Former Fat Girl Kate Winslet

I love reading biographies, and I really enjoy watching TV shows like Biography, Iconoclasts and Inside the Actor’s Studio that tell the stories of how famous or well-known people got their start and the tale of what led to their success. Last night I was watching Kate Winslet’s Biography and they talked about Kate’s struggle with her weight during her teen years. Kate’s parents were theater actors and she knew from a very young age that she wanted to act. So her parents sent her to a performing arts school, apparently Kate always stood out in her school and was a working actor while most of her peers were not.

While Kate was in high school she was very noticeably overweight and the other students teased her despite her talent and burgeoning career, I’m sure the teasing was 1 part fat-hate, 2 parts jealousy, but I digress. But what sparked this post about Kate Winslet is something one of her friend’s said. She stated that Kate knew she wanted to be a leading lady on screen and not the sidekick or the best friend and she understood that losing weight would mean getting the roles she wanted so she lost weight, something in the ballpark of 50lbs. According to sources, Kate “hardly ate” to lose the weight and less than a year later she was a svelter version of herself. Kate Winslet is not fat by any stretch of the imagination but she’s also not a skeleton as so many Hollywood actresses are. What’s also interesting is that you don’t see her struggling with her weight, she’s pretty much stayed the same size and people love her for her “normal curvy body”.

What stands out to me about Kate’s choice to lose weight was her drive to reach her weight loss goal by any means necessary in order to pursue what was most important to her, Acting. I do not support the way she went about losing the weight, but it made me reflect on my own weight loss experience. A big part of me wishes I could just lose the weight without all of the emotional baggage so I can move on with my life and not have to think about it anymore. Because the reality is as much as I believe it is important to enjoy life now, in the body I have right now, and I do, I still want to be a certain size and I’m not there yet. I wonder if I’m able to get really mechanical about food and exercise and just focus on getting it done rather than all of the touchy feely emotional stuff that comes up for me when trying to lose weight. I often wonder what I would think and talk about if I reached my final weight loss destination and stayed there.

 So the question is if you were at your goal weight right now and the idea of losing weight no longer preoccupied your thoughts, what would you do or think about?