Gabriel Iglesias takes a humorous look at his own life

Weight loss is always at the top of the list among New Year’s resolutions. It’s also probably the resolution most likely to be broken.

Comedian Gabriel Iglesias, who for years reveled in his “fluffy” figure to his audience’s delight, has a plan for controlling his weight, which at one point topped 440 pounds and led to a diagnosis of Type II diabetes.

“I’m planning on going on the Keto diet at the beginning of the year, so this is my ‘farewell to sugar tour,’” said Iglesias in a recent phone call. “It’s going to be extremely hard.”

Until then, however, Iglesias was doing everything he could to stay in a good mood while looking forward to his return to Honolulu for a Blaisdell Arena concert on Saturday. “I’m staring at a box of donut holes! So I’m doing pretty good,” he said.

THINGS HAVE come together nicely for the 42-year-old comedian, weight loss included. He’s lost a lot of weight (more than 100 pounds), but he’s gained a lot of new fans.

In 2018, Iglesias was named to The Hollywood Reporter’s list of The 40(ish) Most Powerful People in Comedy.

He has a new Netflix special, “One Show Fits All,” set to air later this year, and he has nearly finished filming a new, 10-episode Netflix comedy series, “Mr. Iglesias,” in which he plays a teacher of gifted, but misfit teenagers.

The character is based on himself – or at least, a self that might have been.

Growing up in Southern California, Iglesias briefly considered becoming a teacher, having taken a course in teaching and getting offered a scholarship to go into education.

“We would make lesson plans, and then they would take us to elementary schools to teach these plans in front of kids,” he said. “We were doing little 10-minute lessons, and after a class a teacher comes up to me and says, ‘Listen, I think you’re going to be a really good teacher.’

“I said, ‘But my lesson plan was horrible!’ And she said, ‘I agree, but you had one thing that the others didn’t have. … You had their attention.’”

Iglesias, however, had always been a wisecracking jokester in school, but could only show those skills in speech class or the occasional talent show.

“My principal got word that I was really good at (teaching), but when he found out I wanted to be a comic, he wasn’t happy,” Iglesias said. “The teachers weren’t happy. Everybody was against me being a comic.”

That included his own mother.

A few years after finishing school, Iglesias had a job selling cellphones – back then, they didn’t come free with a cellular service account – and was doing quite well at it, clearing up to $60,000 a year in commissions. But the urge to do comedy was still there, and he began appearing at “comedy spots” – essentially pop-up comedy clubs that would spring up around L.A.

He eventually gave up selling cell phones to go into comedy full time, despite a stern warning from his mom.

For a while, it seemed she was right.

Unable to pay his bills, Iglesias lost his car and got evicted from his $400-a-month, two-bedroom apartment.

So which was harder, getting evicted or telling his mother something she didn’t want to hear?

“Getting evicted,” he said with a laugh.

“Getting yelled at in Spanish was one thing, but having to move out with a big ol’ pink notice on your door, that’s really hard.”

WITH HIS cheerful manner and clean, wholesome humor, Iglesias has made a career out of poking fun at himself – his weight, his family life – and things that happen around him.

He sees his life as primarily being “a fish out of water” wherever he goes, although he’s done an admirable job ingratiating himself with Hawaii audiences. He’s performed here frequently, at one point appearing here every Thanksgiving for five years running.

Iglesias filmed a special here “Aloha Fluffy,” which was full of local references and gave him a chance to show off some colorful and remarkably accurate pidgin, picked up from hanging with friends in the islands.

“I go to a little hole-in-the-wall place,” he said. “They serve these great Spam sandwiches on white bread, and they have karaoke and a bar. It’s just super, super chill. Clearly tourists don’t know about it, it’s very much a local spot. My Hawaiian friends took me there, and it’s like, ‘Dis da place we like to come to, brah, when we just wanna get away. We OK, we go sing, we go drink, we have Spam sandwiches.’ And I’m like, ‘This is freakin’ awesome!’”

Iglesias is a spontaneous performer who works out his bits before a live audience. He doesn’t bother writing things out, preferring instead to just observe, think and “vent.”

“I have things that are bothering me and then I go up on stage, and I vent about them,” he said. “That’s my writing process. I vent about things going on in my life, and if it’s funny, I’ll remember what got the laugh. And if it’s not, I’ll work on it until I do get a laugh.

“I feel like an idiot savant,” he said. “I’m really good about remembering my set, and I’m really good about being creative, but then I’ll forget where I parked my car. I use up 98 percent of my brain power on making sure that the set and the material come out great, but everything else in my life is not as on point.”