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Season 6 of The Real premiered on Monday, and aside from learning everything we wanted to know (and maybe didn’t need to know) about Jeannie Mai and rapper Jeezy’s romance, we also got to learn about the lengths co-host Adrienne Houghton has gone to be healthier. The results were obvious, because the 35-year-old stepped back on stage looking quite lean. She told the ladies and the audience that she stuck to the vegan diet she picked up in the spring and feels fantastic.
“I know I said last season that I went vegan, I stuck with it all summer. Staying with a plant-based diet, it has made a world of a difference,” she said. “A lot of you guys know I suffer from Hashimoto’s, which is an autoimmune disease, so it has been really helpful for that. I just feel great and I’m happy to be back.”
The star has taken fans into her effort to adopt a vegan diet since February, when she showed off her refrigerator, stocked with healthy eats like celery juice, almond milk, rose water, Ezekiel bread, arugula salad, vegan ice cream and more.
As she noted, this change in her eating habits subsequently followed her revealing her struggle with Hashimoto’s, which would cause weight fluctuations and left The Real watchers asking if she was pregnant.
“This is not a baby, this is sweet potato pie. We have a health condition!” the 35-year-old said during Season 5 while squashing rumors with co-host Tamera Mowry-Housley. “I’m not pregnant! I have Hashimoto’s! It’s hypothyroidism. Yes, I have a fat neck! There is a reason!”
Prior to going public with the diagnosis, Adrienne talked about the struggle of putting on weight in the public eye.
“If I’m honest, my weight gain in the last few years has been like a struggle for me where I’m like, I never looked at myself as being overweight. And it was weird to hear so many comments at one point that I was fat, and ‘Oh my God, she let herself go!’ I was like, ‘Whoa.’ So that was a little bit weird,” she said.
“I just did what I had to do to be comfortable in my own skin. And I think that’s the most important thing. It wasn’t necessarily to please other people. I actually, genuinely, didn’t like the way I looked. And every day it’s a work in progress. You know, girl get up and do some cardio. More than looking good, it’s actually healthy for you to eat healthy and actually get a little workout in. So as I get older, I get that it’s going to be harder and harder, but I’m up for the challenge.”
