From birth, it seemed as though Raven Symone was meant to be a star. She made her debut on The Cosby Show at age 3 and Symone says execs and advisers have been telling her to lose weight “ever since I was very young.” Still, through thick or thin, Symone-whose success exploded playing a curvy teen diva on the hit Disney Channel series That’s So Raven! – has never been ashamed of her body.
“I could look in the mirror and see me at 200 lbs. or 135 lbs. and I’m still the same person,” says the 5’3″ star, now 25. But in 2007 she decided to take a hiatus from Hollywood and focus on her health. Now, she says, “it’s great to put on clothes and not wear a girdle. And my thighs look supergood!” Adds her longtime nutritionist Philip Goglia: “Raven is lean, fit and happy.”
Before, Symone was just frustrated. While she was working 15-hour days on the set of Raven!, “I was addicted to that Thanksgiving feeling of cleaning your plate.”
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But once Raven! ended after four seasons, Symone put her career on hold to recapture the life she missed out on as a kid. “I was stressed out. Normal 15-year-olds had to worry about prom. I grew up worried about memorizing my lines so my show wouldn’t get canceled.” During her downtime, she learned how to cook (“I make really good brussels sprouts!”) and finally started taking Goglia’s advice and eating six small meals a day. Now when she indulges in the occasional fast-food meal, “I order a veggie burger and throw away half a carton of French fries when I get it.”
Symone also admitted that the amount of attention and praise that her new slender figure attracts is quite humorous.
“I find it funny that people now come up to me and say, ‘Wow, you are absolutely gorgeous. I’m like, ‘I was beautiful before I lost weight. Egotistically speaking, I thought I was amazing.’”
When talk show host Wendy Williams asked Symone for her figure-slimming secret, the former That’s So Raven star replied “less stress.”
“I stopped stressing. You have to realize at 15, there was a whole entire show I had on my shoulders. It was a very big cast and crew and if you’re sick for a day, people lose money and that’s a problem,” she said at the time. “[It wasn’t] just over eating because I’ve actually been eating the same. I keep a little bit more smaller portions because I learned that your body has to get rid of that stress some way. Some people break-out, some people lose their hair, some lose weight, some people gain weight, my body just reacted a certain kind of way.”
But through it all, she shares one statement that will stay with her for life: “Whether or not I’m this size, I always preached, ‘Be comfortable with yourself,’ and I will preach that forever.”
