Marie Osmond says that her children were her inspiration to embark on a 50-lb. weight loss journey back in the mid-2000s.
During a recent appearance on theDrew Barrymore Show, Osmond reflects on that difficult situation. She’d gained more weight than felt healthy to her, but after decades of struggling with extreme dieting and body dysmorphia as a young woman in the spotlight, she knew that she wanted to avoid a pattern of yo-yo dieting and self-starvation.
“I was in a situation that I had to get out of,” Osmond remembers. “I had put 50 lbs on. That’s a lot of weight on me. I’m only 5’5. I’m very petite.”
“God had to make me that way to make Donny look macho,” she joked in passing.
But all jokes aside, it took an honest family conversation for Osmond to address the issue.
“Women don’t live long in our family. And so my son came to me, on behalf of all my children, and said, ‘Mom, you’re not gonna live long. You’ve gotta lose weight. It has nothing to do with what you look like. It has to do with that we need you in our lives,'” she recounts.
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That perspective on the situation — the losing weight was a necessary step towards remaining in her children’s lives for the years and decades ahead — was a marked shift from the pressure and “head trips” Osmond faced to stay thin as a young star.
“I mean, ugly stuff, you know, taking [me] out into parking lots and telling me the whole show would be canceled, 250 would lose their jobs, if I didn’t keep food out of my fat face. And at that time I was 5’5 and 103 lbs,” she recounts. “I didn’t want people to lose their jobs, so I got down to, like, 93 lbs.”
Related: Marie Osmond ‘Literally Wept’ Over the Way She Abused Her Health
Early this year, Osmond explained that she had to make with the way she treated her body back then, admitting that she “literally wept” when she thought about “what a horrible thing I did to myself” by taking on such extreme dieting practices during those years.
Around that time, in 2007, she was also a contestant on Dancing With the Stars — another factor in her weight loss, she adds.
“I needed to get the weight off because the 50 lbs in spandex was not going to be pretty,” she added with a laugh.
Now, about a decade and a half after that journey, Osmond has kept the weight off and is enjoying family time more than ever, especially the experience of being a grandmother.
“I mean, I thought I’d never love anything as much as my children. Oh my gosh. Grandchildren are like having your kids on steroids,” she goes on to say. “It’s just so cool, I can’t tell you. As a parent, you have to guide them. You’re not their friend. You’re their parent. When you’re the grandma — who cares? I can do anything I want.”
