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Celebrity Weight Loss

Jason Alexander wants to drop 30 pounds using Jenny Craig. From Kirstie Alley to Fergie, VIEW OUR GALLERY of stars who took it all off in public—and some who gained it back.

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Even though she gained 40 pounds while pregnant with son Liam in 2007, Spelling wasn’t worried about losing the baby weight, until it was time to film her reality show Inn Love. “I had a friend who did NutriSystem. I thought, ‘Let me try it,’” said Spelling, who lost the weight and eventually became a spokeswoman for the meal-delivery plan. When she gave birth to daughter Stella in 2008, Spelling once again found herself with 40 pounds to lose, and the weight loss may have gone a little too well—photographs of the actress looking rail-thin sparked rumors of a possible eating disorder, which Spelling vehemently denies. “I think, ‘Yeah, I could stand to gain a few pounds [in the photos],’ but I am healthy. I’m just crazy busy and being a mom,” she said.

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There are drawbacks to logging endless hours in a diner, even if it’s just for TV. Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander is the latest celebrity to endorse a diet program, signing on alongside Valerie Bertinelli at Jenny Craig in a bid to lose the 30 to 40 pounds he put on since the early days of the sitcom. Alexander blamed the extra pounds on sympathy weight from his wife’s pregnancies, and after a recent Seinfeld reunion on Curb Your Enthusiasm said, “I looked at myself playing a character I started playing 20 years ago and yes, he had aged—but what was disturbing is that he was no longer in a body I cared to recognize.” It remains to be seen how much Alexander will lose and whether he keeps it off, but he wants to inspire fellow dieters with the idea, “If George can do it, I can do it!”

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Former Playboy model Jenny McCarthy is as candid about her weight loss as she is about the rest of her life, admitting that after giving birth to her son Evan in 2002 she weighed over 200 pounds. After following her mother’s advice and turning to Weight Watchers, McCarthy whittled herself back down to 125 pounds and has managed to stay there. McCarthy often discusses her successful weight-loss tactics and became an official spokesperson for the program in 2006.

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Jenny Craig attracted yet another famous devotee in 2008, when Queen Latifah signed on in hopes of losing 20 pounds for health reasons. At the time, the curvaceous Oscar nominee specified that her decision was not “about being skinny,” and after meeting her goal, Latifah has no plans to lose more. In 2009, she transitioned to Jenny Craig’s “maintenance plan” and continues to work out (accompanied by bodyguards) five to seven days a week.

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Nothing’s a better motivator to lose weight than a nickname like “The Duchess of Pork.” The British tabloids often attacked Duchess of York Sarah “Fergie” Ferguson during her days as a royal yo-yo dieter, when she sometimes weighed as much as 220 pounds. In 1997, a year after her divorce from Prince Andrew, Fergie became a Weight Watchers spokeswoman and eventually lost over 50 pounds, which she has kept off ever since. Fergie has talked at length about her struggles with food, saying that she felt “out of control” prior to joining the program. “I’ve been an emotional eater since I was a teenager,” she said.

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Jared Fogle became known as “The Subway Guy” after appearing in ads for the chain in 2000 touting his self-created sandwich diet. By walking more and consuming a diet consisting mainly of Subway sandwiches, Fogle managed to lose 245 pounds (he started at 425), and was featured in a story in his local paper. Executives for the chain caught wind of the story, and he’s been the company’s spokesperson ever since. But even professional dieters have trouble battling their weight, and Fogle admitted to gaining back more than 40 pounds last year. One person who doesn’t mind: his new fiancé, whom he called “the most supportive woman.”

Matt Sayles / AP Photo
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Valerie Bertinelli took her weight-loss goals one day at a time after signing on to represent Jenny Craig in 2007. At 47, the everyday mom joined fellow former sitcom star Kirstie Alley on a quest to regain control of her weight and after only four months, she lost 30 pounds. “I take this job incredibly seriously,” Bertinelli told People about representing Jenny Craig. She’s since lost nearly 50 pounds and has continued to work to maintain her newly svelte body. “This is the longest I've ever kept weight off before,” Bertinelli told Oprah Winfrey.

“I’m still thinking: ‘Wow, is this really happening? Am I going to be able to do this?’” Apparently so—she graced the cover of People wearing a bikini just before her 49th birthday.

