Shonda Rhimes Thought She 'Might Be Dead in 10 Years' Before Weight Loss Journey

Yesterday, the Shondaland founder opened up about her fears of mortality and the ways her children inspired a health improvement.

At the In Conversation with Robin Roberts: Year of Yes at 92NY event, as detailed by People, the writer and producer recounted how her inability to be physically active with her daughters made her feel "bad."   

Roberts remembered one of Rhimes' stories after her fitness journey, "when your daughter, you put her on your shoulders and you were able to run around with her and up the steps and there's a time that you couldn't do that," he said. "And how you literally cried after."

“I did. I really thought like I might be dead in 10 years,” Rhimes explained. “Like that's how bad I felt. I couldn't put my 20 pound kid on my shoulders and run around, which I should have been able to do.”

Rhimes recalled the "relief" and "revelation" found in these memories and her happiness at being able to enjoy time with her children. "That moment, her joy and I sort of having done it, [felt] like, 'Oh my God, I feel [like] myself again,'" she said.

Before her health transformation, the Bridgerton executive producer confessed that her mantra was "my body is just a container for my brain," and that she spent years relying on sweets to cope with her "sadness," per The Daily Mail's coverage.

"Food works, guys," she joked with the audience. "You can put fried chicken on your sadness, you can put cheesecake on your heartbreak."

But she recalls that something shifted. "At a certain point I started to truly feel terrible" she admitted. "I developed sleep apnea and woke up all the time, choking in my sleep. Like I started to feel awful and I was like 'I have to do something about this.'"

And even though Rhimes now worries about her health much more, she is not one to restrict a variety of foods. 

“I'm not one of those people who's like, 'I now only eat salads,'" she said. "It's just about using it in the right ways." 

For Rhimes, weight loss was mainly for her daughters and being present and healthy in their lives.

“I kind of wanted to be around for them, to be healthy,” she told Ellen DeGeneres in 2015. “I’m super feminist, and I’m like, ‘Everybody should be whatever shape they want to be, how dare anybody tell anybody anything!’ – and then I thought, ‘I’m going to fall over, cause I don’t feel good.’ So it was really about that.”