Shonda Rhimes’s Weight Loss of 150 Pounds, And Why She Hated It!

Grey’s Anatomy producer Shonda Rhimes lost about 150 lbs in a little more than a year and hated it, along with the compliments that followed. Read to know why!

Written by Sanchari Bhattacharya , Health & Fitness Expert

Updated on Aug 06, 2024 | 03:48 PM IST | 183.6K

Shonda Rhimes’ Weight Loss (Image Source: Getty Images)

In this Article

Who Is Shonda Rhimes?
Shonda Rhimes Profile
What Was the Reason Behind Shonda Rhimes’s Extreme Weight Loss?
Insights from Shonda Rhimes’ Weight Loss Diet
Insights from Shonda Rhimes’ Exercise Routine
Shonda Rhimes on Ozempic Rumors

Shonda Rhimes’s contributions to the American television industry, as well as online streaming platforms have been invaluable. Be it with OG series like Grey’s Anatomy or contemporary rages like the Bridgerton series, Shondaland has made its mark across genres such as drama, romance, thrillers, biographies, and more. Yet, Shonda Rhimes’ weight loss was — in her opinion — the only thing that made people see her as a “person,” which came to her as a horrifying revelation.

Despite the paramount effort and dedication Rhimes put into her transformative journey, she never placed too much value on appearance alone and embraced herself as a whole person, mind, body, and soul combined, regardless of how her physique was in the past or is in the present. Hence, before we jump into her commendable health journey, it is imperative that we learn a little more about her professional milestones.

Who Is Shonda Rhimes?

Among the most relevant people in the American television industry for the last three decades, Shonda Rhimes is a highly successful producer and screenwriter, and the founder of Shondaland (a media and production company). Born in Illinois, Chicago, Rhimes paved her way into the television industry working as an intern for Debra Martin Chase.

Her massive career breakthrough was with ABC’s medical drama series Grey’s Anatomy, for which she was the creator, head writer, and executive producer. After the show’s remarkable success, Rhimes went on with producing its spin-off Private Practice and then the political drama series Scandal.

These shows made her the first-ever female TV producer to run three television shows that reached the 100-episode milestone. After Scandal, Rhimes developed a taste for thrillers, which motivated her to produce the ABC series How to Get Away with Murder.

The 2020s brought another major turning point in her career as Shondaland produced the Bridgerton series — which became a global rage — as well as its spin-off Queen Charlotte. In 2022, she also produced the Netflix drama series Inventing Anna, which became quite successful.

Shonda Rhimes Profile

Age: 54

Occupation: Producer, screenwriter, showrunner, and author

Birthdate: January 13, 1970

Birthplace: Illinois, Chicago

Awards And Recognition: She has been a five-time nominee for the Primetime Emmy Award and has won the Golden Globe Award. She also received special honors at the British Academy Television Awards and International Emmy Awards. Moreover, she was featured in Time magazine’s Time 100 (in 2007, 2013, and 2021)

What Was the Reason Behind Shonda Rhimes’s Extreme Weight Loss?

Being the feminist that Shonda is, her motivation for weight loss was never about looking a certain way on screen or fitting into any unrealistic societal standard of how a woman’s body should look. What motivated her transformation was a genuine concern about her health, as she reached a phase where losing excess weight was important for her to feel healthier, lighter, and more active.

There was a time when Rhimes was on a plane trying to get the seatbelt on but was unsuccessful. She had a feeling that the seatbelt was broken, but after frisking for some time, she realized that it wasn’t the seatbelt — it was her! Rhimes briefly considered asking the flight attendant for a seatbelt extender but eventually ended up saying nothing.

This incident served as a moment of realization that she needed to start taking care of her health. The 54-year-old mother of three kids (2-year-old, 3-year-old, and 13-year-old, respectively) realized that she wanted to be around them as much as possible — healthy and active. She had hit the stage where she found doing simple, physical tasks exhausting. Hence, she took it to work hard and eat healthier, despite hating every part of it!