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Over the past decade, Whoopi has made the rounds as a celebrity dieter, hopping around to several different programs as she lost and regained weight. The View co-host spent time as a spokeswoman for Slim-Fast, but was dropped in 2004 after making controversial and explicit jokes about President Bush, and then gained back the weight she’d lost on the program. To prepare for joining The View in 2007, Goldberg reportedly lost 43 pounds in 23 weeks courtesy of LA Weight Loss and even filmed an ad campaign for the program. She has also chronicled her attempts at weight loss on the show (including her bizarre refusal to eat vegetables) and most recently sang the praises of PhysioCleanse, saying she lost nine pounds in 28 days while on the detoxification program.

Roger Wong / INF Photo; Jason Kempin / Getty Images
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Ever the publicity magnets, Kim and Khloe Kardashian have used their self-created fame to promote the cleansing diet program Quick Trim. As part of their spokesperson duties, the sisters often post bikini shots of themselves on Twitter to endorse the series of cleanses that supposedly speed up metabolism. Rumor has it that Quick Trim pays the Kardashians per tweet in addition to them shooting slightly racy ads for the product. Khloe, who often discussed her weight struggles on Keeping Up With the Kardashians, now says “I love prancing around in a bikini!” Meanwhile, Kim already made the cover of OK! this year for her 15-pound weight loss.

Rick Rycroft / AP Photo; Brian Zak / AP Photo
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Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky made the most of her notoriety when she signed a $1 million endorsement deal with Jenny Craig at the start of 2000, and committed to losing at least 40 pounds in six months. Though Lewinsky initially said she believed in the product, she later admitted to needing the money for legal fees. A spokesperson for Jenny Craig told The New York Times, Lewinsky “represents a busy active woman of today with a hectic lifestyle. And she has had weight issues and weight struggles for a long time.” But after only losing 31 pounds by April, the company stopped running her ads and reportedly gave her only $300,000 for being the face of the campaign. It’s hard to say whether Lewinsky has kept the weight off, although since she was last in the spotlight in 2006, she didn’t appear to be back to her heaviest weight.

Reuters; Jennifer Graylock / AP Photo
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In 2007, Marie Osmond reached 165 pounds, prompting the mother of eight to make a change in her diet and in her life. After signing on to participate in Dancing With the Stars, Osmond joined with NutriSystem, a private weight-loss program that sends participants their meals. “It was smart, and it made sense for me,” the former child star told Oprah. “It was also easy for me—no stress, no weighing things, no measuring things. I could just grab it off the shelf and go.” Osmond dropped a whopping 45 pounds in four months, a weight loss she’s since maintained. But Osmond isn’t all about size: “We can lose weight for many reasons—we can do it to look good or to get in those tiny little jeans. But I’m telling you, health is the only way.”

Ethan Miller / Getty Images; Isaac Brekken / AP Photo
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In 2005, former Cheers star Kirstie Alley tipped the scale at over 200 pounds on her comedy series, Fat Actress. After mocking her struggles to succeed in Hollywood at her size, Alley made a change and became a spokesperson for Jenny Craig. “I want to get really skinny,” she told People at the start of her new gig. She dropped 75 pounds and earned enough confidence to showcase her new body in a bikini on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2006. But when her contract ended in 2007, so did her weight-loss success. As Alley prepares for her latest venture, a reality show on A&E documenting her weight struggles, she told her loyal Twitter followers she plans to lose 75 to 90 pounds. Things aren’t looking good for the star, who recently tweeted, “I CONFESS, I SHOULD BE WORKING, but I’m too damn lazy today... so I will go take a nap and then eat a bowl of orzo with butter on it.”

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Fans may have not picked up the phone for Kimberley Locke during the second season of American Idol, but the third-place finisher dialed Jenny Craig in 2006 after using the famous plan while appearing on VH1’s Celebrity Fit Club. The plus-size model and singer met her weight loss goal of 40 pounds by the following October, thanks to the program’s portion-control methods. Though Locke proclaimed she’s “still a big girl at heart” on MySpace, she has managed to keep off the weight, recently telling Ellen DeGeneres she was always sexy, beautiful, and confident, but “I’m just better now.”

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After the birth of her son Cody in 1990, Kathie Lee Gifford needed to drop some extra baby weight. Though Slim-Fast’s shakes have since been recalled, they seemed to work for Regis’ then-right-hand woman, who went on to become the company’s spokesperson. In a commercial for the Ultra Slim-Fast shake, Gifford admitted, “The extra weight I gained made me feel a lot less than beautiful,” adding “I lost those last 10 hard-to-lose pounds in only a month.” Gifford still looks svelte on her latest hosting duties on the Today show, but that magic number haunted her before going back to her morning routine. “I had to lose a little weight before I started this show,” Gifford told MediaBistro in 2008. “I had put on 10 pounds since the last time I'd been on camera, so I had to get rid of it.”

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