Mercedes Javid Talks Weight Loss Battle: A Doctor Put Me On Diet Pills At Age 14
Shahs of Sunset’s Mercedes “MJ” Javid, real name Mercedeh Christine Javid as noted in legal documents pertaining to her incarceration for bank fraud, has spoken a lot this week about her past.
During the reunion, for example, she was browbeaten with allegations of alcoholism and pill-popping. Both of which she denied.
Her friend-of-two-decades Reza Farahan put her on blast saying, “You’re 40. You robbed a bank. You aren’t selling real estate,” he said. “You don’t have any hair. Your lips are fake. Your boobs are fake. Everything about you from the head to toe is fake. You can’t go to Canada. You are a convicted felon. You can’t vote.”
Explaining the bank fraud at age 18 (not a robbery), Javid tells host Andy Cohen, “I was working at a bank and there were a group of Nigerian mafia that wanted to make some check deposits without me putting the proper hold on the check. My life was threatened. I was scared for the safety of myself and my family. Even though at the time it was a mistake, it was the only way I knew I could get out of that experience alive.” Possibly revisionist, but it pretty much matches the legal record of her imprisonment.
Mike Shouhed interjects, “She had a public defender who made her take a plea and that is why it went on her record.”
And regarding her criminal past and claims she’s inured to self-medicating, there’s back story to that too. MJ tells Kit Hoover and Billy Bush on Access Hollywood Live, above, about her history with pills. She was put on diet pills by a doctor at 14.
“When I was 14 years old, a doctor, an internist, put me on diet pills, which is really like amphetamines,” MJ explained. “It was terrible and I felt physically sick from it.”
She eventually got her body issues under control: “When enough days and years go by where you’re sort of waiting to be something you’re not, you realize your whole life can go by and you can just waste time thinking that you need to do something. Once [I] let go of that need to be something else [and] relaxed, I feel great about what I am and what I look like, and then [shed] a couple of pounds without even trying.”
She continues, ”I’m just gonna be really happy today with who I am. Striving for perfection is BS because then you’re going to stay home and hide. I’d rather just be cool with what I have!”
She also admits where the issues come from: ”[My mom] wants everything to be perfect: she wants every hair in place and it’s never going to be that way. So, I basically established boundaries with her. Things with my mom are up and down. I adjust my attitude. The younger generation has the obligation to make it better.”