Besides, in a personal blog, Rhimes mentioned, “My body was rising up to overthrow my brain. But first, it needed to catch its breath.” The statement underlines how Rhimes took a moderate and realistic approach to weight loss instead of abruptly throwing her lifestyle out of the window and adapting to something entirely new.

Rhimes considers herself a competitive person who likes to conquer her fears. So, she used the same approach to weight loss and recognized every progress she made in her journey. However, Rhimes' worst experience was not sticking to a strict fitness regime but the compliments that followed after she lost weight.

After shedding around much over 100 pounds, Rhimes felt more noticed and acknowledged by people around her, which seemed like a dramatic change. Women she barely knew felt comfortable just walking up to her, talking about her body — telling her how good she looked and how proud they were of her.

Rhimes also emphasized that men, on the other hand, “spoke to her,” stood still, and had long conversations with her about things, which wasn’t common before the drop in weight. The Grey’s Anatomy showrunner found this quite “disconcerting” as it really made her insecure thinking about what people thought of her earlier. It felt like only after going through an extreme weight loss was she regarded as a “person,” which was more troubling than flattering.

Rhimes does not like to talk about her weight loss journey very often, because she believes that nothing is interesting to say about it. Having said that, she does admit that she feels a lot healthier and more comfortable in her body than she did before, which makes her feel glad about deciding to lose weight, after all.

Insights from Shonda Rhimes’ Weight Loss Diet

As Rhimes’ intention was never to fit herself into a mold of body standards, she chose to have a moderate approach toward her diet. She hated the idea of restricting herself and not being able to eat her favorite foods.

However, making healthier food choices inevitably brought about a significant change in her palate. Suddenly, she became someone who naturally craves fish and salad, which she considered as “upsetting,” like, “Where's my cake?”

While Rhimes doesn’t like to talk too much about her diet and exercise routine, the following are some insights from her diet that helped her get healthier and slimmer.

1. Not Being Too Restrictive:

As opposed to how some celebrities go on crash diets, the Bridgerton producer didn’t eliminate “cakes and biscuits” from her diet entirely — just started consuming her favorite treats in moderation. Any time she craves something, she doesn’t restrict herself too much but ensures that she consumes unhealthy foods in small quantities only.

This way, the producer doesn’t feel any need to rebel against her diet and binge eat anything, which is indeed an excellent strategy for long-term weight management.

2. Portion Control:

Like she limits her unhealthy foods, Rhimes also practices active portion control for her regular, healthy meals, so that she only consumes how much her body actually needs. Instead of large meals, she indulged in smaller, more frequent meals to lose weight by smartly and gradually making her daily food intake more calorie deficit.

Research shows that a low-calorie diet comprising all essential macronutrients as well as micronutrients is ideal for healthy weight loss (1).

3. Balanced Diet:

While some people prefer going on low-fat diets, others opt for low-carbohydrate diets for weight loss. But, both of them don’t fall under the category of a “balanced diet,” which Shonda Rhimes adopted, and is the ideal way of healthy weight management. A balanced diet should comprise all essential nutrients such as protein, healthy fats, complex carbohydrates, dietary fiber, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.

4. Eating “Only” When Hungry:

Sometimes, when it comes to having a healthy diet, the “why” and “when” stand to be more important than the “what.” That is to say, more than what one includes in their diets, it matters if a person eats because they are genuinely hungry or are simply eating out of habit, cravings, stress, boredom, etc. Rhimes takes this seriously and tries to eat her meals only when she is truly feeling hungry.

5. Staying Hydrated:

Many times, a person confuses thirst for hunger and ends up eating something when what their body really needs is some water. Hence, along with other reasons why drinking water is important, one should also drink lots of water to do a quick hunger check and see whether they are truly feeling hungry or are simply dehydrated.

Besides, consuming 6-8 glasses of water every day flushes out the toxins in the body, helps the body with optimal temperature control, lubricates bodily systems, improves the function of the heart, gut, and kidneys, alleviates headaches, and boosts skin health (2).

