That same year, Star decided to undergo gastric bypass surgery. Yet, as her weight melted off in front of the national TV audience, she never addressed her changing body with her fans. In the three years that followed, Star lost 160 pounds. She also lost the trust of her viewers and, ultimately, her popularity. In 2006, Star was let go from her spot on The View.
While on The View, Star was loved by fans for her outgoing personality and what seemed like genuine confidence. When she first started out at the talk show, Star says her self-assurance was the real thing. "There's a difference between being happy when you're full-figured and being happy when you're morbidly obese," she says. "I had given the audience full-figured Star full blast, and when I changed to morbidly obese Star, I didn't have the courage to let that mask down. I didn't have the courage to say: 'Y'all, I ain't happy no more. I'm scared.'"
Star says when she first started on The View, viewers sent letters of support. "Then, as I got bigger and bigger, the mail turned nastier or concerned," she says. "[They said things like,] 'We can hear you breathe.'''
Star says that while she used to love watching herself on The View, especially the opening walkout, she eventually tuned out entirely. "I think the last year before the surgery I never watched myself on camera at all."
Despite the fan mail and her aversion to watching herself on TV, Star says the ultimate decision to have gastric bypass surgery was made for her health. Between her 40th and 41st birthday, Star says she gained 75 pounds. "I was dying," she says. "I now know I was very depressed. I was lonely, and I didn't know how to say, 'I'm lonely.' That's one thing that I have learned in doing a bunch of research and self-analysis—we in our community are ashamed sometimes to admit that our emotional health needs some help."
Though she was struggling on the inside, Star says at age 40 she was having the most successful year of her career. She was always on the scene, appearing at all the major openings, but she was still lonely. "I found myself eating alone after the big party or event," she says. "I was faking it, and it took me a long time to admit it."
Star says it was hard for her to accept that while she was so accomplished in some areas in her life, she couldn't get a handle on her weight. "I could stare a murderer down in a courtroom," she says. "I thought to myself, 'I should be able to control this.'"
At her heaviest, Star says she tried to disguise her weight by increasing the size of her persona. "The hair, the lashes, the nails," she says. "This is the first time since I've been doing television that I've worn my natural nails, because I'm confident enough to not need big long acrylics."
Though she is now 160 pounds lighter than she was when she underwent gastric bypass surgery, Star says having a new body hasn't totally set in. "I'm still 300 pounds in my head some days," she says.
Part of that feeling is the fear that she will disappoint her fans, Star says. "When I was a little kid and I would get chastised by my parents, I longed for a whooping instead of hearing my mother say, 'You have disappointed me,'" she says. "If I disappoint you, I feel like a failure."
The fear of disappointing people is one of the primary reasons Star initially refused to talk publicly about her surgery, she says. "People who loved me and had my best interests at heart would say: 'Star, it's not a bad thing. You can admit it.' And I couldn't. I just put my head in the sand. I was defiant," she says. "I said, 'I'm not talking about this, and if you bring it up again I will fire everybody.' That's how in pain I was."
As Star continued to push away the people who were closest to her, she says the audience could sense that they were being pushed away as well. "I was ashamed," she says. "I was ashamed that I couldn't control my weight, that I was an addict for all practical purposes, that I had never stuck to a real diet or exercise program and that when confronted by my doctor, he said, 'If you don't make changes, you will die.'"
In May 2008, Barbara Walters told Oprah she kept Star's gastric bypass surgery a secret because Star had asked her to. Barbara also said she had been uncomfortable lying on a show that was based on honesty, and the audience of The View was getting turned off.
Star says she was initially hurt by Barbara's comments but has grown to understand where her former co-host on The View was coming from. "I'm so sorry that I placed a burden on my colleagues," she says. "I never asked them to lie. ... I wanted to keep it private. I wanted them to keep my confidence."
Despite rumors that Star claimed her weight loss was due to portion control and Pilates, she says she never lied outright. "I'm a lawyer—I know how to couch my words," she says. "I would say 'medical intervention.'"
Star says she wishes she'd had the courage to talk about her decision publicly so that her colleagues wouldn't have felt pressured to lie. "I wish that I had the strength to face my own demons so that I could have allowed someone to help me," she says. "If I had been stronger, then I could have let people in."
Read more: http://www.oprah.com/health/Star-Jones-Reveals-the-Truth-About-Her-Weight-Loss/11
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