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Beyoncé’s Weight Loss: How Queen ‘Bey’ Lost Her Baby Weight for Coachella
Beyoncé’s weight loss journey comprised extreme diets and rigorous workouts. Read more about how Queen ‘Bey’ maintained her “flawless” body post-pregnancy.
It isn’t easy maintaining a “flawless” physique when you’re a mother of 3. But, when you’re also a best-selling vocalist, businesswoman, sensational pop star, fashion icon, and among the most beautiful women alive, this may be a challenge that you cannot say no to!
Of many celebrities in Hollywood and elsewhere who have made headlines for their impressive body transformations, Beyoncé’s weight loss journey has been among the most difficult ones.
Without the use of Ozempic or any shortcut weight loss drugs (at least not to anyone’s knowledge), the pop star, now 42, managed to achieve and maintain a perfectly proportionate physique, which according to some is as ideal as a woman’s body can get!
While we do not recommend her extreme fitness regime and diet to most people, especially not without the supervision of expert health professionals, it sure is a wonder how the beloved star has stayed consistent and committed to it, especially considering the many hats she wears in her career.
Let’s read more about her weight loss journey.
Who Is Beyoncé?
Known as Queen Bey in popular culture, Beyoncé Giselle Knowles is an immensely successful and globally popular American singer, songwriter, and businesswoman. She has been regarded by Rolling Stone as one of the greatest vocalists of all time, and her songs have been trendsetters over the last three decades.
Having started her career in the late 90s with the best-selling R&B girl group Destiny’s Child, she rose to fame and set on the path of becoming a music icon with popular solo hits such as B'Day (2006), I Am... Sasha Fierce (2008), and 4 (2011).
After starting Parkwood Entertainment, Beyoncé started exploring themes such as feminism with her experimental visual albums Beyoncé (2013) and Lemonade (2016). Her career got its shape from exceedingly successful songs such as Crazy in Love, Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It), Drunk in Love, Break My Soul, Baby Boy, Check On It, Irreplaceable, If I Were a Boy, and Halo.
Among the best-selling music artists of all time, Beyoncé has sold about 200 million records worldwide and won 32 Grammy Awards and 26 MTV Video Music Awards amongst many others.
On a slightly different note, Beyoncé has also been regarded highly for her physical appearance, and her beauty and success have been a matter of pride for the African American community, as well as people of color in general. According to the Daily Mail, she was regarded as the second most beautiful woman in the world, following Bella Hadid as the first.
Beyoncé Profile:
Age: 42
Occupation: Vocalist, songwriter, entrepreneur, actress, philanthropist, and record executive
Birth Date: September 4, 1981
Birth Place: Houston, Texas
Spouse: Jay-Z (American entrepreneur and rapper)
Children: Rumi and Blue Ivy (daughters), and Sir (son)
How Did Beyoncé Lose Weight?
Beyoncé’s weight loss was significantly influenced by her extreme diets and grueling exercise regimes, which helped her shed a whopping 60 pounds after giving birth to her first daughter, Blue Ivy in 2012. This transformation gained insane media attention — understandably so — and made headlines!
However, her more recent weight loss was seen in 2018 — a few days before her performance at Coachella music festival and the year after she gave birth to her twins Rumi and Sir. While there isn’t exact information on the number of pounds she lost during the time, her physical transformation was quite visible and shocking, even for a mother of 3.
Before Coachella, the pop star followed a 22-day nutrition plan recommended by her trainer and exercise physiologist Marco Borges, who also happens to be one of her close friends.
Besides, throughout her career, Beyoncé has been known to resort to juice cleanses, low-calorie diets, plant-based foods with carbohydrates being pretty significantly off the table, and rigorous workouts (more on that below) at the gym and outside of it to achieve and maintain her “Flawless” body.
Now, every time the Single Ladies singer reflects back on her diet right before Coachella, she gets ridiculed and believes it to be quite crazy. While the 42-year-old singer is still very mindful about what she consumes and works very hard to maintain her surprisingly youthful appearance, she has learned to embrace her body the way it is and go a little easy on it from time to time.
Beyoncé’s Weight Loss Diet:
A major part of Beyoncé’s Coachella diet journey involved Marco Borges's famous 22-day nutrition plan — a highly restrictive 100% plant-based diet that famously contained “no bread, no carbs, no sugar, no dairy, no meat, no fish, no alcohol, no coffee, and no fruit-based drinks,” which left very little for her to consume.
