Chaka Khan at 70: "A Change Is Coming"

With songs like, “I Feel For You,” “Angel” and “Through The Fire,” living legend Chaka Khan is undoubtedly one of the best voices of our time. Through her over 40 years of entertaining, Chaka went through a period that she was letting her health go. But, in the past five years, Chaka Khan dropped over 75 pounds, was able to keep it off and now living her best life yet!

But if it wasn’t for a surprise diagnosis, the “I’m Every Woman” hit singer would have never made the commitment to change what she was doing or eating.

The 70-year-old Khan credits a strict liquid diet, and then protein, well lack thereof (her vegan diet), for her weight loss.

“I felt like I needed to heal my body, so I would just fast and eat no meat, no dairy. I’ve never been a fan of meat, dairy and sugar. And when I developed diabetes I said, ‘Oh OK, I’m not going to be here long. A change is coming,’” told Khan to lifestyle website Essence.com.

Once she identified that her diet and lifestyle habits needed to change, Khan took some drastic steps. “I went on a radical change of lifestyle. I was on liquids for a year, and that gave me a good jump-start. It sort of changed my whole way of thinking. You have to get the mindset first,” Khan said, reports The Detroit News.

“A lot of doors have opened significantly for me since I dropped the weight,” Chaka admits. “And I have mixed reactions to that, but I’m going to strike the iron while it’s hot. So there’s been lots of meetings with lots of people.”

The singer also now has a perfume line called, Khanasutra, a line of candles, and Chaka Lips for the holidays.

“My weight loss had to occur because I was diagnosed with Type-2 Diabetes and I also had high blood pressure. And I’ve been on medication for that since last year until the beginning of 2012. And I ended up going, ‘Oh, no, no, no, no, this is enough. I can’t live like this.’ And I have a new little daughter to raise [my granddaughter], I adopted her so I have to be here. … [She] was really my first and major influence to lose weight and get healthy so I can be here for her. What I did was stopped eating and went on a strict unconditional fast for a couple of months. And went off meat, became vegan, stopped all the dairy, stopped all the meat.”