Rick Ross Has The Pear Industry Buzzing After Crediting The Fruit For His Weight Loss

Rick Ross lost more than 100 pounds using this one weird trick — pears.

The rapper has been open about his gigantic weight loss, saying in a now-famous interview that the yellow fruit actually helped a lot when he was trying to drop from his once 400-pound frame.

“I eat pears now and [expletive] like that,” Ross told DJ Tim Westwood in an interview this year that later went viral, inspiring a popular Vine. “Shout out to all the pear.”

Ross has since taken to the fruit, even making it the emoji for his Instagram account. In doing so, he’s helped the fruit hit the big time. USA Pears spokeswoman Kathy Stephenson told Modern Farmer that his plug for pears has boosted the company’s followers on Twitter.

“On behalf of our 1,600 pear growers from the Northwest region, we are pleased that Rick has mentioned the health benefits of pears,” Stephenson wrote in an email to Modern Farmer. “Overall, we could not be more pleased with our message being delivered to a new, young and hip demographic.”

Of course, Rick Ross has done a lot more than just eat pears. The rapper also says he does his own version of CrossFit — which he calls, appropriately, RossFit — which was quite a lifestyle change for him.

“We had started doing it last year,” Ross told 93.9 WKYS FM back in June. “The most I used to do for exercise was stand up to count the money, you know what I’m saying?”

Ross added that his diet didn’t take any drastic changes, but instead ate better portions and mixed in more healthy fruits and vegetables. Ross said he was inspired to make the health changes after suffering two seizures in one day back in 2011. Ross was left unconscious and needed CPR to bring him back.

The pear industry appears to be quite happy that Rick Ross made it.