I remember Nicole Sullivan from MAD TV and one episode of Sh*t My Dad Says that I watched when Camille Grammer made a guest appearance. She’s now on Cougar Town I guess, which I don’t watch. Anyway she’s a well known TV character actress, and she was one of the spokespeople for Jenny Craig in 2010. She was a much better choice tha Mariah Carey. (Although I have to say that I saw one episode of Idol and Carey was great on it, especially compared to how awful Nicki Minaj is.) For some reason Sullivan is talking about what she went through to lose her baby weight back then, and how she felt out of place in Hollywood when the pounds weren’t dropping off. She also called out other celebrity moms for not admitting how hard it can be to lose baby weight:
“I would flip through celeb magazines…and I just couldn’t get how these moms like Jessica Alba lost so much weight so quickly—and yet I couldn’t,” the actress tells Us Weekly in an exclusive interview at “The Real Women of Jenny Craig” event in NYC on Jan. 23. “They all lie and say, ‘Oh, I lost the weight running after the kids or breastfeeding.’ It’s not true!”
“I felt broken. I felt like an outsider in my own community,” she continues of her postpartum experience after giving birth to her son, Dashel, now 5. “There just are not a lot of overweight people in Hollywood. I felt like the jerk who couldn’t figure it out.”
The actress finally figured it out, she claims, when she signed on with Jenny Craig as its brand ambassador. “I had tried every other diet in the world and decided to give Jenny Craig a try. The first week, I lost five pounds and then lost an average of two pounds a week for 16 weeks. I lost 35 pounds total. It changed my life.”
Sullivan has since given birth to another son, Beckett, now 3. “When I look back to when I had my first son, I was unhappy. I couldn’t understand why the weight wasn’t just falling off. I wish I could have that time back. With my second son, I enjoyed the whole process of him being an infant more because I wasn’t mad at myself. When you are mad at yourself, you are mad at everybody. That’s the problem…. I may not look like [Alba], but at least I can keep up with other actresses now. I feel really good about myself.”
Jessica Alba is just 31 while Sullivan is over 10 years older at 42. There’s a big difference in our metabolisms as we age, and yet we compare ourselves to women in their late 20s and early 30s and think we should be in the same place with our fitness. I know I do it and I need to be gentler with myself about it.
The thing is, Sullivan is not up on her celebrity gossip at all. Jessica Alba is a bad example of the “breastfeeding and running around” white lie. Alba was honest after both her first and second baby about what she went through to drop the weight. She admitted that she hates to exercise, that she’s hungry all the time, and that she gets meals delivered that total 1,200 calories a day. Kate Hudson is another celebrity who has been upfront about how hard she worked out post-baby. She copped to three two-hour workout sessions a day.
You know who stands out for me as a big perpetrator of this myth – Heidi Klum. I remember Heidi using that bullsh*t line, even after she had busted her butt to get back on the Victoria’s Secret runway immediately after having her son. That one really made me roll my eyes. So it does happen, all the time, but maybe Sullivan should be more careful about who she’s calling out for doing it.
Also, good for Sullivan for admitting what went through to lose weight post-baby. She’s got paid for it, but I like how honest she’s being, and even that she’s being a little snarky. Those of us who do it professionally appreciate that trait in others.
Nicole Sullivan is shown in the header at the zappos 1/2 marathon event on 12-2-12. She’s shown below on 10-29-12 (grey outfit) and 5-14-12 (black outfit). Credit: WENN.com
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