Rosie O’Donnell Weight Loss: How ‘View’ Host Lost 53 Pounds

When Rosie O’Donnell returned to “The View” Monday, she showed off a slimmer figure. The comedian, who previously hosted the hit ABC show, announced she lost more than 50 pounds.

She once weighed 237 lbs., but estimated she lost 53 pounds after she underwent vertical gastric sleeve surgery in July 2013. She made the choice after she suffered a heart attack earlier in the year.

"I'm not used to it yet," she said about her svelte figure, according to People magazine. "I still buy the wrong-sized clothes."

"A lot of people who have never had weight issues their whole life would assume that losing weight and going from morbidly obese to being able to buy clothes off the rack would be only full of happiness and positivity, but that's not true," the co-host revealed. "It's also full of anxiety and vulnerability. I'm glad it's going at the rate it is because any faster than this would throw me into a panic."

O'Donnell continued: "There are many issues for why people gain weight. Some gain weight as a layer of protection. To keep people away from them. I never wanted someone to want to approach me in a sexual manner because of my physical body because of child abuse issues. So I think they are all interwoven and they don't exist separately so they come up, and I'm having to put out fires and talk to my therapist and get through it and find a different way to cope with my anxiety and my feelings of PTSD rather than eating over them."

The host left the show in 2007 after getting into a heated debate with co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck about the Iraq war. She explained why she chose to go back to the daytime chat fest Monday. “I got married, I had another baby, my oldest boy is in college," she said. O'Donnell also cited her heart attack and subsequent weight-loss surgery, the Guardian wrote.

O’Donnell isn’t the only one sporting a more slender figure. Whoopi Goldberg said she lost 35 pounds.

“The View” airs on ABC weekdays at 11/10c.

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