Dancing with the Stars

• February 18, 2008
• Vol. 69
• No. 6

Marie Osmond Lost 40 Lbs. in 5 Months!

• 

From PEOPLE Magazine

Even before she collapsed on the set of Dancing with the Stars last October, Marie Osmond knew she wasn't fit. "Doing rehearsals, I was out of breath," says the singer, who estimates she gained 40 lbs. during the last five years, as she cared for her parents, each of whom battled heart disease at the end of their lives, and struggled in her marriage. (Last March, she and her husband of two decades, Brian Blosil, divorced.) Still, at a Feb. 1 event for the American Heart Association, Osmond told PEOPLE that it wasn't until her oldest son, Stephen, said, "Mom, it would really be nice if you were there for my kids," that she decided, "That's it." Feeling like she had never taught herself "how to eat healthy," Osmond signed up for NutriSystem in August, dropping 27 lbs. by Dancing's Nov. 27 finale. (She lost another 13 lbs. by mid-January.) "The hardest thing was worrying about what everybody else was going to eat," says the mother of eight, who is raising her brood—the kids range in age from 5 to 24—in Orem, Utah. But, "I told my family, 'Mom has to focus on Mom right now.'"

More From This Article

The Pressure to Be Thin

Born into a famous singing family (above), Osmond was onstage by age 3—and following extreme diets by age 12. "I was taken into parking lots and told if I didn't drop 10 pounds, shows would be cancelled," says the 5'5" Osmond, who recalls often doing the Master Cleanse (ingesting nothing but a drink of lemon water, maple syrup and cayenne pepper) to get to 93 lbs. "I know the head trip of focusing on the outside," she notes, "when, really, we have to focus on the inside."