Beyonce’s time as a public figure has been a circle of being body-shamed for her weight gain and receiving criticism every time she goes on a weight loss journey. The pop star was torn apart on social media when recent pictures showed her visible weight gain. Beyonce had made her fair share of controversies when she went to extreme measures for weight loss. Her weight loss diet of 1200 calories during her time in Destiny’s Child and weight loss drink of lemon juice mixture to prepare for Dreamgirls drew quite a flak. Beyonce went on a 22 days weight loss program shortly after she gave birth in 2017 to bounce back from her pregnancy weight gain for Coachella, which the public didn’t take well.
Beyonce is unarguably the biggest pop icon to come out of the American music industry. She rose to fame in the late 1990s as the lead singer of Destiny’s Child, one of the best-selling girl groups of all time. But she gained megastardom as a solo artist after Destiny’s Child disbanded. In fact, she is the first solo act to have their first six studio albums debut at number one on the Billboard 200. She is also one of the world’s best-selling recording artists, having sold 120 million records worldwide.
The pop star was named the Top Certified Artist of the Decade by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in recognition of her success during the 200s, and she was also Billboard’s Top Female Artist of the Decade. She has 28 Grammy Awards, 26 MTV Video Music Awards (including the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award in 2014), 24 NAACP Image Awards, 31 BET Awards, and 17 Soul Train Music Awards to her name. In 2020, she was included on Time’s list of 100 women who defined the last century.
Recently Beyonce fueled speculations about new music when she erased her profile pictures on all social media. Fans quickly discovered that placeholder album art comes up if you type in the date. The black image comes with captions ‘What is a B7’ and ‘B8.’ This has put her in the spotlight.
After not having had any solo music from her since 2016’s Lemonade, fans are eagerly anticipating her next album from her. And even though Beyonce has not completely shunned being in the public eye and has made occasional public appearances, fans are excited to see her again and are wondering how she is, especially after she faced plastic surgery speculations and drew criticism for her weight gain which was visible in her recent pictures from August 2021.
Previously, we touched on the weight gain efforts of Colton Haynes and Demi Lovato.
Beyonce’s Weight Gain: The Destiny’s Child Star’s Weight Loss Measures for Dreamgirls and 22 Day Weight Loss Program for Coachella!
It’s undebatable that Beyonce is one of the most popular and celebrated pop stars the music industry has ever seen. But it’s not all okay because with the kind of fame she has, comes unwarranted and hateful comments. The worse ones are about her body and physicality because her appearance is not something of her doing and it’s not related to her professional life. But those are the ones that sting the most and not even Beyonce is immune to it. In fact, she has been criticized and mocked for her body, specifically for her weight gain since the time she stepped into the showbiz.
Do you all remember Bootylicious? How can you forget when it has been such a cultural phenomenon? The track Destiny’s Child released as the second single from the group’s third studio album Survivor was written and produced by Beyonce when she was 19. Bootylicious wasn’t even a word before, Beyonce coined the term.
It was to celebrate her curvaceous figure instead of being dragged down when the media was putting her on blast for her weight gain. She, at the time, was dealing with the loss of her friends and group members LeToya Luckett and LaTavia Roberson, by finding comfort in food which became the cause of weight gain and the subsequent barrage of negative remarks about her voluptuous body.
Tired of being insecure about it, Beyonce woke up one day and was going to unapologetically own her body type. This was a turning point for the pop star in terms of body image as she began to use whatever life handed to her and turned it into something empowering for other women. She seemed to have been sorted out but the public clearly wasn’t because the criticisms for weight gain at different points in her life continued to come her way.
Though Crazy in Love hitmaker had learned to love her curvy figure, next year, she had to undergo a weight loss during filming for 2002’s Austin Powers in Goldmember. Her weight loss diet then consisted of eating only 1200 calories per day. In 2003, she talked about having lunch of just six slices of tomato and four slices of cucumber at some point when she was active in Destiny’s Child.
In 2006, Beyonce again went through an extreme measure for weight loss for the movie Dreamgirls. She never had a noticeable weight gain but she lost 20 pounds for the role out of her own accord through Master Cleanse which is a 10-day juice cleanse that requires dieters to eat nothing and drink only a lemon, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper concoction. Bey’s choice of weight loss drink for those 10 days to prepare for Dreamgirls was a lemon juice mixture. It was highly controversial, how she went on about losing weight. But people never stopped making triggering comments every time she had a weight gain.
People didn’t even spare her during her pregnancy weight gain. Maybe that’s why Beyonce, who had once rejected all the body-shaming comments about her body when she was young, turned her back on her healthy attitude about body image. Because soon after the birth of her first child in 2012, she put extreme pressure on herself to lose all the baby weight in three months. She even scheduled a small tour so that she wouldn’t hold back from bouncing back after the weight gain.
Beyonce was 195 pounds when she gave birth to Blue Ivy and had a weight loss of 65 pounds afterward, which is something she caught flak for because she was rushing too much into it. The cycle of being mocked for weight gain and then getting criticism when she loses that weight more often through unhealthy means is never-ending.
In 2013, the Halo singer, along with her rapper husband Jay-Z advocated for veganism when they decided to go vegan for nearly a month as part of a 22-day-challenge, and encouraged their fans to do the same.
In 2018, though Beyonce claimed to have been a lot more relaxed about and had a different approach towards the weight gain she had during her second pregnancy with twins Rumi and Sir, after six months of birthing the twins, she underwent a weight loss journey to prepare for Coachella. She was 218 pounds on the day she gave birth to the twins. That was a difficult birth where she had to get an emergency C-section.
After spending months in recovery during which Beyonce ‘gave herself self-love and self-care and she embraced being curvier and accepted what her body wanted to be’, she took up a weight loss program and implemented Marco Borges’ 22 Days Nutrition program for more than the required number of days, 44 days to be specific in order to shed the post-baby weight gain. As she began rehearsing for Coachella, she tipped 175 pounds on the weight scale, which she documented and shared on her Youtube channel. She also said that she had become a woman who felt like her body was not hers.
In her documentary Homecoming which was about her Coachella performances, the Formation singer shared more about her weight loss diet. For 44 days, she refrained from carbs, sugar, dairy, meat, fish, and alcohol. She was also shown to be hitting the gym very determinedly and with a different headspace because getting off weight was much easier than getting back in shape and feeling comfortable in her body. She was quite satisfied with her weight loss following the 22 days program and received appreciation for it.
After undergoing that impressive weight loss in 22 days following the pregnancy weight gain in 2017, Beyonce was mostly on the fitter and healthier side up until the pandemic. She apparently gained about 55 pounds during the quarantine for which she was mercilessly mocked on Twitter.
The Single Ladies songstress faced harsh body-shaming comments in August 2021 when she was spotted while on a vacation in the Hamptons because of her visible weight gain and because she appeared to be closing in on 200 pounds. However, it looks like she has decided to ignore such remarks for good because, during quarantine, she went from overindulgences to creating positive rituals drawing from past generations and putting her own spin on things. She said in an interview with Harpers Bazaar,
‘In the past, I spent too much time on diets, with the misconception that self-care meant exercising and being overly conscious of my body. Mental health is self-care too. I’m learning to break the cycle of poor health and neglect, focusing my energy on my body and taking note of the subtle signs that it gives me.’
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