According to published reports, rapper Heavy D was on a weight loss program when he died suddenly last week at the age of 44.
The rapper had begun a weight loss plan and kept a regular workout regime, according to EURweb.com.
Tony Wisniewski, the rapper’s trainer at the Ultra Body Fitness gym in Los Angeles, set Heavy up on a fitness plan three months before his death. Wisniewski is the same trainer that helped him lose 150 pounds back in 2008.
Autopsy reports show that Heavy D, real name Dwight Arrington Myers, weighed 344 pounds at the time of his death.
The autopsy was completed on Wednesday, but the coroner’s office declined to release a cause of death until they know the results of toxicology reports, which could take weeks.
According to Heavy D’s cousin, he had a “touch of pneumonia,” after returning from a trip to England a few days before he passed.
“We really do believe obesity makes people do worse with lung diseases,” said Dr. Benjamin Suratt, associate division chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Vermont/Fletcher Allen Health Care hospital.
“If Heavy D died of a garden-variety pneumonia,” said Suratt, “it could be that he wasn’t able to fight it off due to his lungs not being able to fully expand and his immune system not having been fully functional.”
