Celebrity moms blithely attributing their speedy weight loss to breastfeeding and chasing after their kids—too good to be true? Nicole Sullivan thinks so. The comedian-actress, 42, who started her career on the variety show MADtv and has a recurring role on Cougar Town as a couples therapist, says Hollywood starlets like Jessica Alba are lying when they make such claims.
"I would flip through celeb magazines…and I just couldn't get how these moms like Jessica Alba lost so much weight so quickly—and yet I couldn't," the actress tells Us Weekly in an exclusive interview at "The Real Women of Jenny Craig" event in NYC on Jan. 23. "They all lie and say, 'Oh, I lost the weight running after the kids or breastfeeding.' It's not true!"
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"I felt broken. I felt like an outsider in my own community," she continues of her postpartum experience after giving birth to her son, Dashel, now 5. "There just are not a lot of overweight people in Hollywood. I felt like the jerk who couldn't figure it out."
The actress finally figured it out, she claims, when she signed on with Jenny Craig as its brand ambassador. "I had tried every other diet in the world and decided to give Jenny Craig a try. The first week, I lost five pounds and then lost an average of two pounds a week for 16 weeks. I lost 35 pounds total. It changed my life."
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Sullivan has since given birth to another son, Beckett, now 3. "When I look back to when I had my first son, I was unhappy. I couldn't understand why the weight wasn't just falling off. I wish I could have that time back. With my second son, I enjoyed the whole process of him being an infant more because I wasn't mad at myself. When you are mad at yourself, you are mad at everybody. That's the problem…. I may not look like [Alba], but at least I can keep up with other actresses now. I feel really good about myself."
