People can seek to lose weight for many reasons, all of them personal — but for celebrities, these journeys become public, as well. And these stars have recently spoken out about their own body transformations, whether they underwent them for health reasons or simply because they were ready for a change.
Celebrities such as Eric Stonestreet, Kelly Clarkson, Kathy Bates, John Goodman and Adele have all publicly addressed speculation about their changing weight, and in many cases, shared a look at how they achieved the changes. Some stars have opened up about the use of medications that can aid in weight loss, including Mounjaro and Ozempic, and others have said their trimmer figures are purely through dietary changes and working out.
Below, see some of the stars who have spoken about their dramatic weight loss transformations — and how they feel today.
Jelly Roll
Jelly Roll started his weight loss journey in 2022, at 540 lbs.; by April 2025, he revealed he had lost nearly 200 lbs. as of April 2025, and hoped to lose another 100 lbs.
“For the non-fluffy people in the world, I would give y’all some educational course here — to do all the fun stuff in life, you’ve got to be under 250,” he explained while on Jimmy Kimmel Live! “I want to skydive, I want to ride a roller coaster. I want to ride a bull.”
So how has he dropped the weight? “Dude, listen. I’ve been thinking about ways to make it sound cool, but I can’t. I’m eating a lot of protein and vegetables and walking. That’s what I’m doing,” he told Kimmel. He also trained for a 5K and started a Facebook group to encourage others to do the same.
“I wanna be on the cover of Men’s Health by March of 2026,” he said while on his wife, Bunnie XO’s, podcast in 2024, noting that it was the first time he ever publicly shared that aspiration. “That’s my new goal. I wanna have one of the biggest transformations.”
Lizzo
Lizzo started her “weight release journey” back in 2023, in an effort to improve her mental health. Over the years, the star has been vocal about loving her body at any size — and also intentional about making sure she doesn’t use toxic language that might be harmful to her younger fans.
And while she hasn’t revealed the exact number of pounds she’s dropped, the work she’s been doing “very slowly” had led to a look that she’s been happy to show off on social media. In January 2025, she said she had reached her goal weight.
“I did it,” she wrote in the caption on a photo. “Today when I stepped on my scale, I reached my weight release goal. I haven’t seen this number since 2014! Let this be a reminder you can do anything you put your mind to. Time for new goals!”
And she continues to keep it real on the topic. “I’m not going to lie and say I love my body every day,” the singer told the New York Times. “The bottom line is, the way you feel about your body changes every single day. There are some days I adore my body, and others when I don’t feel completely positive.”
Remi Bader
Remi Bader has had to clap back at critics who said her losing weight through bariatric surgery was taking the easy way out.
“Don’t let anyone ever tell you surgery is the easy way out. I worked hard to get here and i’m forever proud of myself 🩷,” she wrote under a transformation video posted to Instagram showing her workout journey post-op.
The influencer, who built her platform on embracing her curves, opened up to Self about her weight loss journey, telling the mag, “I loved being curvy my whole life; I just did. It was who I was… I will always believe that you could be a bigger size and be healthy and happy,” she told the outlet. “I was for a while, that wasn’t a lie. But there was a point when it shifted, and I became really unhappy.”
She later told the outlet, “I was lost with my identity before… I wasn’t big enough at first and plus-size enough at first for the plus-size community. Then I became too big… for some brands even to work with. Now I’m too small? I actually don’t know where I’m supposed to be.”
Oprah
After publicly struggling with her weight over many years in the public eye, in 2024, Oprah said that she had used weight loss medication and lifestyle adjustments to reach a weight she was happy with. Her health journey began after having knee surgery, which led her to make exercise and dietary changes — but she realized that medication could help her keep from “yo-yoing” as she had done in the past.
“I realized I’d been blaming myself all these years for being overweight, and I have a predisposition that no amount of willpower is going to control,” she told PEOPLE. “Obesity is a disease. It’s not about willpower — it’s about the brain.”
“The fact that there’s a medically approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier, in my lifetime, feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift, and not something to hide behind and once again be ridiculed for. I’m absolutely done with the shaming from other people and particularly myself,” she said.
Whoopi Goldberg
While discussing the ABC special Winfrey produced about the topic of weight loss medication on The View, Whoopi Goldberg told the audience she had lost weight herself with the help of Mounjaro.
“I will tell you, I weighed almost 300 lbs. when I made Till,” said Goldberg of the 2022 film she acted in and produced. She added that she didn’t realize the extent of her weight gain until one day, “I saw me and I thought, ‘Oh! That’s a lot of me!’ ”
She also urged compassion for anyone who has experienced weight gain or loss.
