The most stunning weight-loss transformations Hollywood has seen

TV producer Shonda Rhimes decided to change her life after her sister Delorse confronted her in 2013, saying, “You never say yes to anything.” Those words were the basis of the Grey’s Anatomy creator’s best-selling book The Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person, where Rhimes started to change that way of living.

Rhimes told Oprah Winfrey on the show Super Soul Sunday in 2015 (via Parade) that she thought at the time: “I really need to start saying yes to the things that scare me. If I never say yes to anything, I need to start saying yes to things that I would always say no to automatically.” So one thing that was important for the mother of three to say yes to, she said, was good health, so that she could be there for her kids.

And her eventual weight loss of over 125 pounds was she called a “byproduct” of saying yes, and also of “having an epiphany,” she said. “I work so hard at everything that I do. I work my butt off at work and I work hard at being a mother, why do I think losing weight would be easy?” Just realizing that made a big difference for her. Rhimes also acknowledged that she wouldn’t like it, telling Extra (via Popcrush), “I changed everything I ate — and I hated all of that — and then I hate exercising and I did that, too. I hated it the whole time.” She admitted she still hates it, but she keeps on track for her health and for her family.

Actress Kirstie Alley once got up to 219 pounds, but she was in a little bit of denial over her weight loss until the tabloids not-so-helpfully pointed it out to her. “Honestly, I didn’t know how fat I was,” she said on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2006. “Thanks to the tabloids I went, ‘Damn, girl, you’re fat!'” Ultimately, Alley lost 75 pounds, and kept a promise she made to come back on Oprah and wear a bikini, albeit with some pantyhose under it.

Alley “broke up” with Jenny Craig shortly after that. Unfortunately, within a few years, she had gained all the weight back and then some. Then she started her own weight loss company, Organic Liaison, lost 100 pounds, and went on Dancing With the Stars in 2011. But, according to an interview with People magazine, Alley found herself getting back together with Jenny Craig in 2015 after she put on 30 pounds.

“I love that you have a consultant,” Alley told People. “It’s like being an athlete. No athlete is going to do well without having a coach. We have to equate that to life.” By 2017, Alley had lost a total of 50 pounds, and has kept it off. She revealed to People in January 2017 that she avoided her three top trigger foods, cheese, linguini with clam sauce, and sugar cookies, watched her calories, and kept up with exercise. And she’s still enjoying life. “I can have anything I want, I’m just counting the calories,” she noted.

Actress/writer Lena Dunham is very philosophical about her weight and how it relates to her happiness — or not. “I feel I’ve made it pretty clear over the years that I don’t give even the tiniest of s**** what anyone else feels about my body,” Dunham said on her Instagram account in 2017. “I’ve gone on red carpets in couture as a size 14…. I’ve accepted that my body is an ever-changing organism, not a fixed entity—what goes up must come down and vice versa. I smile just as wide no matter my current size because I’m proud of what this body has seen and done and represented.”

She has worked out with celebrity trainer Tracy Anderson, but told People that it was about wanting to be healthier and stronger, not thinner. “I came to her and was like, ‘I have endometriosis, I have chronic physical pain, I just want to feel stronger. I just want to have a stronger core, I want to feel like I have more power throughout my day, how do I get there?'”

Dunham did lose some weight in 2017, and when she showed up on The Ellen DeGeneres Show (via Self) with a slimmer body, she talked about how she got called names for losing weight. “I had this experience of my body changing and suddenly I got all these people being like, ‘You’re a hypocrite! I thought you were body positive! I thought you were a person who embraces bodies of all sizes!,'” she said. She replied, “I do, I just understand bodies change.” 

Dunham later mocked tabloid coverage of her weight loss, insisting that her “20 slimdown tips” came from things like health issues and stress, as well as “marching your ass off” and “a quiet rage that replaces need for food with need for revenge.” She may have lost weight, but she hasn’t lost her sense of humor.

Singer/actress Jennifer Hudson is known for her 80-pound weight loss nearly as much as she is known for winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for the 2006 film Dreamgirls, a role she had to gain 20 pounds for. She initially started to lose weight for the title role in the 2011 film Winnie Mandela. “Whatever it takes to morph into the character, I’ll do it,” she told People. However, “I wasn’t going to starve myself for anyone.”

