The Real Housewives of New Jersey star Dolores Catania is feeling her best amid her weight loss journey.
“I feel good. I’m down, like, 20-something pounds,” Dolores, 52, exclusively told Us Weekly at BravoCon in Las Vegas on Friday, November 3. “I haven’t been this weight since 1988, so yeah, I’m feeling good.”
Dolores credited her wellness routine to “Mounjaro and the gym,” noting boyfriend Paul “Paulie” Connell often encourages her to work out.
“She works out really hard in the gym,” Paulie, 48, gushed to Us about Dolores, whom he’s been dating since 2022. “And she eats really good.”
Despite cutting out “junk” food, Dolores still has her cheat meals. “I like my McDonald’s still. That’s the truth, Paul,” she quipped to her boyfriend. “I have to tell the truth all the time.”
In fact, Dolores nearly indulged in her guilty pleasure in the middle of BravoCon. “I looked out the window [earlier today] and I saw McDonald’s in the parking lot downstairs,” she told Us. “And I was, like, [counting] the steps.”
Dolores revealed in April that she had started taking Mounjaro, a weight loss medication primarily prescribed to diabetic patients, six weeks earlier.
“I wasn’t going to come to the [season 13] reunion looking any bigger than anyone else, so I got on the bandwagon,” the Bravo star said during an appearance on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen before noting her side effects. “[I’m] just not hungry.”
Dolores also explained that she started working with a personal trainer to help her efforts to slim down.
Nearly three months later, Dolores had dropped 20 pounds. “Right now, I’m 137. I was 157 when I started,” she told The U.S. Sun in July, noting her “realistic” goal is to “be in the low 130s.”
She continued to the outlet: “I took Ozempic, stopped and then began Mounjaro. I was medically prescribed for both because I am insulin-resistant, prediabetic and have a thyroid issue.”
Dolores had found herself “gaining weight every month” prior to starting the injections. “It doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t come off easy,” she told The Sun.
In addition to prioritizing her health, Dolores filmed an “action-packed” season 14 of RHONJ.
“You won’t be disappointed. It’s very surprising. It’s very unpredictable, and there’s going to be a lot of emotions watching it,” she teased to Us on Friday, adding that Teresa Giudice and Melissa Gorga’s hatred for one another reaches a boiling point. “It’s been hard on me. I don’t usually let anything in life affect my everyday life.”
Dolores added, “This season got the best of me. [Paulie] even had to ask me, ‘He’s like, why are you so quiet?’ And I’m like, ‘Listen, I’m facing a lot. I have to go sit with a bunch of people that I don’t know what’s going to happen next.’ How could they hate each other any more than they do?”
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
