Rosie O’Donnell Explains Dramatic Weight Loss

Rosie O’Donnell is looking good and feeling better than ever.

In a new interview with Access Hollywood, the 52-year-old opened up about her health and the procedure that has helped her drop nearly 50 pounds.

“I had a thing called the vertical gastric sleeve. It’s very different than when you think of bypass surgery. It’s newer,” Rosie told Access. “They remove two-thirds of your stomach but everything else stays intact, and as a result of that you can’t hold as much food. But the very interesting part is that in that other two-thirds are where all the hunger hormones live. There’s a technical name. It starts with a g, it sounds like gremlins… that’s the biggest surprise, is that you’re not hungry, right?”

The surgery isn’t the complete solution to weight loss – it must be used in conjunction with smart eating habits and exercise.

“Now it’s a tool, it’s not an answer. You can’t just get surgery and go ‘I’m done’ and keep eating the way you did,” she said. “You have to change the way you eat, you have to exercise.”

Since the surgery, she’s lost a significant amount of weight.

“[I’ve lost] 44 pounds. Almost 50 pounds. Some days it’s 46,” she said. “It’s a lot slower than it was at the beginning.”

As for whether her newly-slim figure has led the comedian to feel “sexy,” Rosie said she’s not quite there yet.

“Sexy? No,” she laughed. “No, I feel better that like my tummy’s not in the way, you know, when everybody’s naked. But no. I feel maybe less shame a little bit.”

— Erin O’Sullivan