“Maybe the key is to stop judging everybody,” she said. “My weight has come and gone and up and down, but it’s never been an issue for me because I don’t listen to what other people say about me so it has never been a problem … Everyone has something to say but no one said, ‘How you doing?’ Because it involves so many other things.”
Eric Stonestreet
Eric Stonestreet was diagnosed with diabetes around the same time as he began filming his role as Cam on Modern Family, and at the time, he underplayed the seriousness of the condition.
He admitted to feeling shame because of the diagnosis and hiding “injectables and pills” from his now-fiancée Lindsay Schweitzer, until a few years into their eight-year relationship.
Still, it wasn’t until the death of his father, who also had diabetes, that Stonestreet got a wake-up call. “He passed away from leukemia, but the thing that was the most painful for him was his diabetic neuropathy. And I just decided, well, I can’t go down that road,” the actor explained to PEOPLE.
Additionally, Stonestreet revealed that the thought of not being there for his and Schweitzer’s 13-year-old twin sons made him turn things around.
“They’re her kids but I’ve known them since 3 so they’re my kids as well,” he said. “And just like every parent, I want to be around. So I just decided, I gotta stop this train from going that direction and reverse it a little bit as best I can.”
The actor then got on Mounjaro, which he has been taking since 2022. “It’s a game changer,” he said. “It has just been incredible. It’s changed my lifestyle, changed my approach to eating, changed my approach to exercise.” He added that he wants to maintain those changes long-term: “Here these people have invented this incredible thing that clearly does its part. Now I need to contribute my part.”
John Goodman
John Goodman’s weight loss journey began back in 2007, and he has been on a steady path since. The actor, who first came to prominence in the late ’80s and early ’90s playing Dan Conner on Roseanne, has lost 200 lbs., thanks to a consistent healthy diet and workout regimen.
“I don’t want to be an example to anybody when the weight comes thundering back on — when I start eating Crisco out of the can with a spoon and a side of confectioner’s sugar,” he joked to AARP when speaking about what motivated him to stay the course.
Jim Gaffigan
Jim Gaffigan lost 50 lbs. using Mounjaro — the brand name for tirzepatide, a prescription drug used to treat type 2 diabetes that also helps people lose weight. And though some aren’t as open about using the medication, Gaffigan has been very candid about his experience.
“I had very low expectations because I did know someone that had tried it and they were like, ‘Oh no, I was just nauseous for a week,'” he told PEOPLE. “And then I thought my true joy of eating would overpower anything.”
However, after his doctor asked if he’d considered the medication, the actor gave it a go. “She was like, ‘Well, some people are against it.’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t care, I’ll try it.’ My knees hurt and my cholesterol was kind of not great,” Gaffigan says.
As for the stigma that may come with having used a weight-loss drug, Gaffigan has no qualms about it.
“I almost thought it was kind of odd that people were resistant to talking about it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it,” he said. “There’s people walking around that obviously do not have blonde hair — yet they do. I don’t think that’s weird, either. It’s just whatever gets you through.”
Fat Joe
At his heaviest, Fat Joe weighed 470 lbs. However, after attending the funeral for Big Pun — who died aged 28, from a heart attack — the Bronx native knew he had to make a change.
“I went to his funeral and I felt like Ebenezer Scrooge. Like, I seen me,” Fat Joe recalled. “And I’m looking at his little daughter. She was the same age as my daughter. I said, ‘You gotta lose weight; otherwise you outta here.'”
He has since lost about 250 lbs., thanks to a cleaner diet and Ozempic.
“We just try to eat everything with the least carbs as possible…so we try to stay away from the bread, the pasta, the rice. That’s the smartest way to eat,” told Us Weekly.
Kathy Bates
Academy Award-winning actress Kathy Bates revealed she lost 100 lbs. over six years, but it was not all due to Ozempic. The actress first lost 80 lbs. through sheer changes to her lifestyle and diet, she told PEOPLE. She then dropped another 20 on Ozempic.
“There’s been a lot of talk that I just was able to do this because of Ozempic,” Bates says. “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.”
Dave Bautista
As a former pro wrestler, Dave Bautista has been relatively in shape throughout his career. However, after putting on 300 lbs. for his role as Leonard in Knock at the Cabin, the actor went into serious shredding mode and dropped 50 lbs. using jiu-jitsu.
“I put on all this weight for Knock at the Cabin. I was really big, like over 300 lbs.,” he said while on Live with Kelly and Mark. “I was struggling to lose the weight, so I brought a trainer — my buddy Jason Manly — over to Budapest with me while I was filming Dune,” he said.
