Ahead of Rebel Wilson’s 40th birthday, the Pitch Perfect actress decided to embark on a “Year of Health” in 2020 and commit her time to living a more healthy lifestyle. In turn, Wilson lost over 60 pounds, very much meeting her health goals and turning a lot of heads regarding her epic weight transformation. As Wilson celebrates being healthier than ever, she’s also being open about the reaction she received from her team when she made the decision.
Rebel Wilson was chosen as one of the BBC 100 Women and decided to share her journey of health this past year. While talking about it, she recalled this:
I got a lot of pushback from my own team actually, here in Hollywood, when I said, ’OK, I’m going to do this year of health. I feel like I’m really gonna physically transform and change my life. And they were like, ’Why? Why would you wanna do that?’ Because I was earning millions of dollars being the funny fat girl and being that person.
Rebel Wilson’s most popular role is “Fat Amy” in the Pitch Perfect movies, where many of the jokes relate to her body type and generally make up the identity of the character. Many of her other roles have also translated well to going along with her figure. So when Wilson decided she wanted to lose weight, it’s not surprising the people close to her in the Hollywood world might not necessarily want to see her change up her persona.
But for Rebel Wilson, losing weight was not about changing her identity, as she said that she was feeling confident and happy before as well; it was about getting rid of the emotional eating behaviors she had lived with for a long time. Wilson shared that she would look at food like a tub of ice cream as a way of “numbing emotions.” Emotional eating is a common behavior used as a result of stress. The APA reported 38% of adults say they have overeaten or eaten unhealthy foods in the past month due to stress.
Rebel Wilson wanted to feel better as she entered her 40s, and her “year of health” allowed her to do so. However, as she told BBC, now there’s a lot of attention being placed on how she looks now and she’s receiving new attention after years of feeling “essentially invisible” to others due to her size.
The actress has shared multiple times since her transformation about creating a lasting change in her lifestyle, as she has implemented more regular workouts and is determined to “keep” the weight off. Rebel Wilson isn’t losing work either. She has new movies coming up in Senior Year and The Almond and the Seahorse. It’s great to see Wilson is taking control of her life on her own terms and surely inspiring others through her public journey.
