As part of Adele’s One Night Only special last night, interview Oprah Winfrey asked the British singer about losing 100 pounds in two years — and she responded by telling the full story about how and why that happened.
Earlier in the special, Adele addressed her recent divorce and the disappointment she felt in that, and noted that the anxiety that major life event produced initially sparked the weight loss. But then, digging deeper into the story, she talked about how she was able to channel what was happening into workouts with her trainer that helped her body and mind to become healthier.
As she revealed:
It was about my anxiety when I had the most terrifying anxiety attacks after I left my marriage. They paralyzed me completely, and made me so confused because I wouldn’t be able to have any control over my body.
Adele also commiserated with Winfrey over being in the public eye, and dealing with judgment over how they appeared regardless of what weight they happened to be at any given time. “My body has been objectified my entire career — too big, too small,” she observed, before clarifying, “I was body-positive then; I was body-positive now. But it’s not my job to validate how people feel about their bodies.”
Adele went on to explain that in workouts with her trainer, a person she trusts implicitly, she got into lifting weights, revealing that she was able to get up to 160 pounds — and wondering as a result if she might have had a path as an athlete had she not become a singer.
As one fan on Twitter noted, “I really like what Adele said about her weight loss. People needed to hear that. She isn’t obsessed with her body. It was a result of her doing stuff to help her mental health.”
Not everyone loved it, though. As Roseanne Carrara noted, “Yikes, I love Adele, but this exclusive, hollywood, I’m-in-with-the-in-crowd audience is cringey and bougie and tip-top alienating and now Oprah’s asking about her fucking weight loss in between numbers like it’s a WW ad – so I’m ouuuuutttt.”
But Joseph Rojo felt validated, remarking, “Hearing Adele talk about weight and weight loss and that she can’t control how people react to her body and it’s always been objectified felt so deep and personal to me as someone who has lost significant weight in my lifetime.”