How did Melissa McCarthy lose so much weight?

Melissa McCarthy was in the news when Barbra Streisand responded to a McCarthy Instagram photo, asking the actress if she’d taken Ozempic, an approved diabetes medication that many high-profile celebrities have allegedly used for weight loss.

Babs later deleted the controversial comment and said on her Instagram feed, in part, ” … I just wanted to pay [McCarthy] a compliment.” Streisand also called McCarthy “a friend” in her post and said she looked “fantastic.” The 82-year-old superstar added, “I forgot the world is reading!” To date, McCarthy, 53, has not responded publicly to Streisand’s query about whether or not she’d taken the drug for that purpose.

Instead, when asked about Barbra Streisand’s question, Melissa McCarthy reportedly told a photographer, “I think Barbra is a treasure, and I love her,” according to TMZ. She also shared a video on Instagram of herself reading Barbra magazine and said, “The takeaway, Barbra Streisand knows I exist. She reached out to me, and she thought I looked good. I win the day.”

It’s McCarthy’s business whether she used Ozempic to lose weight, as Streisand suspected when she saw McCarthy’s Instagram photos. We think McCarthy always looks great, and in 2023, People agreed, putting McCarthy on the cover of their Beautiful Issue.

Nonetheless, here’s what McCarthy has said in the press about body positivity and her appearance, offering some insight into how the Bridesmaids star may (or may not) have trimmed a few pounds.

Melissa McCarthy’s weight has always fluctuated

In 2013, the Gilmore Girls actress opened up about her weight loss journey and her up-and-down relationship with her body. “I’ve been every size in the world. Parts of my twenties, I was in great shape, but I didn’t appreciate it. If I was a six or an eight, I thought, ‘Why aren’t I a two or a four?'” Melissa McCarthy said, according to US Magazine.

About four years later, in 2017, McCarthy told Rolling Stone her body changed after she moved to Los Angeles in the 1990s. “I stopped walking and ate sh***y food. I was in good shape, then suddenly I gained 25 pounds.”

Melissa McCarthy is done with ‘fad dieting’

It’s unclear if Melissa McCarthy dropped weight with Ozempic, but she’s tried fad diets, including an all-liquid diet that she once said helped her lose 70 pounds. But in 2011, the mother of two told People, “I’d never do that again. I felt starved and crazy half the time.” That comment alone makes us think that McCarthy would not try the Ozempic weight-loss trend.

So, if McCarthy has trimmed a few pounds, how did she do it? After dropping 50 pounds in 2015, she told Life & Style she stopped worrying about it. “I think there’s something to kinda loosening up and not being so nervous and rigid about it that, bizarrely, has worked.” But the very next year, she told Refinery29, “I have [lost weight], but I’ll be back again. I’ll be up. I’ll be down, probably for the rest of my life.”