The Terrifying Reason Shonda Rhimes Lost…How Much Weight??

Shonda Rhimes may have built entire TV empires around survival. But off-screen, she admits she wasn’t sure she could make it another decade.

The “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal” creator recently revealed that before her dramatic weight loss, she feared she’d be “dead in 10 years” if she didn’t make a change. Now, the powerhouse producer is opening up about what finally pushed her to put herself first — and how that decision changed everything.

Rhimes spoke candidly about her experience and dramatic transformation at the “Shonda Rhimes in Conversation with Robin Roberts: Year of Yes at 92NY” Tuesday (Oct. 14), detailing how her three children played a monumental role in the decision to change her life. 

“I’d been saying, like a happy yes, to being out of shape and uncomfortable because food works guys…You can put fried chicken on your sadness, you can put cheesecake on your heartbreak,” she told Robin Roberts, per the Daily Mail. 

“I really thought like I might be dead in 10 years,” the star expressed. “That’s how bad I felt. And I couldn’t, I couldn’t put my 20-pound kid on my shoulders and run around, which I should have been able to do.”

According to Rhimes, leaning on comfort foods to combat “sadness” and “heartbreak” became a crutch she leaned on for years. The writer and producer was honest about how bad she felt at that time, and it wasn’t long before she began to struggle with health issues. 

“At a certain point I started to truly feel terrible, like having a hard time going up the stairs, getting breathless all the time,” she admitted. “I developed sleep apnea and I woke up all the time, choking in my sleep. I started to feel awful and I was like, ‘I have to do something about this.’”

Rhimes recalled the joy she felt after her staggering 117-pound weight loss, and the relief she felt when she could finally hold her children again.

‘When that moment happened, when I could do that, it was such a moment of both relief and revelation for me that it’s one of those memories I’ll take with me forever,’ she said. ‘[I felt] like, “Oh my God, I feel myself again.’”

Shonda Rhimes has long redefined what power looks like in Hollywood. As the creative force behind “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scandal,” and “How to Get Away with Murder,” she built some of TV’s most iconic shows and carved out space for complex stories centered on women and people of color. 

As we previously reported, Rhimes even needed 24-hour security to deal with toxic fandom — a testament to just how deeply her work has shaped culture.