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Well, I for one am shocked—shocked!—that Star Jones Reynolds lost all that weight through gastric bypass surgery. I thought it was perfectly reasonable to expect that she’d gone from 307 pounds down to 140-something in a year or two. I’d make a joke about Pilates here, but Rosie O’Donnell already stole that one a few months ago.

She originally credited a healthy diet and lots of water for her sudden and extreme weight loss. But in the September issue of Glamour, which hits newsstands next week, Star finally confesses that surgery is the secret behind her 160-pound weight loss. Star admits, “I was scared of what people might think of me.” Well, frankly, we would have thought you had gastric bypass surgery…which is what we thought anyway. As weight loss secrets go, it may have been the worst-kept one in Hollywood .

But that was four years ago. So why does she suddenly have the urge to spill? I guess it has something to do with the facts that a) it’s been over a year since she was sort-of-fired from The View, and b) Whoopi Goldberg was just announced as a likely replacement. When Whoopi takes your job, you pretty much know that no one’s exactly crying into their pillow for you. A little emergency publicity was definitely in order.

I shouldn’t be so harsh though. Star did make one really important point—she said she was hesitant to come clean because she worried about viewers rushing out to get surgery with tragic results. Gastric bypass is no quick fix; while patients can expect to lose up to 60 percent of their excess weight, it’s a rough procedure. For starters, you need to be obese—a BMI of 40+, or a slightly lower BMI with some other weight-related complication, like diabetes. And while the risk of death is commonly cited as 1 in 200, studies have found that those figures come from the best doctors; on average, the risk is closer to 1 in 50.

Then again, patients who had the surgery had an 89 percent decrease in risk of death over the next five years. So the benefits are clear—but, as Star hinted, it’s not a risk that should be taken lightly. It’s only an option for those whose weight is putting them at an extreme health risk. Star was absolutely a valid candidate for the surgery; at only 5’5”, her BMI pre-surgery was 51. She chides herself for “not being able to get myself under control without this procedure,” but her decision to have surgery may have been a lifesaver. She just should have divulged it four years ago—back when we were actually curious.

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written by Dazzle, August 24, 2007

The point is she did it and it's her business. People should focus on running their own lives. She had her reasons for not telling the world. At first she look like hell now she is very attractive.