Kelly Ripa reflected on her body transformation after she stopped drinking eight years ago.
“When I quit drinking, I expected there to be this windfall of weight loss because everybody’s like, ‘Well, you are gonna get too skinny, and you can’t afford to lose it,’” Ripa, 54, said during the Wednesday, January 22, episode of Live With Kelly and Mark. “I gained 12 pounds [and said], ‘I don’t understand this magical weight loss that people apply.’ I think I just took to eating the sugars.”
Ripa, who cohosted Wednesday’s show with pal Andy Cohen in her husband Mark Consuelos’ absence, gave up alcohol in 2019.
“They’re saying that Americans bought less wine last year,” she previously said on a January 2020 episode of Live. “It’s the first drop in a quarter of a century. Now, I believe this is because I quit drinking that I caused this dip. I have influenced the market.”
She added, “I’m not saying I’ve driven people [from drinking alcohol]. I’m saying, I stopped buying wine and there’s [been] a dip.”
Weeks later, Ripa told People that her wellness journey started when she did a “sober month” with her friends.
“We all did it together — and I just never went back to it,” she explained to the outlet. “It wasn’t even really a thought process. It felt great, I felt like I looked great, I felt like I didn’t feel hungover. Not that I was a heavy drinker — I wasn’t someone who got drunk — but even like two glasses of wine at a girl’s night out dinner, I would feel it the next morning.”
According to Ripa, she never felt “the need or desire to go back” to consuming alcohol.
“It wasn’t really a choice or a thought, it was just, ‘Yeah, I guess I don’t drink anymore,’” Ripa added. “I just felt better, so I stopped.”
The talk show maven further told People that becoming sober was easier than when she stopped smoking cigarettes.
“Quitting smoking I really had to think about. I was like: ‘Smoking leads to cancer and it will kill you.’ It was a thing I had to tell myself. And I was like, ‘It gives you wrinkles,’” Ripa said. “And that was the thing that was really terrifying [laughs]. But you don’t want to die early, needlessly, over cigarettes. Over something you don’t even like that much anyway. But drinking was very easy. I didn’t really think about it at all.”
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