Adele Lost 100 Pounds And It's NOT Because She Went to the Gym!

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Did you see the Adele-Oprah interview? Even if you haven’t, it’s almost impossible to miss the hundreds of articles that have been posted and video clips popping up everywhere online.

While the fitness industry capitalizes on “Adele goes to the gym and loses 100 pounds,” I noticed something different in her comments about her body.

Her reason for going to the gym in the first place had nothing to do with weight-loss or body image. She seems perfectly comfortable with her body regardless of her size. 

She started going to the gym to manage the crippling anxiety she had as she went through her divorce.

Why this is important: Adele looked at going to the gym as a reward. It was the one task in her day that kept her grounded when things were spiraling out of control. The “I’m working out at this time with my trainer” appointment gave her structure at a time when her world seemed to be collapsing. 

The physical activity helped her body process and remove stress hormones leaving her feeling peaceful, quiet and grateful, even if only temporarily.

When we see the gym as a place to torture our bodies into submission, it’s tough to make time to go. So we constantly “run out of time” at the end of the day.

When we see exercise only as a means to an end, we want the quickest route to the finish line regardless of what the consequences are. This often leads to over-training, pushing through pain and creating injuries that set us back weeks or take us out of exercising all together.

Seeing the gym as a place we “get to go” instead of a place we “have to go;” exercising because we “get to” instead of “have to,” is crucial to making movement a daily habit.

Unfortunately, the headlines read, “Adele goes to the gym and loses 100 pounds,” instead of focusing on Adele’s acceptance of herself and her body…regardless of size.

In her own words, "I'm either too big, I'm either too small, I'm either hot, or I'm either not . . . It's not my job to validate how people feel about their bodies . . . I'm tryna sort me own life out." She stays focused on the care part of exercising, mentioning that she’s not concerned at all about future weight fluctuations as long as she stays strong.

THIS is how you build a body that you love!

When you let go of trying to fulfill someone else’s idea of what you should look like, you do what works best for your body. You stop fighting yourself.

Here’s the thing.

Our beliefs dictate our behavior.

If I believe I should be a smaller size and I see that process as a time of deprivation, struggle and misery, I won’t take the steps I need to for change to happen. Who wants to be deprived, struggling and miserable? No sane person. Not me and not you.

If I believe that I deserve to be healthy, that I can find a way to manage my stress and I CAN be my strongest, healthiest, best self, everything else falls into place and self-care is no longer deprivation, struggle or misery. All of the things that have been so hard to do suddenly make sense and aren’t hard to do.

Is it all rainbows and roses from here? Spoiler alert: No.

You still have to do the work.

Keeping those deeply held, self-sabotaging thoughts at bay isn’t a one-and-done event. It requires conscious decision-making.

Adele’s body reflected how she felt about herself and her life. She was unhappy with both. Once she admitted it, said it out loud to her friends and confronted it, her life changed dramatically. That kind of bravery and resilience make her a bad-ass. And it makes her real.

This is why women stay trapped in unhealthy and unhappy bodies.

Adele believed she must stay with her husband at any cost because of her childhood trauma of her dad leaving when she was 2 years old. She was willing to pay the price for that for a long time. Until she wasn’t.

What about you?

What price are you paying to support your beliefs?

If you believe that losing weight will break up your marriage, you won’t lose the weight.

If you believe that you’ll lose friends if you lose weight, you won’t lose the weight.

If you believe that you’re a 40-year-old chubby mom who only lives for her kids, you won’t lose the weight.

Our bodies reflect our beliefs. Changing our bodies means changing our beliefs. Which could mean changing our lives.

It’s terrifying.

It’s something we don’t admit.

Instead we struggle. We fail. We continue to pay the high cost of supporting false beliefs.

How did Adele find the strength to upend her entire life?

You’ll have to watch the interview to find out more.

Here’s my guess though. She didn’t do it alone.

She had a team of friends (the women who heard her initial confession of unhappiness)

She had a personal trainer to help her with the fitness side of things (dinking around at the gym wouldn’t have helped her with her anxiety and would likely have increased her feelings of powerlessness, but that’s another story for another blog).

And it sounds like her now ex-husband was on her team as well.

This is what can happen when we’re honest with ourselves. This is brutal honesty.

This is the place where we face the truth, ugly as it may be, and we become who we are meant to be.

We can hide from it for years, even decades. 

Until we can’t.

Facing our truth and identifying our underlying false beliefs is self-love incarnate. 

This is self-care at its highest good.

Does this mean you have to get divorced to master your health? Maybe, maybe not. The divorce isn’t the point.

Facing the truth and destroying underlying false beliefs is the point.

Once we do this, there’s no telling what can happen.

What are you hiding from? What price are you paying to maintain false beliefs?

It wasn’t the gym that got Adele to drop 100 pounds.

It was the truth.

Adele seems to be mostly on the other side of the breakup and her career is soaring. She is happy and she’s continuing to grow. So can you.

About the Author
Ginny Grabowski, MS, has been helping women get off the weight-loss roller coaster, feel confident and sexy, transforming minds and bodies since 2003.

She works with women in The Women’s Wellness Academy, an online community where she coaches women to master the 3Fs (Food, Fitness, Feelings) to live their healthiest life. Her “Break-the-Cycle” program helps women uncover and transform the deep, underlying beliefs that keep them stuck in unhappy, unhealthy bodies.

You can find out more at https://www.thewomenswellnessacademy.com/