Marie Osmond has been able to sustain her 50-pound weight loss for 15 years by reminding herself that food is her “friend,” not her “enemy.”
“Don’t think of it as weight loss. Because the minute you think ‘dieting,’ you think, ‘Oh, I can’t have this,’ and that’s not what this is about,’” the singer, 62, told Closer Weekly in an interview published Thursday.
Back in 2007, Osmond famously used Nutrisystem to kickstart her lifestyle change after she’d hit her heaviest weight of 165 pounds.
She credited the personalized meal delivery program with helping her transform from a size 14 to a size 4, and committed herself to follow what she learned for years to come.
“Look at me. I have been off of it [Nutrisystem] now for 15 years. I lost my weight 15 years ago,” boasted Osmond, who said she never lets herself “get more than five pounds overweight,” which typically happens around the holidays.
“You know, I’ll eat a little extra,” she added. “One week it’s off, and you know, you’re back to your game, and you feel great about yourself.”
The “Donny & Marie” star grew up in the 1970s, which she described as “the worst era possible for women and weight.”
“Everybody had to be Twiggy, you know, a zipper, a lollipop head,” she recalled. “It was all ‘name a diet.’ I’ve done that diet, I swear to you.”
Because of that, she had a lot of unlearning to do.
“You can eat what you love, but make healthy choices and understand portion control,” she advised others who are looking to change their lifestyles. “Understand [that] the frequency of eating makes it so you can eat food and not starve to death.”
Osmond – who ended her 11-year Las Vegas residency with brother Donny in 2019 – also revealed that monthly fasts are part of her health routine.
“But to do it all the time, it shuts your metabolism down,” she warned. “So, you get to the point that you really can’t eat a lot of food and that doesn’t work for me. I need to eat. It’s my energy, and also, I think it’s your mental health.”
Osmond previously opened up about being sexually abused as a child. In 2018, after years of reflecting, she told Dr. Mehmet Oz that she felt she subconsciously used weight gain as a defense mechanism to protect herself against potential future harm.
“I didn’t want to be pretty … It was almost like a defense,” she explained at the time, admitting that she “didn’t really realize that was happening.”
