It’s 11:00 a.m. on a sunny Monday, and Lizzo and I are powering through a circuit-training session in the gym of her mid-century modern Los Angeles home. “Let’s get it!” she hollers, Beyoncé’s Renaissance blasting as she launches into her third set of lateral step-overs and I push through bench dips. The setup flanking us as we train is a bona fide fitness and recovery sanctuary: a Peloton Tread, a StairMaster, a Power Plate whole-body vibration platform, a nonimpact Arc Trainer machine, and an infrared sauna fill one side of the room, while a huge window showcasing greenery frames the other.
As Lizzo, clad in a cropped green nylon hoodie and flare leggings from her shapewear brand, Yitty, attacks step-ups with an overhead press while rapturously singing along to Bey, you’d never know that before today’s workout, she felt run down. Out of sorts. Over it. But instead of letting that stop her, she remembered what inspires her to move—and it has absolutely nothing to do with aesthetics. “I’ve never regretted a workout,” says the 37-year-old, sipping from her water bottle between reps. “After, I always feel better. I work out for mental health first. Exercise is the best mood enhancer.”
Her trainer, Marvin Telp, with whom she’s been working for a little under a year and who is motivating us to put in some serious work today, says he admires her grit. “Even when she’s in a mood,” he says, “she’s focused.”
Lizzo’s relentless ambition has been essential in her rise to global stardom, but her unapologetic “I’m 100 percent that bitch” conviction and cultural influence are what made her a pop icon. The Houston-bred, classically trained flutist, whose real name is Melissa Jefferson, went from performing with girl groups after moving to Minneapolis in 2011 to having her song “Truth Hurts” become the longest-running number one single by a solo female rap artist ever and making history in 2023 when she became the first Black woman since 1994 to win Record of the Year at the Grammys, for her double-platinum track “About Damn Time.”
More than a hitmaker, Lizzo inspired a wave of empowerment and body positivity by shattering beauty standards and affirming that health and self-love aren’t about fitting into a mold. “I’m not a snack at all,” she declares on “Juice.” “Look, baby, I’m the whole damn meal.”
That full-stop confidence and public perception became complicated a few years ago when legal disputes and various allegations came to light, prompting Lizzo to want to “disappear,” she says. During the summer of 2023, she was hit with what she calls “a shocking, really hurtful accusation” when she was sued by three former backup dancers for alleged sexual harassment, as well as weight shaming, as reported in the Los Angeles Times. That lawsuit was followed by another by a wardrobe stylist who claimed to have been sexually harassed by Lizzo’s team. As news of the claims spread, cancel culture came for her.
Lizzo’s specific brand of empowerment—which saw her create the Emmy Award–winning reality show Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls, where she searched for backup dancers who have a body type similar to her own—was seemingly undercut by the alleged behavior. Was this a different, darker side of Lizzo? One that shifts from championing liberation to exercising power over others? While she has denied the allegations, the case with the dancers is still active (at the time of this article’s publication), and a judge ruled that Lizzo can no longer be sued as an individual in the stylist’s lawsuit, though her company, Big Grrrl Big Touring Inc., remains a defendant. As the saga continues, Lizzo faces not only the legal matters but the shifting tides of public opinion, as some now call into question the double standard regarding what we deem “acceptable” behavior for women (particularly Black women) compared to men.
Though Lizzo says she’s endured “backlash my entire career” due to criticism and hate related to things like her size and race, the severity of this situation made it hit differently for her, especially at first. “You look around and think about every person you’ve ever known and every experience, and you wonder, Was that real?” recalls the singer, who took to Instagram a few days after the dancers’ suit was filed to address the claims against her. “I got very paranoid and isolated. I used to walk into glam and be like, ‘Oh, let me tell you about this crazy shit that happened last night!’ I couldn’t do that anymore. I pushed everyone away. I wasn’t even talking to my therapist. I wasn’t present. I wasn’t open. I wasn’t myself anymore.”
On her darkest days, Lizzo says, “it got to the point where it’s just like, well…” She pauses, collecting her thoughts. “You ever get tired of living?” she asks, staring down before tapping her long nails on the table. “It got to the point where I was like, ‘I could die.’ I never attempted to kill myself or thought about it, but I did think, If everyone hates you and thinks you’re a terrible person, then what’s the point? ”
After months of being isolated, feeling depressed, and “sitting with myself for a long time,” Lizzo got out of the house to go to Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour. “I was so nervous,” she says, worried that people would “boo me or be like, f*ck you.” But the opposite happened: People showered her with support, encouraging her to keep her head up. “It made me feel like, wow, maybe I don’t want to die. Life is worth living. That was the kick-starter to me being like, ‘Okay, Melissa, get your ass in gear and take your f*cking life back.’ ”
Her first step toward self-restoration was to detach from her phone. She relinquished her socials to her team and stopped reading comments. “My validation was from external sources, people telling me they loved me, or that I look good, and accepting me,” she says. “It helped me build self-confidence. But if that’s all I’m getting my validation from, when it changes—and it will, because people are not always going to like you—what happens? Where are you going to get your love from? I can convince myself that I’m beautiful, my body fine, no matter how big or small. But reminding myself that you can’t let others tell you who you are—that was hard work.”
