Singer Lizzo reveals she was frustrated being ‘overshadowed’ by her ‘fatness’

American singer Lizzo, has revealed that she was frustrated by being ‘overshadowed’ by her ‘fatness’ in a candid new post reflecting on her weight loss journey. The 37-year-old singer has dramatically slimmed down in recent years after years of embracing her role as the face of the body positivity movement. In her very first Substack post, entitled ‘Why is everybody losing weight and what do we do? Sincerely, a person whos lost weight’, Lizzo admitted she became irritated being synonymous with the size of her body.  ‘I was sick and tired of my identity being overshadowed by my fatness. People could not see my talent as a musician because they were too busy accusing me of making being fat my whole personality,’ she said. ‘The way Ive been treated as a public figure since I was introduced to the world as a confident, body-positive figure has been borderline emotional abuse. And its simply because of my weight.  ‘Nevertheless, I made it work for me. I trolled the hell out of those obnoxious memes. I was self-aware that I was the butt of every fat joke on the Internet.  ‘And yet I continued to be who I am, because its the only thing I know how to be. And even in being myself, no one really believed it. I discovered that people thought that I was being performative. Performing being body positive when I was the first body positive musician to become mainstream doesnt even make sense.’  At first, Lizzo did not intend to lose weight, but after her mental health deteriorated over lawsuits by former team members, she decided to lose some weight. At the time, three back-up dancers accused her of sexual harassment, fat shaming, and a hostile work environment, while a former stylist alleged a ‘sexualized, racially charged, and illegal work environment’ while working for Lizzo’s Big Grrrl Big Tour company. Lizzo has denied all the claims. ‘I started losing weight in the fall of 2023,’ she wrote. ‘I was severely depressed. I had been the subject of vicious scandal, and it felt like the whole world turned its back on me. I became deeply suicidal. I cut off all my loved ones.’ ‘So, in my self-loathing and self-neglect I began to rot,’ she later said. ‘As someone who has talked and sang about self-love their entire career, it was hard to watch that happen to myself. And so I decided to turn my extreme inaction to action.’  ‘I only worked with black women instructors and learned that Pilates was actually cofounded by a black woman,’ she explained. ‘I used it as physical therapy. Sometimes I cried after sessions. I found that I had lost some weight in that process, but it wasnt as significant as it is now. Because it wasnt intentional. Id decided that winter to sit and record a video saying I wanted to intentionally lose weight.’ Lizzo later realized she had been using the weight as a shield and stressed slimming down was ‘energetic… not vain.’  ‘After talking to a few therapists I discovered that my weight had been a protective shield, a joyful comfort zone, and even sometimes a super hero suit to protect me through life. My weight, like my hair, represented time.It stored energy. And I wanted to release myself from it. So from that moment on any weight on my physical body that was subtracted was not a pound lost but a pound released. It was energetic for me, not vain.’That being said, she still wanted to ‘change’ how she felt in her body.   ‘But lets be real. I wanted to change how I felt in my body. I had been holding onto so much since my father passed away in 2009. I had been holding onto relationships that were deeply abusive and toxic since 2011. I had been carrying the weight of supporting my family since 2016. I wanted to let-it-the-f**k go.” Lizzo has previously credited her dramatic slim down to hard work and discipline, but she has also admitted to trying Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs to help her on her journey.’ The post Singer Lizzo reveals she was frustrated being ‘overshadowed’ by her ‘fatness’ appeared first on Linda Ikeji Blog.