Marie Osmond Opens Up About Weight Loss Battle & Body Dysmorphia

Marie Osmond stopped by The Drew Barrymore Show on Wednesday, March 20, and opened up about her history of weight loss and how her children inspired her health journey in the 2000s.

“I was in a situation that I had to get out,” the iconic singer shared, referring to her weight gain in the mid-2000s. “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 quipped, poking fun at her brother and long-time musical partner.

Getting serious, Osmond said, “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.'”

The Grammy-nominated artist reflected on her weight loss journey from earlier in her life when she faced pressure and “head trips” from those trying to guide her career.

“I mean, [it was] ugly stuff, you know, taking [me] out into parking lots and said 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 shared. “I didn’t want people to lose their jobs, so I got down to, like, 93 lbs.”

Osmond recalled a time when she was at Elizabeth Courtney Costumes in Los Angeles, where she was having a fitting for an upcoming show.

“I was in my underwear and my bra, and the rooms were huge, with mirrors everywhere, and I saw a girl bending over, her back was this skeleton with skin on it, and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh,'” she remembered. “I got up to look at her, and I realized it was me. And it was so scary.”

She said she “tried to stay thin” but was “always on a diet” and realized she had body dysmorphia. “But I just got tired of dieting when I got in my 50s, and my body hated me,” she added.

Carol Kaelson / © ABC / Courtesy: Everett Collection

Osmond also said her time on Dancing With the Stars (or, as she called it, Dancing With the Starved) in 2007 was a factor in her weight loss.

“I needed to get the weight off because the 50 lbs in spandex was not going to be pretty,” she joked. “But I realized we don’t need to starve, we do not need to diet, and we don’t need to be skinny, we need to be healthy.”

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