He added that the duo “did nothing but grapple, like for hours. And so I started shedding the weight off and I figured ‘I’ll just stick with it so I’ll get my brown belt.’“
Kelly Clarkson
While Kelly Clarkson has been more private about her weight loss journey, she did disclose that she’s taking “something that aids in helping break down the sugar,” because her body “doesn’t do it right,” and addressed the Ozempic rumors.
“My doctor chased me for two years, and I was like, ‘No, I’m afraid of it. I already have thyroid problems. Everybody thinks it’s Ozempic, but it’s not. It’s something else.”
Adele
Adele’s quest for better mental health led to her weight loss, though the singer stressed that wasn’t the end goal. She began working out as a way to manage her anxiety in 2018, and three years later, she was down 100 lbs.
“It became my time,” she told Vogue of her intensive weightlifting and circuit training sessions at Heart & Hustle, a private gym in West Hollywood. “I realized that when I was working out, I didn’t have any anxiety. It was never about losing weight. I thought, If I can make my body physically strong, and I can feel that and see that, then maybe one day I can make my emotions and my mind physically strong.”
Khloé Kardashian
Perhaps no other Kardashian sister has had to deal with more public criticism about her appearance than Khloé Kardashian and the reality TV star has talked openly about how hurtful it’s been — as well as what now motivates her to stay in shape.
The third Kardashian sister revealed she dropped 40 lbs. following her divorce from Lamar Odom, but has now turned her focus more on being healthy than obsessing over the number on a scale.
“When I was bigger, if they had Ozempic, I probably would have tried it, cause I tried any other thing,” she said during an episode of The Kardashians. “I tried any fad weight loss trend except for the real thing that actually works, and that’s a lifestyle change.”
“So I really want to encourage healthiness, and not about the number on a scale. I just think people should be active,” she said. “I don’t really care what your size is. You should just be healthy and stronger for yourself.
Rebel Wilson
Rebel Wilson’s desire to become a mother was the catalyst for her weight loss journey. The actress visited her fertility doctor back in 2019, who revealed she’d have a much better chance of harvesting and freezing her eggs if she lost weight.
“He looked me up and down and said, ‘You’d do much better if you were healthier,’ ” Wilson told PEOPLE in 2022.
“I was taken aback. I thought, ‘Oh God, this’s guy’s so rude.’ He was right. I was carrying around a lot of excess weight. It’s almost like I didn’t think of my own needs. I thought of a future child’s needs that really inspired me to get healthier.”
She went on to lose 80 lbs. and welcomed daughter Royce Lillian in 2022.
David Harbour
Though David Harbour had fans swooning over his ripped physique in season 4 of Stranger Things, the actor said he doesn’t see himself dropping weight for a role ever again.
Harbour lost 80 lbs. for season 4 of the Netflix show because his character, Jim Hopper, was held captive by Russians at a labor camp at the top of the season. To get the weight off, he took on intermittent fasting and pilates.
“I lost about 80 lbs. from season three — I was about 270 [then], and when we shot [season four] I was around 190,” Harbour told British GQ.
“I don’t think I’ll ever do that again,” he told the outlet. “I have this Santa Claus movie [Violent Night] coming out for Universal in December and I gained [it all back]. But now, yeah, never again. The prosthetics are too good.”
Billy Gardell
Billy Gardell lost 150 lbs. after undergoing bariatric surgery, but the Bob Hearts Abishola actor says the procedure was just the beginning of his journey.
“My suggestion to anybody who’s considering this is to study and really immerse yourself in the commitment it takes after the surgery to maintain this and take care of yourself,” he told PEOPLE.
“If you’re not willing to make that commitment, don’t do the surgery. But if you are willing to make that commitment, then it’s been an incredibly healthy change for my life.”
After going through a pattern where he’d “lose 30 lbs., gain 35 lbs., lose 30 lbs., gain 35 lbs.,” the COVID-19 pandemic made him realize he was more at risk of catching the virus because of his health. The thought of leaving his family behind gave him the jolt he needed to move forward with the surgery.
“The idea of not being here for my wife or my kid motivated my change, motivated me into I will commit to whatever it takes to get healthy,” he said. “Sometimes you need help and you have to be humble enough to ask for help in order for that to happen.”
Al Roker
Al Roker famously underwent gastric bypass surgery back in 2002 after years of failed diets and health problems, and was able to drop more than 100 lbs.
