Star Jones reveals surgery led to weight loss
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - After years of rumors and media speculation, television celebrity Star Jones Reynolds on Tuesday admitted to having had gastric bypass surgery before her massive weight loss.
Reynolds, 45, said she was "intentionally evasive" over the last four years about how she lost the 160 lbs (73 kg).
"I was scared of what people might think of me," Reynolds wrote in an essay for the September issue of Glamour magazine. "I was afraid to be vulnerable."
Reynolds left her job as a co-host of the popular daytime TV talk show "The View" last year amid speculation she had clashed with executive producer Barbara Walters.
In the Glamour essay, she discussed her weight gain -- at one point, she weighed 307 lbs (139 kg) -- feelings of insecurity and what it took to acknowledge the surgery.
Reynolds said her "out-of-control" eating was the worst in 2002, near her 40th birthday, when she felt lonely and gained 75 lbs over 17 months.
"I pretended not to see how big I was getting -- but not only did I see it, I was disgusted by it," wrote Reynolds. "I'd gradually gone from full-figured to morbidly obese."
"Through it all, food was there to comfort me," wrote Reynolds. "Food never judged me - even when I judged myself."
In August 2003, at the urging of a friend, Reynolds underwent surgery, which she characterized as a success from the start. She eventually shed the weight, but her feelings of insecurity did not melt away.
In 2005, Reynolds started therapy and said she gradually came to realize that "transparency is not humiliating." She began to share her story with strangers.
"I was hell-bent on keeping the specifics of my weight loss private in an effort to maintain control," wrote Reynolds. "Yet talking about my weight loss finally gave me the control I'd hungered for."
