Mariah Carey loses 70 pounds after having twins

Mariah Carey, 41, appeared on The Rosie Show, Rosie O’Donnell’s new show on the Oprah Winfrey Network, Nov. 8 to talk about her new life as the mom of twins and, not surprisingly, how she lost all the baby weight.

Carey reports that she gained roughly 70 pounds during her pregnancy with twins Moroccan and Monroe, who are now almost seven months old. During her appearance on Rosie, she shared that 40 of the pounds she gained were water weight. Pregnant women tend to retain fluids more than women who are not pregnant, and part of the weight for any woman postpartum is water weight.

Carey was very honest about her experience gestating twins, which is not easy.

“I had a really tough pregnancy,” she told Rosie, “I was supposed to be on bed rest, but it was so bad that even bed hurt. I learned a lot being pregnant, watching my body change.”

After immediately losing the water weight after the twins, who weighed six pounds each, were born, Carey said she turned to Jenny Craig to help her lose the part of the wait that wasn’t water weight. The weight loss program put her on a diet that consisted of 1,500 calories each day and an exercise session three times a week.

To get ready for her appearance on Rosie, a series of anonymously posted YouTube ads were put up featuring a mysterious woman who would appear on the talk show. It turned out to be Carey, who appeared to help kick off Rosie’s “Ready Set Go” initiative, which aims to help 25 viewers lose any extra weight they’ve been carrying around.

Carey is one in a long line of celebrities who have tried and endorsed Jenny Craig, including Valerie Bertinelli, Jason Alexander and Kirstie Alley, though Alley now uses her own plan to maintain weight loss. Carey’s Jenny Craig advertisements say that she’s eager to start helping others understand how to make healthier lifestyle choices.

“I look at people who have been on Jenny and gotten great results,” she said on Jenny Craig’s website. “I say to myself, wow, this is something that everybody should be able to obtain.”

The twins were delivered via C-section at 35 weeks gestation, and Carey said she’s proud of how hard she’s worked to get the weight off and is eager to show off her new physique.

“I feel incredible,” Carey said to Extra.com. “It was a huge blessing to be able to have the babies. But I felt trapped in my body because I couldn’t move.”