How Marie Osmond Lost 46 Lbs. and Stopped Hating Her Body
By Liz McNeil - PEOPLE
Originally posted Tuesday March 31, 2009 08:05 AM EDT
Though she shed 46 pounds in 2007, it took Marie Osmond years of struggling with a negative body image until she decided to fight back.
"Our society makes women feel that they should have a body of a skinny little boy," she tells PEOPLE. "We put on five pounds, and we think we're fat … It's stupid."
It's these very issues Osmond, 49, addresses in her new book, Might As Well Laugh About It Now, which also deals with life's other struggles. Publication date is next Tuesday. Says Osmond: "You have women who feel that they have to get boob jobs to be sexy. It's wrong. We're females, we have curves."
Family Teasing
Osmond felt the pressure to be thin at an early age. As a pre-teen, she remembers being called "the fat sister." While hosting Donny & Marie in the late '70s, Osmond, then a petite 5'5" and 110 pounds, was told she needed to reduce. "The producers said I was an embarrassment and the show was going to be cancelled if I didn't keep food out of my fat mouth. And so, I got down to 93 pounds. I was a lollipop head."
She didn't eat for days at a time and was briefly bulimic. But when the show ended in 1979, Osmond gave up dieting. She gradually gained 40 plus pounds as a result of bad eating habits: skipping breakfast, candy bar snacks and big meals late at night.
It wasn't until her son, Stephen, now 25, expressed concern for her health that something clicked. "Stephen said, 'We need you around for our kids and your grandkids,' " recalls Osmond. "I needed to do it for my kids, but mostly I needed to do it out of self-love. [I] looked at dieting as abusive and controlling but my whole attitude changed to, 'I just want to be healthy.' "
The Turnaround
Her eating habits improved, and she began taking long walks and eventually joined NutriSystem – eventually becoming the program's celebrity spokesperson.
"It took eight years to put [the weight] on, and four months to take it off," she explains. "My metabolism shut off." That same year, she joined Dancing with the Stars and memorably fainted after a samba routine. She was eventually voted off in the finale.
Offstage, her personal life was equally dramatic. "I was going through a major divorce. My father passed away. I had a child who was struggling. He had to go into a rehab situation. I was like, 'Good grief!' " says Osmond.
Her World Crashes
Her divorce from her husband of 20 years, music producer Brian Blosil, came as a bitter blow. "I had a bad marriage for 20 years and a fear of saying that it was a failure," she admits. "You have to say to yourself, 'What am I doing? Am I really taking something and trying to make it average? Does this person keep me down?' " Considering they were together for two decades, Osmond observes with a laugh, "You can't say I didn't give it a shot."
In November 2007, her son Michael, then 16, went into rehab. "Those kinds of things are really very hard for a teenager to deal with," she tells PEOPLE. "And if he ever wants to talk about it ... he will, but it has to be their choice. It's not my choice."
Now out of rehab, Michael Blosil is finishing up his last year of high school while living with his mom in Las Vegas (where she and brother Donny headline in a show at the Flamingo). "I couldn't be more proud of him," says Osmond. "He's got a 3.9 GPA in high school. He's looking at scholarships to some wonderful colleges."
Meanwhile, as Osmond faces turning 50 on Oct. 13, she jokes, "I call it the female F-word." But, she is quick to add, "I have eight beautiful children. I'm crazy busy, and I feel fantastic. So, that can be, 'Fifty – the F-word – Feel Fantastic.' I love it."
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Marie Osmond Tough Times
By Michelle Tauber
Tested by Divorce, Her Father's Death and Her Son's Stay in Rehab, the Dancing with the Stars Contestant Finds Strength in Faith and Family
Hoofing her way through the mambo and the quickstep on Dancing with the Stars Nov. 19, Marie Osmond showcased the sequined razzle-dazzle fans had come to expect from her all season long. "She's always going to give it her best shot," says her longtime friend, Lisa Hatch, "because that's all Osmonds know how to do."
Raised in a family sworn to the credo The Show Must Go On, Marie, 48, has kept her signature smile in place through an increasingly difficult year. In March, before she took on Dancing with the Stars, she announced she and her husband of 20 years, Brian Blosil, were divorcing. On Oct. 22, she fainted on the show after a samba. Two weeks later, her father, George, died at age 90. And then came yet another blow: In response to questioning from Larry King Nov. 14, she said that her son Michael, 16—one of her eight children, who range in age from 5 to 25—has been undergoing rehab. (Hatch says he is being treated for a substance abuse problem.) "When it hits the fan," says her brother Donny of Marie's ordeal, "it hits it."
Especially difficult have been Michael's troubles, which Donny says are not new. "They have been an ongoing problem. Marie has been dealing with this for a very long time. Unfortunately, he got into the wrong crowd." Hatch describes Michael—one of five children Marie adopted with Blosil (she also has three biological children)—as "a very quiet kid" who played drums on his mom's Christmas concert tour last year. "When her kids are hurting," says Hatch, "there's nobody that hurts more than her."
It's not the first time her kids have made headlines: In 2006, daughters Jessica, then 21, and Rachael, then 16, posted risqué MySpace profiles that prompted a statement from Marie saying she was "saddened" by the choices her girls had made. Donny acknowledges that the pressures of living up to the squeaky-clean Osmond name can be difficult. "Yes, Marie has made mistakes [as a parent]. We all do," he says. "We were given great parents. Marie was implementing those [lessons] the best way she could."
One of nine Utah-bred Osmond siblings, Marie began performing with her brothers at age 3. She has been outspoken about the trials of her life in the spotlight. In her 2001 memoir Behind the Smile, she detailed her battle with postpartum depression following the birth of her son Matthew; she also revealed that she had been sexually abused as a child. (She did not identify her abusers but said they were not family members.)
Her love life, too, has had its share of ups and downs: divorced from first husband Stephen Craig in 1985, she married music producer Blosil, 55, the following year. The pair briefly separated in 2000 only to call it quits for good this March. "It was very difficult for Marie to come to the decision to move on," says Hatch, "because she is someone who believes in family."
It is her family, along with her strong Mormon faith, that helps Osmond through the tough times. In her unassuming home on a quiet street in Orem, Utah, "she's just a typical mom—working in the garden, baking treats for her kids and their friends," says a neighbor. "She has a big heart." During her Dancing run, the kids have largely been in Blosil's care at home in Utah while Osmond works in L.A. "She is conflicted, because she is a working mom and it's difficult to balance that," says Hatch, who also runs Marie's $100 million-plus doll line for QVC. And yet her children "are really proud of her. She's teaching them some great life skills. Yeah, life throws you some curves, but you don't lay down and die. You pick yourself up and keep going."
* Contributors:
* Monica Rizzo/L.A.,
* Cathy Free/Orem.
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Marie's Difficult Year
MARCH Marie split from husband Brian Blosil (with her in '97). Since then, "She's said there is more peace in the home," says Donny. "He is there for the kids as well."
OCTOBER Osmond—who has shed 30 lbs. during her DWTS run thanks to the show and NutriSystem—shocked audiences when she fainted on live TV. She said she was winded and recovered with a curtsy.
NOVEMBER She flew to Provo, Utah, for her father's funeral the day after appearing on Oprah to mark the family's 50 years in showbiz. Returning to the ballroom the next week, "It was our father's spirit within her," says Donny. "She did it."
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