Lizzo is offering her most intimate and unfiltered account yet of the emotional and physical transformation she has undergone over the past two years.
In a deeply personal Substack essay shared on Sunday, November 23, the Grammy-winning artist discussed her weight loss, the cultural shift surrounding body image, and the intense private struggles that propelled her into a period of major change.
The singer, whose real name is Melissa Jefferson, began her essay by confronting the widespread conversation about weight-loss drugs and the shrinking visibility of plus-size women in pop culture.
Now 37, she wrote that she currently weighs over 200 pounds and remains “still a proud big girl,” but she fears the broader landscape is shifting in harmful ways.
“So here we are halfway through the decade, where extended sizes are being magically erased from websites. Plus-sized models are no longer getting booked for modeling gigs. And all of our big girls are not-so-big anymore,” she noted.
Lizzo emphasized that the rise of drugs like Ozempic is not simply a trend but part of a larger cultural change, adding, “We have a lot of work to do, to undo the effects of the Ozempic boom.”
But her reflections were not limited to social commentary. Lizzo also turned inward, revealing that her own weight loss began during one of the darkest periods of her life.
“I started losing weight in the fall of 2023. I was severely depressed. I had been the subject of vicious scandal, and it felt like the whole world turned its back on me. I became deeply suicidal,” she wrote. “I cut off all my loved ones.”
View this post on Instagram
The “scandal” she referenced was the 2023 lawsuit filed by three former backup dancers, an ordeal she says left her unable to trust the people around her. “I couldn’t trust anyone,” she said, explaining that “former close colleagues and friends” began making accusations. “God knows why. I supposed to kick me while I’m down? Fifteen minutes of fame? I guess I’ll never know. That resulted in my extreme isolation.”
That isolation deepened her emotional turmoil. “I was angry every single day. Mostly because I couldn’t go out and defend myself. I couldn’t tell the world the truth because no one would believe me,” she wrote.
Her path out of that emotional pit began with movement, not dieting. Lizzo explained that she “needed a way to process [her] pain through [her] body,” so she turned to Pilates. She recalled sometimes crying after sessions, discovering only later that the physical effort had also triggered weight loss.
“I found that I had lost some weight in that process, but it wasn’t as significant as it is now,” she said.
The intentional part came months later. “I’d decided that winter to sit and record a video saying I wanted to intentionally lose weight,” she wrote. Though she understood the cultural implications of being a plus-size woman in the spotlight, she felt compelled by personal necessity.
Therapy helped her understand her connection to her body, leading to a breakthrough: her weight had become “a protective shield, a joyful comfort zone, and even sometimes a super hero suit.”
She decided she wanted to release that weight. “I wanted to let-it-the-f— go,” she wrote, adding that she now thinks of each pound not as “lost” but as “released.”
Throughout the essay, Lizzo emphasized that she is not undergoing a dramatic transformation for medical reasons or aspiring to conform to beauty standards.
Her journey, she said, is tied to years of emotional burden: the death of her father in 2009, toxic relationships dating back to 2011, and the pressure of financially supporting her family since 2016. “I had been holding onto so much,” she reflected.
Still, she remains proud of the body that has carried her through it all. “I will always have the stretch, and the skin of a woman who carries great weight,” she wrote. “And I’m proud of that. Even when the world doesn’t want me to be.”
Lizzo ended her essay with a plea for more compassion in discussions about body positivity.
“I want us to allow the body positive movement to expand and grow far away from the commercial slop it’s become,” she wrote, adding, “Because movements move.”