Shaquille O’Neal Says He Lost 55lbs: “I Couldn’t Even Walk Up the Stairs” [Video]

Shaquille O’Neal recently shared his weight loss journey, which he says is still ongoing.

The former NBA star, 51, announced he has lost 55 pounds to get his weight down to 351 pounds. The star center told Entertainment Tonight that his target goal is  “between 315 and 330” pounds.

“I was getting chubby and couldn’t even walk up the stairs,” the former Los Angeles Laker player told the outlet. “I didn’t like the way I looked in the mirror.”

“I was like, ‘I’m gonna lose 20’ and then I was trying to lose 20,” he said, adding that he previously set “crazy goals” that he never followed through on.

He mentioned his lifestyle and eating habits as possibly the reason, joking that he currently owns “a little 4.9 pack” but the goal is to get “an eight pack,” PEOPLE reported.

O’Neal, who stands at 7-foot-1, said that in 2000 he weighed 345 pounds, in 2001 he was 375, and by 2002, he weighed 395 pounds.

This isn’t the first time O’Neal has shed some weight. In 2004 he weighed 345 and said he was in his best physical shape in 2006 at age 34 when he played for the Orlando Magic.

“A friend of mine called me and said, ‘You’re fat,’ and she gave me this guy’s name, and he did some blood work,” the retired athlete recalled at the time. “He was saying, ‘You can do this, you can’t do that, [eat] more vegetables, [your] iron’s low.’”

O’Neal noted that he wasn’t “a salad eater” before but now takes supplements, drinks shakes, and avoids soda.

“Once I just started changing those certain things, it dropped,” the 50-year-old continued. “It’s all about eating right.”

He also plans on eliminating bread from his diet, explaining, “I think I could get the Marky Wahlberg look. I want to be known as the Black Mark Wahlberg.”