Gabourey Sidibe Opens up About Weight Loss Surgery and Major Body Transformation

(Photo: Twitter / @UsWeekly)After undergoing weight loss surgery last year, Empire star Gabourey [...]

By Torie Jochims

gaboureysidibe
(Photo: Twitter / @UsWeekly)

After undergoing weight loss surgery last year, Empire star Gabourey Sidibe is opening up for the first time about the decision as well as her struggles with anxiety, depression and bulimia.

Sidibe dives deep into these issues and the weight loss decision in her memoir, This Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare, according to PEOPLE.

"I just didn't want to worry," Sidibe, 33, said of her decision to get laproscopic bariatric surgery after she and her older brother Ahmed, 34, were diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. "I truly didn't want to worry about all the effects that go along with diabetes. I genuinely [would] worry all the time about losing my toes."

Sidibe admits that she struggled for over a decade to lose weight before finally making the choice to secretly undergo the surgery in 2016.

MORE: Gabourey Sidibe Has Completely Transformed With This Huge Weight Loss

"My surgeon said they'd cut my stomach in half. This would limit my hunger and capacity to eat. My brain chemistry would change and I'd want to eat healthier. I'll take it! My lifelong relationship with food had to change," she writes in her wise, witty and unapologetic memoir, out in May.

"The surgery wasn't the easy way out," she says. "I wasn't cheating by getting it done. I wouldn't have been able to lose as much as I've lost without it."

Despite the massive physical transformation Sidibe has undergone since the surgery, the star insists "beauty" was not the motivator behind the choice.

"It has taken me years to realize that what I was born with is all beautiful," she writes in her book. "I did not get this surgery to be beautiful. I did it so I can walk around comfortably in heels. I want to do a cartwheel. I want not to be in pain every time I walk up a flight of stairs."

Sidibe says she was initially apprehensive about losing weight because she was worried she wouldn't feel as beautiful in a "new body," noting that her beauty "has never come from a mirror."

"There's nothing ugly about me. Anyone trying to convince me that I am — and it's usually me — is wasting her time," she says. "I was in a war with my body for a long time. If I'd started treating it better sooner, I wouldn't have spent so many years hating myself. But I love my body now."

All we can say is, dang, girl! We are loving your attitude toward the whole thing. What a strong woman.

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