Twenty years later, the beloved weatherman looked back on his life-changing decision with a post on Instagram where he could be seen pulling out his old jeans — and showing how he could fit his whole body in just half of the pair.
“Hard to believe it was 20 years ago today, I wore these size 54 Levi jeans to my #gastricbypass at 340 lbs. and here I am today,” Roker wrote.
“It’s still a struggle but I’m never going back,” he vowed. “I have setbacks and struggle every day, but I never forget how far I’ve come.”
Jennifer Hudson
Jennifer Hudson was a proud, full-figured woman when she came on the scene on American Idol back in 2004. However, she decided to make some lifestyle and diet changes and shed 80 lbs. as a Weight Watchers spokeswoman between 2010 and 2014.
“I throw the pancakes across the room! I don’t let the food intimidate me,” she told Yahoo of how she keeps the weight off. “If it’s too much, I just get rid of it, but I make sure to watch what I put in my body. And I make sure I know what it is. It’s all about portions for the most part. I just take care of myself in that way, being more conscious. I don’t work out a lot, but I do like to be active. Simple as that.”
Shonda Rhimes
Shonda Rhimes’ 117 lbs. weight loss was also inspired by the desire to be around for her daughters.
While on the Ellen DeGeneres Show back in 2015, the Shondaland pioneer opened up about an eye-opening moment that spawned her journey. “I got on an airplane … it was a first class seat, you know, they’re bigger, and I was like: ‘This is going to be really comfortable,’” Rhimes recalled.
“And I got in my seat, I took off my shoes, I took out my book and I went to buckle my seatbelt – and it wouldn’t buckle. And I thought to myself, ‘Well, something is wrong with this seatbelt, it’s broken.’ And it wasn’t the seatbelt, it was me.”
She continued: “It really was about the fact that I have a 3-year-old, and a 2-year-old, and a 13-year-old, and I kind of wanted to be around for them, to be healthy.”
“I’m super feminist, and I’m like, ‘Everybody should be whatever shape they want to be, how dare anybody tell anybody anything!’ ” she said. “And then I thought like, ‘I’m going to fall over, cause I don’t feel good.’ So it was really about that.”
Jacob Batalon
Jacob Batalon dropped 100 lbs. after realizing he couldn’t walk upstairs without being out of breath.
“This one day I kind of just saw myself without a shirt on and it was just ridiculous,” he explained. “I could not believe I let myself get this far. That’s what sort of started it all.”
The Spiderman actor enlisted the help of a trainer, began working out six days a week for about 90 minutes and switched to a plant-based diet and began losing weight in 2020.
Anthony Anderson
For Anthony Anderson, being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes initially only led to some small changes in his lifestyle.
“I started eating healthier and in moderation, but I was still sort of eating the same stuff that I’d been eating all my life,” he admitted to PEOPLE.
But a new role made him change his tune entirely. “When I was cast in Law & Order, I decided to make a drastic change,” says Anderson. “I got more serious about my health and appearance — not from a vanity standpoint. I just started making healthier choices.”
By 2014, he’d lost 47 lbs. and altered his diet. “I moved to a plant-based diet,” he told PEOPLE. “I’m vegan-ish — I’m not going to send anything back to the kitchen if some butter or cream found its way onto the plate.”
Missy Elliott
Missy Elliott was diagnosed with Graves’ disease in 2008, a thyroid condition which not only led to depression and anxiety, but a significant amount of weight loss as well.
“There were physical changes, extreme headaches, extreme weight loss,” her friend Sharaya J. told Women’s Health of that difficult time in Elliott’s life. “What that does to a person, being a public figure and knowing people are looking, judging? That’s a tough thing.”
These days, Elliott has said, she manages her condition with medication, diet and exercise.
“Every day I wake, I’m blessed to be here and in good health,” she told PEOPLE in 2024. “I’m feeling so much better now … Every now and then you get a little ache in the leg or the knee, but outside of that, I feel good.”
Mo’nique
No one reveled in her curves more than Mo’Nique, but at one point, the comedian decided to begin taking better care of her health. The actress lost over 80 lbs. and in 2018, she celebrated weighing under 200 lbs. for the first time in her adult life.
“I said that I would share this journey with y’all, the weight loss and getting healthy,” Mo’Nique said in a video shared to Instagram.
“And today when I got on the scale, since I was 17 years old, I’ve been over 200 lbs. Today was the first time in my adult life that I’ve been under 200 lbs. So I wanted to let y’all know it’s possible, we can do it and we can get there.”
To this day, Mo’Nique continues to share motivational videos of herself hitting the gym, staying disciplined and committing to her health journey.
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