The Real Reason Rebel Wilson Is Losing Weight

Many celebrities feel pressure to conform to expectations about their bodies, and others have stopped trying to lose weight to fit in. While Rebel Wilson has revealed that she's lost weight recently, it turns out that this change wasn't motivated by a desire to accommodate problematic demands to be skinnier but was instead prompted by another reason.

"Okay so for me 2020 is going to be called 'The Year of Health,'" Wilson captioned photos of herself that she shared with her social media followers via Instagram on January 2. In the pictures, the star can not only be seen on a beautiful beach with waves rolling in under her feet, but she also appears to be much slimmer than she has been in the past. And while skinnier doesn't necessarily mean healthier, Wilson's weight loss happens to be one of the outcomes of the healthier choices she's making.

Wilson shared snippets of her journey via her post: "I put on the athleisure and went out for a walk, deliberately hydrating on the couch right now, and trying to avoid the sugar and junk food which is going to be hard after the holidays I've just had but I'm going to do it!" She encouraged her fans to join in her efforts to adopt a healthier lifestyle by asking, "Who's with me in making some positive changes this year?" And when she says positive changes, she doesn't just mean cutting out sweet snacks. She's adopted a hardcore approach to a healthy lifestyle.

For Rebel Wilson, the positive changes that she's aiming for in 2020 include spending time with "renowned" personal trainer Jono Castano, according to Extra. The fitness buff took to Instagram on January 17, 2020 to praise his dedicated client, posting a picture with Wilson and writing: "Friday vibes but @rebelwilson has been putting in the yards 7 days a week! Proud of you gurl."

Castano also included a short video of Wilson showing off her hard work in the gym with a pair of hefty ropes. "Nice, Reb," you can hear the trainer say. The Pitch Perfect star also seems impressed with herself when she's done, coming at the camera with her arms spread wide and an enthusiastic expression on her face.

This is impressive for sure, but putting in hardcore workouts with a personal trainer isn't the only way Wilson claims to have lost weight. She's also crediting an uncomfortable situation that she endured while filming Cats.

Rebel Wilson may be spending plenty of time in the gym to focus on a healthier lifestyle, but the actress also claims to have lost some weight due to the heated conditions she faced on the set of Cats. And by heated, we're not referring to arguments among cast members. Wilson, who plays a frisky feline named Jennyanydots, revealed that the temperature on the movie set was literally super-hot, so she lost some weight just by sweating.

"One, because there's a lot of physicality," Wilson told Entertainment Tonight in December 2019. "...but also, they heated up the set very high, to almost 100 Fahrenheit, so that we could never cool down. These people are like, the best dancers in the whole world, so they can't cool their muscles down or they could get an injury and they'd be out of the film ... So they'd heat up the set like a sauna so we would never cool down, but made it pretty uncomfortable."

As Wilson told Extra, "Someone like me, I sweat a lot anyway. I lost eight pounds shooting my number [for Cats], just from sweat." That's certainly quite a change from someone who used to be known as "Fat Amy" on the set of other famous films...

Many fans first fell in love with Rebel Wilson during her performance as "Fat Amy" in the Pitch Perfect franchise. As the name implies, Wilson's character in the films was a larger girl. According to The Telegraph, "rumour has it that she was contractually forbidden from losing weight while a sequel was in the offing." 

Wilson revealed that she first realized that her weight could influence her success while working alongside someone who was larger than her. "I was like: 'Oh. That girl's getting a lot of laughs, a lot easier than me. What is it?' Because I don't think there's much difference in talent," she recalled. "And I remember distinctly thinking: 'I think it's because she's fatter.' And then, I don't know if it was mega-conscious, but I thought: 'How can I get more laughs? Maybe if I was a bit fatter ...' And then suddenly I was fatter, and doing comedy."

"I saw my size as being an advantage," Wilson added, "whereas so many women see it as a disadvantage." While the extra weight may have helped Wilson in the past, she's apparently decided that it's not what she wants to focus on these days. Instead, her priority is her health — being bigger or smaller isn't the end goal this time around.