Food Network star Ree Drummond is opening up about her dramatic weight loss and the moment she hit “rock bottom” that led to her fitness journey.
The “Pioneer Woman” is known for her successful cooking show and food blog and has turned her love of making food and desserts into an empire in her home state of Oklahoma, where she and husband, Ladd Drummond, live on a ranch.
The TV host said she hit “rock bottom” one night early this year after dropping her son Bryce off at college.
“I have a cooking show, I write cookbooks, I have a cooking website. I have a restaurant, a bakery. So you know, it just kept creeping up and in January of this year, we took my son, Bryce, to college. And I tell this story, but I basically hit rock bottom eating chips and salsa one night. I went a little overboard, but I thought that night, ‘I am going to start tomorrow, I am doing something different.’ And I just started and I almost lost 60 pounds now,” she said in an interview with Entertainment Tonight.
Drummond said she “never” had a goal in mind when it came to losing pounds. Instead, she just focused on wanting to feel better – and she confirms she certainly does.
Ree Drummond revealed she’s lost nearly 60 pounds.
(Tyler Essary/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)
“I feel great and that’s what matters. The scale was sort of a gauge for me that I was heading in the right direction. And it was never about I have to lose this amount, it’s really about how I feel,” she shared.
“I feel great, I have, I feel strong. Even when I was thinner, I don’t think I ever have been a squatter or a lunger before. Not since my ballet days. So it’s really nice to just kind of feel the muscles that I thought were gone forever.”
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Drummond, who owns an ice cream shop, pizzeria, restaurant and an inn in Pawhuska, Okla., said weight loss journeys can change a person’s day-to-day routine.
“It changes your whole outlook just having the routine of exercise in your day and, you know, I still eat the foods that I cook my family. I still eat cake. I just eat a Rhode Island-sized piece instead of a Texas-sized piece,” she said.
The tastemaker also dished on her first acting role. She will star in Discovery+’s first original movie titled “Candy Coated Christmas.”
“I am not an actor, I am the host of a cooking show, but when Food Network asked if I wanted to participate in their first Christmas movie, I think I said yes in like point two seconds,” Drummond added. “And even though I knew I couldn’t act, and I knew I had no experience whatsoever, I just thought, ‘How could you say no to that?’ I mean, Christmas movies are just such a part of tradition and I have friends that are so obsessed with them, so I said yes and then I thought, ‘What in the world have I done?'”
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In June, Drummond revealed she had already lost 43 pounds. Prior to making changes to her lifestyle at the start of the year, she revealed she had tried a number of things to nutrition-and-fitness before, like intermittent fasting, personal trainers, fad diets, and weight loss programs. However, none of those methods were right for her.
“I’ve tried it before, and it caused me to gorge during my eating window,” she said about fasting. “Since calories matter, this didn’t work for me.”
Drummond said she decided to keep it simple and instead, focus on eating fewer calories per day and relying on portion control. Drummond noted that using online calorie counters made it easier to maintain her goals. Using a digital food scale – as opposed to solely a measuring cup – was also helpful to make sure she was “as precise as possible with the calories I was eating.”
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“Counting my calories was nothing short of eye-opening, and for me it was essential,” said the Food Network personality. “I’d completely lost track of the calories I was consuming on a daily basis so it was very helpful to get a handle on what I was looking at. I could tell if it was working by whether I was losing weight over time, and adjusted up or down naturally as I went.”
In addition, she “made exercise a regular part of my day, whether I walked with the dogs or did the rowing machine.”
Fox News’ Stephanie Nolasco contributed to this report.