While this may have worked out for your favorite Queen Bey, such low-calorie and highly restrictive diets are not recommended for everyone trying to lose weight, especially not when not practiced under strict medical supervision and guidance.
A study demonstrates the health risks of such crash diets, which include potential eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia nervosia, and binge eating disorder, in addition to other problems such as negative mood, poor cognitive function, risk of diabetes, abnormal insulin levels, etc (1). Another study questions the safety of such diets, in addition to also acknowledging their benefits in obesity (2).
Back in 2006, she also followed a famous 10-day juice cleanse, also known as the Master Cleanse to get in shape for Dreamgirls. This liquid diet involved only consuming one drink that comprises water, lemon juice, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper and prohibited consuming any other food or beverage.
However, experts strongly recommend against extreme liquid diets or juice fasting, as such diets deprive the body of essential nutrients such as fiber, protein, fats, complex carbohydrates, and several micronutrients that can adversely affect health.
There are times though when Beyoncé consumes proper meals and goes a little easy on her diet by even sliding in a few treats here and there. When she’s not dieting, a typical meal day looks something as follows:
Breakfast: Scrambled egg whites, vegetable smoothie, or some whole-grain cereal with low-fat milk
Snack: Skinny popcorn, protein bar, banana, or assorted fruits
Lunch And Dinner: A plate full of fish and vegetables
On days when she’s craving some extra carbs, she’ll go ahead and eat some quinoa, pita bread, or a pizza — pizza being her one indulgence that she doesn’t want to completely forgo.
Beyoncé’s Exercise Routine:
For our super-energetic Queen Bey, exercising — and that too, beastly exercising — has been pretty much on her table consistently, when it comes to her health journey. And, her exercise regime appears to be quite diverse, almost all-inclusive compared to others.
She has been resorting to sprints to boost her stamina and strength training to build muscle and strength. Like her diet, her workouts too have been greatly influenced and monitored by her trainer Marco Borges, who recommended the following circuit, with three sets each:
- Jumping lunges
- Plié jumps
- Pelvic lifts
- Reverse-squat kicks
In addition, Beyoncé would also incorporate kettlebell workouts, bodyweight exercises, crunches, sit-ups with a medicine ball, dumbbell punches, forward lunges, and lateral bench hops to target multiple muscle groups, boost cardiovascular health, burn fat, and enhance respiratory function.
Moreover, she incorporated activities such as boxing, dancing, cardio, and battle rope exercises to boost her strength, flexibility, energy, and endurance.
A study shows that high-intensity boxing is an excellent exercise to reduce weight, boost strength, improve heart health, and have an overall therapeutic effect on the body (3). Moreover, studies have proven dancing to be fantastic for boosting cardiovascular fitness (4), (5).
Beyoncé’s Before And After Weight Loss Photos:
The following are the before and after photos of Queen Bey’s weight loss following her second pregnancy.
Before:
( Image Source: Getty Images)
After:
( Image Source: Getty Images)
While we don’t recommend Beyoncé’s weight loss diet or exercise to anyone without the recommendation and assistance of professionals, we can all surely be inspired by how dedicated the pop star has been to her fitness goals despite the other demanding aspects of her job and motherhood. We love how beautiful our Queen Bey is and has always been, and adore her more for her exceptional talent and hard work!
Sources:
1. Caloric Restriction in Humans: Impact on Physiological, Psychological, and Behavioral Outcomes - PMC
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3014770/#B40
2. Pros & cons of some popular extreme weight-loss diets - PMC
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6366252/
3. The feasibility and effectiveness of high-intensity boxing training versus moderate-intensity brisk walking in adults with abdominal obesity: a pilot study - PMC
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4429464/
4. Effects of dance interventions on cardiovascular risk with ageing: Systematic review and meta-analysis - ScienceDirect
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0965229916301406
5. Dancing Participation and Cardiovascular Disease Mortality: A Pooled Analysis of 11 Population-Based British Cohorts.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26944521/#:~:text=Conclusions%3A%20Moderate%2Dintensity%20dancing%20was,lifelong%20adherence%2C%20or%20psychosocial%20benefits.
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