The Modern Family star discusses how positivity helps his anxiety—and why he's ready to open up about his health journey.
Eric Stonestreet Is Ready to Talk About His Diabetes Diagnosis
Published on May 01, 2025
When Eric Stonestreet was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes back in 2009, he says he didn’t think much about it and he certainly didn’t want to tell anyone about it. Like a lot of people, the Modern Family star figured a pill or two and a few casual changes might be enough.
It wasn’t until he saw close family members face health challenges—and heard about doctors encouraging a different approach—that Stonestreet realized it was time to show up for his own health in a more meaningful way.
Now, at 53, Stonestreet says he’s still figuring it all out—but the changes have been real. Recently partnering with the pharmaceutical company Lilly to share his experience with diabetes and the medication Mounjaro, he’s opening up about the daily shifts that helped him feel better, how he manages the stress—he’s a big fan of box breathing—and why staying hopeful has become one of his most important wellness tools.
The Healthy by Reader’s Digest: Eric, you’re working with Lilly to share your experience on Mounjaro for type 2 diabetes. What motivated you to become a spokesperson, and can you tell us a little bit about how the medication has impacted your health journey?
Eric Stonestreet: I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2009, so a long time ago, and I never really took it that serious. I think a lot of other people do. It’s like, you’re younger and you think you’re invincible, and they give you a couple pills and you take them and hopefully that’ll do the trick. I wasn’t checking my blood sugar.
It wasn’t until my parents experienced some health issues unrelated to their type 2 diabetes—and I got two really great doctors in my life, an endocrinologist and an internist, they both were just awesome. My endocrinologist told me that there was a drug coming out in 2022 that she was really excited for me to get on called Mounjaro. So I’ve been on that since 2022 and it’s been going great.
I’m big fan of it as far as lowering my A1C, and then they called and said, “Do you want to talk about it?” So my point of saying that is I was on Mounjaro because of my type 2 diabetes and controlling my A1C—I’m not on Mounjaro because Lilly called and said, “Hey, try this drug out and see if it works for you and then talk about it.” It’s been amazing for me, and my mom as well. We’ve had very good success on it.
The Healthy: Amazing. How did they find out you were on it for the partnership?
Eric Stonestreet: It’s a weird thing how those things work. It’s a little business-y. So actors have representatives and representatives … ask you to freely explain some of your personal life. And some of my personal life was that I have type 2 diabetes. And when I decided that I wanted to tell people about it, I wanted it to be meaningful and I wanted it to be the most impactful, and this really was because Mounjaro had been meaningful and impactful in my life.
So then, naturally, I’m able to speak about it and encourage other people to talk to their doctor about it. Not only the drug and the treatment, but type 2 diabetes in general. Because in the beginning for me, I was embarrassed. I didn’t want to tell anybody about it. Being a heavyset guy, paint with a broad brush, “Well, you’re overweight, so of course you have type 2 diabetes.” And then I’m sitting there thinking, Yeah, I do. So, awkward. And I didn’t tell my parents; I didn’t tell my best friends. I didn’t tell anyone on set.
And then I just got to a point where I was like, I’ve got to make some changes. The campaign itself is, sure, about Mounjaro, but it’s mostly to put a highlight on type 2 diabetes and get people talking about it. One of the ways they can do that is to go to the website. Lilly’s created Mounjaro.com/duets. Duets means partner, and I never had a partner with my diagnosis. Now I have a bunch of partners, the first one being the drug itself because it does its thing and if I don’t show up for it, what’s the use? So I just got motivated and started taking better care of myself.
The Healthy: It’s great when people who are more high-profile come out and talk about their health. It breaks taboos and is great for society.
Eric Stonestreet: I’m nervous about it. I’m not going to lie to you. I’m nervous about it because we know how awful the internet is and how terrible it is. And it was one of my concerns with people. It’s like, I don’t want to go on Instagram and have people making fun of me, even though I’m successful and happy. Still sucks.
The Healthy: Discussions around women aging have been taboo for a long time, and there’s been a lot of female actors coming out about menopause. People are just like, “I’m a human also.”
Eric Stonestreet: You took the words out of my mouth. Literally newsflash, we’re all human, we’re all the same. And with type 2 diabetes, unlike other serious diagnoses of things, you can help control your A1C with treatments, diet, exercise … There is something you can do about that. And I’m doing that, so I hope it inspires people to talk about it. My doctor, when I told him I was doing this, he said, “Thank you. I’m really excited because somebody like you is going to have an impact on patients that I recommend these kinds of drugs to that push back on me because of stigma.” And I never would’ve in a million years thought in a doctor’s office and they say, “Hey, this drug’s really potentially great for you. You should try it.” And [people] be like, “Nah, I’m good.”
The Healthy: You mentioned some of the lifestyle adjustments you had to make.
