With just three weeks before the Met Gala to fit into Marilyn Monroe’s dress, Kim Kardashian dropped an alarming 16 pounds.
She faced backlash for wearing the dress.
Kim was also called out for her extreme weight loss, including criticism from actress Lili Reinhart who was appalled by the message that she sent.
Now, however, she insists that her weight loss was perfectly healthy.
Kim Kardashian spoke to The New York Times on many topics, including defending against backlash for her rapid 16-pound weight loss.
“I didn’t do anything unhealthy,” she insisted in the interview.
That might sound literally impossible considering the timeframe and the amount of weight lost, but let’s hear her out.
Kim explained that her reasoning was inspired by Hollywood’s sometimes extreme body transformations.
“To me, it was like, ‘OK, Christian Bale can do it for a movie role and that is acceptable,'” she cited. “Even Renee Zellweger gained weight for a role.”
Kim added: “It’s all the same to me.”
Kim also feels that callouts were unfair, because she was not explicitly advocating for others to follow her example.
“I wasn’t saying, ‘Hey everyone, why don’t you go lose weight in a short period of time?’” she reasoned.
Yes, that is true, but … was anyone really confused about that?
“The idea really came to me after the gala in September last year,” Kim said of wearing the dress ahead of the gala.
“I thought to myself, what would I have done for the American theme if it had not been the Balenciaga look?” she recalled.
“What’s the most American thing you can think of?” Kim asked. “And that’s Marilyn Monroe.”
“For me, the most Marilyn Monroe moment is when she sang ‘Happy Birthday,’ to JFK, it was that look,” Kim said.
For many, the fact that she wore a piece of history, even briefly, was controversial enough on its own.
When the inability to alter the dress led to her dramatic weight loss, however, people took issue.
Christian Bale is infamous for his catastrophic cycle of gaining and losing weight for film roles.
Renee Zellweger gained 30 pounds to play the role of “overweight” character, Bridget Jones.
While actors may change fitness habits while working in contrast with when they are not filming or auditioning, these kinds of transformations are more extreme.
Kim says that she did not do anything unhealthy, because she simply did a “strict” diet and fitness plan.
She went to the sauna twice a day, used a treadmill, excluded all sugar and carbs, and ate “clean” veggies and protein for three weeks.
So, was it as healthy as Kim seems to think?
Simply put, there is not a “healthy” way to lose 16 pounds in three weeks.
Unless you are giving birth (which is not a recommend weight loss strategy unless you happen to be pregnant), losing that much weight should take 8 weeks at a minimum.
Kim dropped weight at nearly three times the recommended weight, which takes a toll on the human body.
In Kim’s mind, not doing anything “unhealthy” likely means that she did not induce vomiting or refuse to eat or use dubious “dietary aids” like the weight loss teas that her family used to promote.
But it sounds like she went on an extreme diet coupled with rigorous exercise, and may have dehydrated herself.
Kim is wealthy enough that she can have the lifestyle and healthcare to be fine after that, but this kind of extreme fasting can tank someone’s metabolism.
Just for the record, people correctly call it “unhealthy” when Christian Bale drops 50 pounds in one summer, too.
Kim didn’t ask others to follow her example, but … does that matter?
Kim made her fortune as an influencer — one of the most prominent in the world. If she thinks that her words and diet plans don’t influence other people, she’s not being honest with herself.
