Gayle King recently shared her weight gain over lockdown. She showed photos of her feed on a scale that had a gradual progression to gaining 13 pounds. Plus she let her toenails get long due to a fear of getting pedicures (understandable). That was about a week ago, and she wrote “The weight struggle is real! fatter than I’ve been in long time.” Same. However Gayle just lost seven pounds in five days on a “soup fast.” We know because she posted her progress for that too. (That photo is the first one below.) She’s now down to 165, which is close to the weight her doctor told her she should be. She wanted to lose quickly to be able to fit into a dress for last night’s election coverage. This is what she wrote on Instagram.
Update! Just completed 5 day soup fast & the results are in! Trying to get into mustard yellow dress for Elex night coverage TONITE ..praying to sweet black baby Jesus it now fits, that you VOTE, & that there is PEACE … ps plz withhold all negative comments about my jacked up feet I’m well aware they are a hot mess but not yet comfortable in a covid environment going to nail salon… bigger issues to worry about ….
I’m not an anti-diet person at all. I count calories, it’s worked for me and apart from the past seven months in lockdown it’s helped me maintain weight loss. I definitely gained weight recently and plan to lose about seven to ten pounds by the end of the year. We have a couple of months, I think that’s doable and not too punishing. My weight loss philosophy is “slow and steady.” That’s why I find it frustrating when celebrities promote quick weight loss strategies like this. Yes it may work short term but how many people can maintain that weight loss and how painful was it to eat only soup for almost a week? You can eat real food and still lose weight! At least Gayle isn’t saying we should pay money for this. I still remember Beyonce touting that insane cayenne pepper apple vinegar cider diet (also free, but worse than this). Now, whenever that terrible diet is mentioned they can say “Beyonce did it.” Just eat less and move more! This also gives people the impression that weight loss requires major sacrifice. It’s a lifestyle change, not something you do for a week and forget about. That said, what soup did she eat and how can I lose seven pounds in a week? Can you have soup with meat in it?
Photos are from 2019 when we could go to stuff. Credit: Avalon.red
I have slowly been putting on in the past few years and told my doctor I want to lose it and it’s been frustrating. She said to cut fatty foods and processed foods AND no crazy diets. They just make you blow up again and then some. So I’m cutting the munching and eating smaller portions and moving more. It’s a struggle but I really believe these fad diets are no good. They’ve been around forever and yet none really stick around, they are always replaced. That speaks volumes.
I am all for eating lighter, and having soup after eating too much, but for one day.
Doing this and saying “this diet worked” it’s so wrong.
I find soup very filling so I could prob do this, depending on what kind it was lol. And mentally I get it, when you want to lose weight it can help to have that immediate loss. But it’s not a sustainable lifestyle and isn’t helping to establish healthy habits.
Look up the cabbage soup diet. The soup was a tomato based vegetable soup, and not bad at all. Except the diet has you eat as much as you can, so you kind of get tired of it quickly
Yep, that’s the “Peel-A-Pound” soup from the 70s/80s.
I also think we are missing the bigger picture that we women feel immense pressure to conform to the societal ideal of THIN, that we go through extreme measures to achieve that goal. Which is sad because many fall victim to it, as have I. And sadder still, is that now it has grasped younger females where middle schoolers and 5th graders are body conscious. THAT is the real shame.
Its fluid weight and will be regained rapidly when normal eating returns.
I did the cabbage soup diet years ago (like 20+ years ago). IIRC, it is supposed to be a fast drop, and the info that I had said that it was used when people needed to have surgery but needed to lose some weight beforehand. I don’t know if that’s true, but with all the peeing and the pooping from all the cabbage soup you can eat, it really did fall off fast. I kept it off for a little bit bc I was 20, but did gain it back.
Nothing keeps weight off better than a total lifestyle change
Honestly so disappointed in Gayle as it normalizes crash dieting. She has money – can’t she pay to get alterations? I’m sure the queen has had this done all the time. Bodies deserves kindness not malnourishment.