Eric Stonestreet: For me, it was the little things like trying to drink more water. I’m not a great water drinker. That was step one. Getting rid of carbonated beverages, huge for me. I was an addict. So many people are. Got rid of those. I allow myself to have some every once in a while—there’s one sitting next to me that I am sipping on slowly. That will be the only one I have today.
[I’m also] watching [my] caloric intake and then moving more. It sucks that it’s true. And everybody says, “Move more, eat less.” It’s like, “Yeah, I got it. Yes, I know.” That’s so much easier said than done. I’m not born to get into a Bikram hot yoga studio and work my tail off. That’s not how I’m wired. But what I am wired to do is take little baby steps to find my journey to better health, and that’s what I’ve been doing over the last year, really since I had a doctor’s appointment that just was like, Hey, this is kind of a wake-up call. Our bodies are amazing vessels, and I hate that the heavyset guy’s giving people advice. It’s always been a funny thing for me, but I see the difference.
The Healthy: Mental health is also a crucial aspect of overall well-being. How do you manage stress and maintain mental clarity amid a busy career and just living on ?
Eric Stonestreet: Well, [my wife] Lindsay would say not well. I’m a stress-ridden guy. I’m pretty high strung, which is shocking to some people because they may never see that side of me. I come from a long line of worriers. My dad was a worrier and a thumb-biter and a nail-biter. My grandma was the same way.
I carry a little bit of the weight of the world on my shoulders on a set. I’m the guy that’s worried about sh– that I shouldn’t be worried about, and I wished I wasn’t that way, but then I’m also thankful that I’m that way. I [tried] to breathe on Modern Family when the scene would take too long. We all developed our own techniques of dealing with frustration. Mine was this giant breath, like a deep inhale and a quick exhale. Ed [O’Neill]’s was tapping on his watch. He would do that. Julie [Bowen] had hers, Jesse [Tyler Ferguson] had his, and so it’s kind of an acute thing where I manage stress depending on where I am in different ways. I’m not a great flyer, for example. I love flying, I just don’t like crashing. So I deal with stress there differently. I deal with stress at work differently, so I just kind of adapt and adjust. My high school football coach was a Marine, and he always said, “You have to adjust, adjust, adapt, and overcome.” So I’ve always just tried to do that.
The Healthy: I just read the book Breath by James Nestor. Breath and Pranayama [a breathing technique used in yoga] are just so powerful.
Eric Stonestreet: I just learned square breathing. Have you ever heard of square breathing?
The Healthy: Yes! I think it’s wonderful. So easy to remember and so powerful.
Eric Stonestreet: And listen, I’m a Kansas farm kid that played football, so my point is I’m not a guru type of person. I’m always blown away when stuff that I would easily dismiss actually works—and that square breathing works. And then the other one that I’ve been doing is focus here for 10 seconds on my finger and then focus in the background for 10 seconds and then interchange those two things. That really works.
The Healthy: Is there any wellness ritual that you refuse to skip that’s just a part of your routine?
Eric Stonestreet: It goes back to being embarrassed of my diagnosis of type 2. When I was a freshman in high school, I was six foot one. I’m six foot one now, and I weighed 175, 185 pounds. Now, if I was six foot one and weighed 185 pounds right now, people would say like, “You are really in shape.” [Back] then I never thought of myself that way because I was the chubby kid; I was the fat kid; I was made fun of. I never in a million years looked at myself in ninth or eighth grade as being in shape.
So my point of that is that’s never been a view of mine in the world, that I look any different than I always have felt on the inside. So this journey, this wellness journey, is new, and so I’m figuring it out as I go and I do have a very, very dedicated ritual to thought.
The Healthy: Wonderful.
Eric Stonestreet: I am in my head a lot and I’m always trying to keep it positive. That has never wavered for me. I wouldn’t have been successful in entertainment had I not been able to imagine myself succeeding. I always tell people, I practice life before life happens. I’ve had this conversation with you before I had this conversation. I have interactions with people on the streets before I have those interactions. I get into verbal confrontation with someone over something. I’ve done it before in my mind, I know what’s going to happen. So that’s one of my techniques, I think you could say, is practicing life before it happens.
The Healthy: I teach Katonah yoga a bit and they talk a lot about the imagination, and whether you’re imagining something that you’re doing or you’re imagining your body a certain way, imagining it happening before you actually do the thing is so powerful.
Eric Stonestreet: I was a discus thrower in high school, marginal. But I took lessons in the summer and I had a Nigerian discus coach, and he and his thick Nigerian accent said, “There’s no such thing as practice makes perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. The only way you can perfectly practice is here. You imagine it and you see it, and then that is what makes you great.” I’ve never forgotten that, and it’s meaningful.
For more wellness updates, subscribe to The Healthy by Reader’s Digest newsletter and follow The Healthy on Facebook and Instagram. Keep reading:
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