Hudson first hired Harley Pasternak, a top celeb trainer. Then she started doing Weight Watchers. Hudson admitted that she had tried to diet in the past, but this time it took thanks to it being less restrictive. She also started working out regularly. In 2014, when she stopped doing the ads, she said (via People), “My experience with Weight Watchers has truly been life changing. I am grateful for what I have learned throughout the process and will always take it with me.”

And she’s also managed to keep the weight off. JHud explained one of her secrets to Yahoo! Style, “I throw the pancakes across the room! I don’t let the food intimidate me,” she said. “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 don’t work out a lot, but I do like to be active.” She does admit to still indulging on chocolate. “I always have to have chocolate around — it’s my cigarette,” she shared. “I don’t smoke, but it calms me so well.”

Actress and former talk show host Ricki Lake shot to fame in John Waters’ 1988 movie Hairspray. She got the part because she was overweight. “Being fat worked, and I think that was what was confusing for me for a long time in my career,” she told ABC News. She said that she had put on the weight in the first place because of being “sexually abused as a child.” She said “it was my way of, you know, protecting myself, I think,” she shared, “and maybe stuffing my feelings with food.”

When she reached 260 pounds and her acting roles dried up, she decided to take drastic measures. “I was starving myself. I mean, it was really not the way to do it, which is why I continue to say I’m not an expert on weight.” But it did relaunch her career. She got her own talk show and more acting roles. And she kept the weight off for a long time. “To have almost 130 pounds on top, I mean, almost twice what I weigh, I can’t fathom what that feels like today,” she said. “Being a size 6 feels better than being a size 24.”

But the struggle continued for her. After being thin for over a decade, she started putting on weight, but then lost it in a more healthy way while filming Dancing With the Stars in 2011. Lake still continues to battle with her weight, and explained her struggle to Oprah Winfrey in 2015 on Where Are They Now?. “I became famous for being a certain size, and I was a role model for so many young women. But I loved when I lost weight and felt good about my body. I loved telling the world!” Lake shared. “At the same time, I felt like I was perpetuating this obsession that we have with weight.” She noted, “You’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t.”

When we first met the reality star during her Honey Boo Boo and Toddlers and Tiaras days, part of her hilarious appeal was her laid back relationship to food. She was overweight and she knew it — according to E! Online, Mama June weighed 460 pounds at her heaviest. But in 2017, she started a new reality TV venture in an attempt to get healthy and lose weight. Her show Mama June: From Not to Hot followed her weight loss journey through a gastric sleeve surgery and skin removal surgery along with a new diet and exercise plan. In an interview with Wendy Williams, Mama June revealed that she lost over 300 pounds (and spent $75,000 on it along the way).

Pratt rose to fame as the chunky Andy Dwyer in Parks and Recreation — a role that he actually purposely gained weight for. “I would eat four burgers at every read. I became really fat and got up to almost 300lbs,” he revealed to Men’s Health in 2015. But then, when he starred in Guardians of the Galaxy, he showcased a thinner, fitter figure thanks to a strict diet and workout regimen. According to Pratt, the secret to his weight loss is moderation. “I keep close to what I need to be, but I have to live my life as well,” he said during a press event for Guardians of the Galaxy.

Osbourne’s spent much of her life in the public eye, thanks to her famous dad and family’s MTV show. For her, life in front of the cameras wasn’t easy, especially when the media focused on her weight. “Having your local radio station talking about how fat you are? It really hurt,” she told People. She turned to drugs to numb the pain, but luckily attended rehab in 2009. Once she left rehab, however, she told Shape that instead of drugs she turned to food. 

But when she appeared on a season of Dancing With The Stars later that year, she says her partner helped her get her health on track. “He made me eat turkey burgers and salads and explained to me that a high-protein, low-carb diet would keep me energized,” she revealed. “Then I started losing weight and realized, ‘Oh, it’s true what they say: Diet and exercise really work!'”