Me, too. Oprah should call and yell at her. I was able to do weight loss gimmick diets when I was in my 20s, but now I know better. She can do what she wants, but she shouldn’t publicize it. Everybody knows these type of diets don’t work. It’s disappointing.
This. Crash dieting is so harmful and won’t work in the long run.
Buy the dress in the size that fits. It’s that simple. She does have enough money that she could have bought another dress.
Having said that, I have soup almost every day for lunch. It’s not part of some ridiculous diet. It’s a good (& delicious!) way to eat vegetables.
Plus it’s a one and done with cooking for lunch for a week. This week I have turkey vegetable!
I had a boyfriend in college who tried a soup diet and couldn’t understand why “cheese and broccoli” all day every day was not his ticket to olympian form. Any diet where you’re taking in less calories than you expend can help you lose weight and *healthy* soup options can certainly help you achieve that while filling you up. That said, I think it sucks for Gayle and women in media that on top of everything else needed to prep for high profile, stressful election night coverage she also had to worry about her figure on camera.
Meanwhile, does she look overweight at all? No! People carry weight differently, muscle weighs more than fat (I think?). I don’t understand how her weight became a thing
Muscle has a higher density – a higher mass for a given amount of volume- than fat.
Think about how much space a 5 pound hand weight will take up versus a gallon jug of water, which weighs around 8 pounds.
Or in metric units, think about a kilogram barbell versus 3.8 L of water. One of those takes up much more space than the other.
But a pound of feathers weighs the same as a pound of fat or a pound of muscle.
She probably did the ProLon Fast Mimicking diet. I did it a few times and yes, you lose a good amount of weight quickly but it comes right back. It also messes up your metabolism. Both times I did it I lost 8 lbs in a week and then it went right back on because you can’t maintain that limited amount of calories long term. Now I’m trying a slow and steady route but my metabolism is so messed up it’s really taking a long time. Those diets are such bad ideas even if they claim they have health benefits.
I would have changed the dress rather than starve. But what do I know?
I’m probably going to get yelled at but I don’t see the problem. She’s talking about a fast for getting into a dress for a specific day. I don’t think Gayle is trying to do this the rest of her life or is promoting it as a great weight loss plan. To me a fast is just that: a quick way to lose weight for a special occasion. It don’t know what’s involved but at least it sounds better than the pepper water fast.
I agree with you. I intermittent fast all the time and it is possible to make healthy, filling soups with protein and vegetables. You aren’t starving that is for sure.
I have to do something. I have become rather portly since the pandemic started. And by rather, I mean tremendously. It is not good.
None of these crash diets work, if you go back to your regular eating you put it all back on + more.
I’ve tried a gajillion of these..back in the 1970’s a popular diet was 1 drained can of tuna + 1 apple 3x a day + all the back coffee and tea you could stand. Then there was the 3 hard boiled eggs 3x a day for 5 days. Then there was the banana, yogurt, baked potato diet 2 bananas for breakfast + 1 cup of yogurt for lunch + 1 dry baked potato with skin on for dinner.
A girl I worked with was starving herself before her wedding on the tuna/apple diet..she fainted at work while on the shop assembly floor, lucky she didn’t fracture her skull when she hit the dement floor.
Go up a damn dress size!
Man, I am so tired of women still being made to feel we are only acceptable if we are thin.
It’s a Pandemic! Count yourself lucky the food supply chain is still working reasonably well!
so, is no one talking about her toes? She should really just take the polish off. She really don’t care about her feet
Her toes are not on camera, so. . . .
🙁
I have lost and maintained 40 lbs this year by eating mainly plant based, drinking water with fresh squeezed lemon and zest, and using MyFitnessPal. Living in downtown Denver, the record heat and wildfire this past summer made it difficult to go for walks as much as I like to. It’s true what they say that is 90% diet! If anyone is interested in trying plant based, I love Sarah Britton’s unintimidating cookbooks. Some of her recipes are on her blog and a go to is the sweet potato and spinach “detox” soup. It’s really filling and savory sweet. https://www.mynewroots.org/site/2015/01/a-winter-weekend-cleanse/ Another perk of eating less meat and dairy is that it reduces our carbon footprint!