‘Dancing With the Stars’: Sean Spicer Reveals 17-Pound Weight Loss

Many celebrities who have competed on Dancing With the Stars over the years have noticed their waistlines shrinking in addition to their dance skills improving during their time on the show, and Sean Spicer is the latest star to lose more than a few pounds while working on his routines.

“I’m down 17 pounds from the show’s start,” he told USA Today. “I’m seeing it on the scale. Every week, they’re taking in my outfits, especially the pants. I can see it in my face. It’s not just a show, it’s a weight-loss program. I’d love to go down another 10 or 15 pounds. If I get to the full goal, maybe we’ll talk. But this is the lowest I have weighed since I got off active (Navy Reserves) duty in 2011.”

The former White House press secretary is partnered with Lindsay Arnold and the two have remained in the competition despite low scores thanks to fan voting. On Monday, Donald Trump urged viewers to vote for his former employee, tweeting, “Vote for good guy @seanspicer tonight on Dancing With The Stars. He has always been there for us!”

“There’s no question that’s a huge part of it, people on the political side,” Spicer mused when asked about whether the vast majority of his votes are coming from Trump supporters. “But there’s a good chunk of people who enjoy my approach. The other night we were out, and I had people coming up to me saying, ‘I’ve loved watching you, you look like you’re having a great time.’ Hopefully, they’ll watch me progress. There’s a lot of people who sit at the bar and watch everyone else on the dance floor. That’s who I have been. I’m never going to be the natural. But people watching know I am working as hard as I can, and going to have a blast doing it.”

Spicer’s casting on the show was initially met with criticism from fans as well as DWTS‘ host, Tom Bergeron.

“A few months ago, during a lunch with DWTS‘ new executive producer, I offered suggestions for season 28. Chief among them was my hope that DWTS, in its return from an unprecedented year-long hiatus, would be a joyful respite from our exhausting political climate and free of inevitably divisive bookings from any party affiliation,” Bergeron tweeted on Aug. 21. “I left that lunch convinced we were in agreement.”

“Subsequently (and rather obviously), a decision was made to, as we often say in Hollywood, ‘go a different direction,’” he continued, adding that it is the “prerogative” of the producers to cast whoever they choose. “We can all agree to disagree. As we do now, but ultimately it’s their call. I’ll leave it to them to answer any further questions about those decisions.”

Photo Credit: Getty / Allen Berezovsky