Charles Barkley Shows Off Weight Loss on ‘Inside the NBA,’ Reacts to Being Called ‘Sex Symbol’

The NBA season tipped off with a noticeably slimmer Charles Barkley behind the broadcast desk.

Barkley, 62, showed off his weight loss progress on the ESPN debut of Inside the NBA on Wednesday, October 22, much to the delight of his cohosts. 

“You did lose weight,” Kenny Smith told Barkley, as Ernie Johnson remarked, “Look at this guy.”

Barkley thanked his deskmates for their kind words and jokingly gave a “shout-out to my doctors” at Ro, the telehealth service that promotes a GLP-1 medication that Barkley has used to aid his weight loss. The NBA Hall of Famer became a celebrity ambassador for the company in April. 

“You told me you was, like, riding a bike and jogging,” Smith, 60, said. 

Barkley responded, “I’m working out too. You got to work out. You can’t just take a shot.”

Inside the NBA panelist Shaquille O’Neal also couldn’t resist ribbing Barkley over his trimmed-down figure when asked about his predictions from last season. 

“That’s last year. Chuck was fat last year,” O’Neal, 53, joked. “Now look at him. He’s a sex symbol.”

Barkley smiled and said, “He’s got a point about the sex symbol.”

In 2023, Barkley revealed he had lost over 60 pounds in six months after he started taking Mounjaro, an injectable prescription medication that helps with weight loss.

“I started at 352 [pounds] and I’m down to 290,” Barkley said during a May 2023 appearance on ESPN’s The Pat McAfee Show. “I’m starting to feel like a human being, not a fat ass anymore.”

Barkley said he felt “amazing” after a combination of “working out” and taking a once-weekly injection. 

“My doctor told me, she says, ‘There’s a lot of fat young people. Ain’t a lot of fat old people, they’re all dead,’” Barkley joked. 

He added, “I’m like, ‘Yo, man, I wanna be here.’ I’m gonna get down to 270 [pounds] because man, I wanna be here.” 

Barkley attributed much of his weight gain to hip replacement surgery he had in 2016. 

“I gained 100 pounds when I got new hips,” he said in an interview to promote Ro in April. “You know, you can’t do anything for months and months and months. It’s kind of hard to lose weight when you get older because obviously you can’t work out. Your metabolism changes, first and foremost. But you don’t have the ability to work out five or six hours a day like you did when you were playing professional [basketball].”

Barkley explained that his weight loss had allowed him “to feel a lot like myself.”

“When you lose 10 pounds, you don’t notice a difference,” he added. “When you lose 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, your back, your knees, your ankles — I play golf every day during the summer. It was great not having that 50-pound dumbbell on my damn back and neck the whole time.”

Inside the NBA, which aired on TNT from 1989 to 2025, will serve as ESPN’s pregame, halftime and postgame show throughout the 2025-26 NBA season.