Lizzo shared new details about her recent weight loss journey and got real about weight-loss drugs in a new appearance on the “Just Trish” podcast, hosted by internet personality Trisha Paytas.
When Paytas asked the 37-year-old pop star if she’s ever experimented with weight-loss drugs, Lizzo replied: “I’ve tried everything. It’s just the science for me: calories in, versus calories out. Ozempic works because you eat less food. That’s it. It makes you feel full. So if you can just do that on your own and get mind over matter, it’s the same.”
Lizzo previously addressed rumors that she used Ozempic to lose weight in an Instagram post in September 2024, explaining that she’d been focusing on “weight training and calorie deficit.”
In the podcast episode, the “Truth Hurts” singer went on to reveal that she really started to lose weight once she scaled back on her vegan lifestyle.
“When I was vegan, I was consuming a lot of fake meats,” she recalled. “I was eating a lot of bread. I was eating a lot of rice. And I had to eat a lot of it to stay full. But really, I was consuming like 3,000 to 5,000 calories a day.”
“We live in a society that makes super calorically dense food and they hide it,” she continued. “So you’re eating something that’s small and you think, ‘Oh yeah this is a healthy little protein bar.’ It’ll be like 300 calories and filled with all this fake sugar and weird s— that f—- you up on the inside that you’re not even aware of. Then you’d still be hungry.”
Protein bars and fake meats are two foods often considered health foods but can actually be unhealthy, dietitian Collin Popp, Ph.D., previously told TODAY.com.
Lizzo added that eating more “whole foods” and meats, such as beef, chicken and fish, was a game changer for her health because she was no longer eating “a lot of like fake things … that wasn’t actually filling me up.”
While Lizzo has found success with this particular approach, she emphasized that there’s no one-size-fits-all weight-loss method.
“I don’t like to tell people too much about releasing weight, like what I did, because I don’t want people to do what I did and it doesn’t work for them,” she said.
“Everybody’s body is different. So I don’t know if GLP-1 might be the only thing that works for you because I don’t know what your blood work is like. I don’t know how your body breaks down food (and) sugar. I don’t know. But I know for me I just had to start eating meat again.”
While appearing on the “Just Trish” podcast, the star also explained that she was motivated to lose weight after experiencing back pain.
“My back was in such a bad place where I couldn’t stand for more than like 15 minutes at a time. I had to sit down and do figure 4s and stretch my back out during dance rehearsal for tour,” she said.
She’d also have to stretch her back while changing outfits between songs and do a cold plunge “immediately” after each show since her back was “radiating so much pain.”
The singer noted that the discomfort stemmed from compressed discs in her back.
“The only way to really alleviate that is surgery or releasing a little bit of weight. So I was like, I want to be Tina Turner. I want to be doing stadium shows when I’m 70. If my back is on this track right now, there’s no way I’m going to be able to do that without serious surgery. So that was my decision,” she said.