Pausing social media was only the tip of the iceberg for Lizzo’s healing. She also let go of unhealthy relationships and started talking to her therapist again. “I was like, ‘Bro, I need you once a week,’ ” she remembers saying. Incorporating pilates was next. “I was like, I need to be gentle. I want it to feel sacred. I need to release a lot of things from my body. ” Detoxing her gut, clearing the heavy metals from her body, and taking echinacea to build immunity followed, as did qigong meditation, reading books like Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, and journaling. Also, she began hosting ashrams—spiritual retreats encompassing sound baths, yoga, massages, and acupuncture—and initiating hangs with friends where they’d sip wine and stretch.
Lizzo was battling ongoing radiating back pain as well, a result of damaged discs due to pressure caused by her weight—weight she hadn’t been concerned with losing because she was proud of her size. She’d overcome the bullying that began when she was in fifth and sixth grade and “started getting bigger,” she says. “I was an awkward, kind of nerdy, bigger girl.”
After moving to Minneapolis, things changed. “I started my artist journey, and I gained confidence from living in a cool city where nobody was really judging me. So, I started to explore what it meant to love yourself in a bigger body. As I gained more weight, I gained more confidence because I was being validated as an artist.”
But when the back pain became so intense that it was affecting her ability to function, she knew she needed to make some changes. When trying to lose weight in the past, she’d think, Just do it until it feels good. But this time, she was going for intentional. So she began weighing herself regularly, taking note of her measurements, and setting a new goal. “I wanted to be ‘big-girl skinny,’ ” she says. “Every big girl knows what I’m talking about. Big-girl skinny is 250 pounds.”
She also reached out to friend and fellow artist Kelly Rowland, “whose body is the calling card,” Lizzo says, and was introduced to Marvin Telp. Together, they devised a routine: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday consist of moves like posterior chain–focused step-ups, V-sit crunches, reverse flies, lateral lunges, and single-leg deadlifts, followed by 20 minutes of cardio on her Arc Trainer and 20 minutes in her infrared sauna. On Tuesday and Thursday, she exercises for 45 minutes on one of her cardio machines.
Strengthening her body wasn’t all about putting in physical work, though. Lizzo knew she had to alter her diet as well. For years, she’d been vegan, but admittedly, she wasn’t approaching it in the healthiest way. Eating mostly bread, soy, cashew cheese, and meat substitutes left her lightheaded and bloated. “I wasn’t getting the nutrients
I needed,” she says.
Now, her meals consist mainly of protein and vegetables. A go-to breakfast includes two scrambled eggs, chicken sausage, and a cauliflower hash brown. She goes for a shredded Thai chicken salad or lettuce wraps stuffed with tuna or sliced chicken breast for lunch. And in the evening, she opts for turkey meatloaf with cauliflower mashed potatoes and green beans, which she makes sure to eat before 5 p.m. “I have GERD [gastroesophageal reflux disease], so my body needs time to digest food before I go to sleep, so acid doesn’t roll up to my throat,” she says.
For snacks, it’s low-sugar Greek yogurt with blueberries or blackberries and a little honey on top. And though she’s replaced multiple Frappuccinos a day with one cup of coffee with vanilla protein, when she wants, say, a waffle with chicken tenders, crab legs, or a coconut cream–filled doughnut, she goes for it. “There’s a balance,” she says of her food choices. “I think that’s what true health is.”
Achieving these healthy eating patterns has been a challenge for Lizzo, who says she’s struggled with disordered eating—binge eating, specifically—as an adult. “There were times when I would eat so much that my stomach hurt. When I was done, I would be so uncomfortable, I couldn’t breathe and wouldn’t let anyone know. I would hide it,” she says, adding that “I had so much food noise and connected so much emotion to food. If I were sad, anxious, stressed, or working a lot, I would snack and just eat constantly. And then I would wait for everybody to leave, secretly order two separate meals on a food delivery site, then order dessert on a separate one.”
Getting her habits in check took a great deal of mental work. “There was a lot of shame and guilt I had to forgive myself for,” Lizzo says. These days, she’s achieved what she describes as a “very sustainable” lifestyle. “I’ll open up a bag of BarkThins, and once I get to the fourth one, I close [the bag]. I’ll be like, ‘Okay, Melissa, put it back on the table. You had enough.’ I’ll grab one more for the road and then drink a shit ton of water. It’s a beautiful balance where it’s like, if you allow yourself to have something, you can enjoy it without overindulging and hurting yourself. I’m so proud of myself for overcoming that.”
She’s also proud to have exceeded her expectations in carving out a life where she makes choices for herself and her health. That goal weight? “I far surpassed that,” she says. That back pain? Alleviated. “I couldn’t wear heels for an extended amount of time anymore,” she says. “Now, baby, I wear heels to the grocery store!”
Her shift toward a deeper sense of self-worth was solidified on a trip to Bali in August 2024. “I talked to this Tibetan monk who didn’t know I was a famous singer. He was like, ‘You worry too much about other people. You need to trust yourself. You need to tell yourself you are incredible, prioritize your ideas, and don’t let someone tell you they know what’s best for you more than you.’ After talking to him, I had this clarity; nothing could shake me anymore. [The public] can’t manipulate my feelings. You see somebody now who is very protective, but not guarded. I don’t not care; I just don’t carry.”
