Every few years the internet decides Kim Kardashian has “transformed” again, and every few years the explanation offered is a pill, a surgeon or a secret. The less exciting truth is that she tends to tell you herself, usually on morning television, with numbers. Her most famous weight loss happened in the spring of 2022, for a single dress she wore for a few minutes, and she has spent the years since explaining it.
This site first ran this story in December 2022 with talk of diet pills from “insider sources” and remarks about her thighs. I have removed both. What follows is what Kim has actually said, where she said it, and what I make of it now that she is about to turn 46.
The Marilyn dress: 16 pounds in three weeks
At the Met Gala on May 2, 2022, Kim wore the Jean Louis gown Marilyn Monroe wore to sing “Happy Birthday” to President Kennedy in 1962, on loan from Ripley’s Believe It or Not! On the red carpet she said the dress had not fit when she first tried it on. “I had to lose 16 pounds down today to be able to fit this,” she told Vogue’s livestream. Her method, in her own words: “I would wear a sauna suit twice a day, run on the treadmill, completely cut out all sugar and all carbs.” And: “I didn’t starve myself, but I was so strict.”
Here is my read: the honesty was the most useful part. A lot of red carpets are prepared exactly like this and described as “drinking water and getting sleep.” She named the sauna suit. That does not make three weeks of it a plan anyone should copy, and she did not claim it was.
“I looked at it like a role”
The backlash arrived quickly: dietitians and fans said a celebrity crash diet for a dress sent the wrong message. Kim answered on TODAY in June 2022. “I looked at it like a role, and I really wanted to wear this dress,” she told Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb. She said she was now “down 21 pounds” and added: “I’m not trying to lose any more weight, but I have more energy than ever.” Asked whether she had damaged the gown, she said no, and that “there was handlers in gloves that put it on me.”
The actor comparison is fair as far as it goes (Hollywood has rewarded people for changing their bodies for a part for decades). The difference is that a film role ends with credits. A Met Gala look ends with hundreds of millions of followers taking notes. I think she understood that by June, which is why the “not trying to lose any more” line was in the answer at all.
Before the dress: Atkins after Saint
The original version of this article put the Atkins diet at the center of the story, and it did belong in it, just not in 2022. After her son Saint was born in December 2015, Kim followed the Atkins plan and documented it publicly. In May 2016 she posted her scale reading, 135.8 pounds, with the caption “Yaaaassssss!!!! #Atkins.” The diet’s basic rule, low carbohydrates with protein and fat at every meal, is the same logic she described again before the Met Gala, minus the sauna suit.
What strikes me, looking at both episodes side by side, is how little mystery there is. The old 2022 version of this post listed grocery items and a five-step plan “according to the method of nutritionist Kim Kardashian.” I have dropped that. She is not a nutritionist, and she never offered one.
What about Ozempic and diet pills?
Both rumors have followed her since 2022, and neither has a primary source behind it. She has not said she used either; her own account of the Met Gala weight credits diet and training. Anonymous “insiders” describing pills from “tropical plants” are not a source, which is why that line is gone from this page. If she ever says otherwise, on camera or on Instagram, we will update.
Kim Kardashian in 2026
The body talk has quieted, mostly because she has given people other things to discuss. She has kept the Met Gala as her annual art project: on May 4, 2026, her 13th Met, she wore a sculpted Allen Jones and Whitaker Malem breastplate built from his 1960s body plates for the “Costume Art” theme. She is still running Skims. In November 2025 she announced she had not passed the California bar exam, with a line I would frame for any law school: “Falling short isn’t failure – it’s fuel.” And in April 2026 Lewis Hamilton posted a clip of her in the passenger seat of his Ferrari in Tokyo, the closest thing to a public confirmation either of them has offered.
My take
The “shocking before and after” headline this page once carried promised a secret. There was never one: a deadline, a dress, a sauna suit and a woman who told TODAY she had more energy than ever and no plans to lose more. Four years on, the dress is back at Ripley’s and she has moved on to breastplates and bar exams. I would suggest the rest of us move on with her.
Sources
- Kim Kardashian on Instagram, September 2026
- Kim Kardashian on Instagram (@kimkardashian)
- Instagram post by @kimkardashian
- TODAY on YouTube: Kim Kardashian Talks Pete Davidson, Marilyn Dress, Weight Loss
- Vogue on YouTube: Kim Kardashian on wearing Marilyn Monroe’s dress, Met Gala 2022
- TODAY, May 3, 2022: Kim Kardashian says she lost 16 pounds to fit into Marilyn Monroe’s dress
- TODAY, June 21, 2022: Kim Kardashian on the dress and the 21 pounds
- Brit + Co, May 2016: Kim Kardashian’s Atkins scale post
- TMZ: Kardashian-Jenner looks from the 2026 Met Gala
- SheKnows: Kim Kardashian’s 2026 Met Gala look
- AOL: Kim Kardashian reveals the results of her bar exam
- The Nightly: Kim Kardashian and Lewis Hamilton Tokyo Ferrari video
