Kim Kardashian claims losing weight to fit into Marilyn Monroe’s dress for Met Gala taught her about ‘health’

Kim Kardashian has claimed that losing 16 pounds to fit into Marilyn Monroe’s dress for the Met Gala “taught [her] a lot about [her] lifestyle and [her] health,” while admitting that she’s since lost 21 pounds total.

The Kardashians star, 41, reflected on her controversial weight loss during an appearance on the Today show on Tuesday, where she revealed that she’d lost the weight in the three weeks before the 2022 Met Gala because she’d “really wanted” to wear Monroe’s iconic “Happy Birthday” gown.

“I looked at it like a role and I really wanted to wear this dress,” Kardashian admitted. “It was really important to me.”

Kardashian then told Today hosts Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb that her pre-gala weight loss taught her a lot about her health, as she claimed that it encouraged her to change her “lifestyle”.

“It actually taught me a lot about my lifestyle and my health and since then, afterwards, I continued to eat really healthy. I’m down 21 pounds now. I’m not trying to lose any more weight, but I have more energy than ever,” Kardashian said. “I cut out so much sugar - a lot of junk food I was eating, I didn’t realise, like a lot of fried foods. And I just completely changed my lifestyle.”

Kardashian’s comments come after she faced criticism from fans following the Met Gala, where she revealed while wearing Monroe’s iconic dress that she undertook the extensive weight loss goal to fit into the gown.

In an accompanying interview with Vogue, Kardashian said at the time that “it was this or nothing,” and that to accomplish her goal she would “wear a sauna suit twice a day” and “completely cut out all sugar and all carbs,” while eating just the “cleanest veggies and protein”.

The “damaging” comments also sparked backlash from a number of Kardashian’s peers, including Jameela Jamil and Lili Reinhart.

However, Kardashian recently defended the lengths she took to fit into the dress Monroe wore in 1962 to serenade President John F Kennedy on his 45th birthday in an interview with The New York Times, where she compared her methods to those used by actors for a role.

“To me it was like: ‘OK, Christian Bale can do it for a movie role and that is acceptable.’ Even Renée Zellweger gained weight for a role,” she told the outlet. “It’s all the same to me. I wasn’t saying: ‘Hey everyone, why don’t you go lose this weight in a short period of time?’”

She also maintained that she lost the weight in a healthy way, telling The Times: “I didn’t do anything unhealthy.”

During her appearance on the Today show, Kardashian also addressed accusations that she damaged the infamous dress during the short period of time she was wearing it on the red carpet steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with the reality star claiming that the rumours are false.