Actress Kathy Bates has lost an impressive 100 pounds, and she realizes her change in weight has sparked some discussion. Now, she’s setting the record straight and explaining exactly how she dropped the pounds.

Bates told PEOPLE that it was back in 2017 when she first decided to lose weight. She was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and decided to focus on her health. Bates shared that diabetes “runs in my family, and I’d seen what my father had gone through. He had had a leg amputation. One of my sisters is dealing with it very seriously, and it terrified me. It scared me straight.”

Her diet was the first thing she changed. She stopped overeating and she switched up what she was eating for healthier choices. She explained, “I used to eat terribly: burgers and Cokes and pizza.”

Bates, who stars in the reboot of “Matlock,” shared that she still lets herself have the occasional splurge. For example, she shared, “We’ve been having trucks come to the lot over at Paramount to thank the crew, and yesterday we had Pink’s Hot Dogs.” She continued, “Oh, my God, I hadn’t had a hot dog in such a long time. Today I’m getting back on my track.”

She hasn’t added exercise to her lifestyle yet, but she wants to. She explained, “I have a treadmill here at the house, and I might try Pilates. People always ask, ‘Don’t you want a trainer?’ No, I really don’t. I don’t want anybody over my shoulder. It’s just very important to me to keep this going. I don’t want to slip.”

While Bates has done a lot of the hard work to lose weight through her diet, she has admitted that she did take Ozempic. She explained that she dropped the first 80 pounds on her own, but she used Ozempic to lose the last 20 pounds. She said, “There’s been a lot of talk that I just was able to do this because of Ozempic.” She emphasized, “But I have to impress upon people out there that this was hard work for me, especially during the pandemic. It’s very hard to say you’ve had enough.”

The side effects of weight loss have been tremendous for Bates. The 76-year-old shared, “I don’t have to sit down. I can stand up all day long and walk and move and breathe and do so many things that I couldn’t before.”

In addition, she no longer has to wear compression sleeves like she used to for lymphedema symptoms that she developed following the double mastectomy she had following a 2012 breast cancer diagnosis. She no longer experiences swelling like she used to. She shared, “It’s such a thrill to be able to put my arm into a jacket and it fits.”

Watch the video below to hear Bates discuss her weight loss.