Speaking of Rhimes, she consumes 8 glasses of water every day, which is almost 60 ounces.

Insights from Shonda Rhimes’ Exercise Routine

In her book The Year of Yes Journal, Rhimes writes, “I work hard — that's how I succeed. That's how anyone succeeds. So why in the world did I think weight loss would be any different?” And, she has applied the same principle to her exercise routine.

The How to Get Away with Murder producer has hated exercising — if you look at workouts in a certain way, they can indeed be grueling and exhausting. However, with her never-give-up attitude, Rhymes took up this challenge and worked extremely hard to exercise and shed those nasty pounds.

Now, while she hasn’t shared specific details about her workout routine, we do know for a fact that Rhimes is into sports, especially golf, and engages in it quite often. Research suggests that playing golf is linked with several mental health benefits such as improved mood and reduced anxiety as well as physical health benefits such as muscle strengthening and better balance (3).

Other than that, we believe Rhimes’ exercise routine comprises a good mix of strength and conditioning, cardio, aerobic exercises, and stretching exercises. The following are their benefits:

Strength Training: Helps strengthen and tone the body by building lean muscle mass. Such exercises show the best results when practiced along with having a protein-rich diet (4), (5).

Cardiovascular Workouts: Exhilarating exercises such as HIIT (high-intensity circuit training), running, jogging, cycling, etc., are highly beneficial in improving heart health and lung health, releasing endorphins, and also supporting healthy weight loss (6), (7), (8).

Aerobic Exercises: Along with improving cardiovascular health, balancing blood pressure, and facilitating healthy weight loss, these exercises also help people with diabetes, pregnancy, and age-related issues. Moreover, aerobic exercises are excellent for mental health and wellness (9).

Stretching Exercises: These exercises help rejuvenate the body by relaxing tight muscles and releasing tension. Doing stretches as cool-down exercises help improve flexibility and also have a positive impact on the nervous system (10).

Shonda Rhimes on Ozempic Rumors

Like most celebrities who lose weight, Shonda Rhimes’ too, has been accused of using Ozempic (a type-2 diabetes drug) for weight loss. The remarks of some netizens have been quite nasty on this as they pointed out that “Oprah talked her into it,” referring to the showrunner’s friendship with the media mogul Oprah Winfrey.

However, there is no evidence that can prove that Rhimes took the help of the famous semaglutide, or any other weight loss shortcut for that matter to lose the weight she did.

Besides, the intention of losing weight for Rhimes was to get healthier, not simply thinner, which would be reason enough to not rely on the diabetes drug, which can have several side effects — diarrhoea, nausea, vomiting, gastrointestinal disorders, constipation, fatigue, etc. if used for weight loss (11).

Shonda Rhimes Before And After Weight Loss Photos

Shonda Rhimes dramatic weight loss had a significant impact on her appearance too. The following before and after images are evidence for the same.

Before:

After:

Shonda Rhimes weight loss joins the club of the numerous career and other milestones she has accomplished in her life. What’s commendable about that is unlike most people who lose oodles of weight, Rhimes did not seem pleased with the compliments about her weight loss that came her way.

She stood strong in her opinion that losing weight doesn’t make her a different person, and a person’s weight and appearance shouldn’t be a reason for society to treat them differently and measure their value. Moreover, being a responsible influential figure, Rhimes has never promoted any unhealthy or idealistic body standards for men and women and has always encouraged fans to be confident in who they are.

Sources:

1. Optimal Diet Strategies for Weight Loss and Weight Loss Maintenance - PMC

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8017325/

2. Water, Hydration and Health - PMC

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2908954/

3. The relationships between golf and health: a scoping review - PMC

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5256129/

4. Increasing Lean Mass and Strength: A Comparison of High Frequency Strength Training to Lower Frequency Strength Training - PMC

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4836564/

5. Dietary Protein and Muscle Mass: Translating Science to Application and Health Benefit - PMC

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6566799/

6. Evidence-Based Effects of High-Intensity Interval Training on Exercise Capacity and Health: A Review with Historical Perspective