Sitting at the dining room table with me in her home a few days before our epic Beyoncé-fueled workout, Lizzo reflects more on the body-positivity piece of it all.
"Me saying I love myself in 2016 was offensive to people,” she says. She’s back in Los Angeles after a whirlwind trip to New York, where she attended the Met Gala, shot two music videos, and appeared on The Kelly Clarkson Show. “ ‘How dare you love yourself? You are fat and Black and you’re a woman, so you shouldn’t love yourself,’ ” she recalls of the sentiments thrown her way. Easygoing in baggy boyfriend jeans and with only a touch of mascara, Lizzo shows no signs of fatigue from the flip-flopping criticism. In fact, she’s fired up.
“It’s radical to f*ck with yourself,” she says. “I had to fight for that [to love myself]. And now I’m fighting again.”
The fight she’s referring to is for the right to love her body now that it’s changed. Lately, she’s been fielding comments from fans like “How dare you lose weight?!” “Are you taking Ozempic?” “What happened when you said it’s okay to be fat?” (And a more existential question at the heart of it all: Is Lizzo still 100 percent that bitch?)
“Let me tell you this,” she asserts, her raised tone indicating that she’s not here for the opinions. “It’s okay to release weight.” Her use of the word release is indicative of her transformative approach to shedding pounds; rather than saying lose, she prefers a more active and purposeful framing. She did it for her health. She did it for her. She did it to satisfy Lizzo, not anyone else. Yet she leaves room for the possibility of more shame-free physical change in the future. “It’s okay to gain weight after you’ve released weight, because what you’re not going to do is shame me if my body changes again and I get bigger.”
And regarding those Ozempic inquiries, no, Lizzo isn’t taking it. She does admit that the idea of weight-loss surgery and cosmetic procedures like a tummy tuck have crossed her mind. Though she chose not to go that route, she doesn’t condemn it. “If I did all of this on Ozempic, if I did all this with surgery, I would be just as proud of myself, because this shit is hard. Everyone who’s ever been in a bigger body knows that this shit ain’t easy. Existing isn’t easy.”
No matter how her body evolves, she will always see herself as beautiful. “I like how I look now. I still think I’m big. I’m definitely in the ‘two-something to do something’ crew,” she says. “I’m still wearing plus-size clothing. I have the same rolls. I got the same belly, the same thighs—I think I’m just a smaller version. Body positivity has nothing to do with staying the same. Body positivity is the radical act of daring to exist loudly and proudly in a society that told you you shouldn’t exist.”
Lizzo’s new mentality has also made her more confident in her independence. The singer SZA, a friend of hers, recently noticed. “I remember pulling up by myself to see her, and she was like, ‘Are you okay? You’re always alone now, and you were never alone,’ ” says Lizzo. “I was like, ‘I’m good. I don’t need anybody. I’m here to see you.’ And she was like, ‘I love this healed version.’ ”
Now she’s bringing that self-assured energy to her most vulnerable album yet. Inspired partly by the love she received in person at that path-altering Beyoncé concert, Love in Real Life is about cherishing human connection and the work it takes to find happiness. “On all my past albums, I’m at the destination—like, I walked my fine ass out the door, and I feel good as hell,” she says, referencing her song “Good as Hell.” “But nobody knows how I got there.” With this album, “I let you in on the process.”
Along the way, she tackles death and grieving, betrayal, and feeling lost—a sensibility she believes plenty can relate to. (She’s also dabbling in film with an upcoming role as the legendary gospel and rock ’n’ roll singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe in the biopic Rosetta.) “We’re at such a turning point for human existence that if someone doesn’t show young people the way to connect, to crave human connection and seek it, it could be a lost practice.”
Of course, there are feel-good bops on the album, too, like the kiss-off track “Still Bad” and the dance floor–beckoning title track, which had been released at the time of this interview. Says Lizzo of the album, “It’s about finding yourself again.”
Lizzo now seems truly ready to embrace whatever may come next as she inhabits a new, better version of her that bitch self. “There’s a part of me that could easily be exploited and taken advantage of that has been broken off,” she says. “I don’t miss it.”
She now stands in her power, delighted with her restored confidence and clarity. “I’m proud of the person I’ve become. I feel like I’ve turned everything I’ve been through into growth.” Yes, for the first time in a long while, and possibly ever, Lizzo is not just navigating life—she’s reshaping it on her own terms.
Photography by Caleb & Gladys.
Styling by Wayman + Micah.
Hair by J Stay Ready at Chris Aaron Management.
Makeup by Alexx Mayo for The Only Agency using Dream Labs.
Manicure by Eri at The Wall Group.
Set Design by Sarah Caye.
Executive Producer / Director: Dorenna Newton
DP: Elyssa Aquino
2nd Camera: Derrick Saint-Pierre
Editor: Josh Archer
Associate Producer: Janie Booth
This story appears in the Summer 2025 issue of Women's Health.
