Kim Kardashian’s 3-Week Weight Loss: An Obesity Medicine Specialist Weighs In

By now, you’ve likely heard about Kim Kardashian’s recent 3-week weight loss. She lost 16 pounds in 3 weeks to fit into her vintage Met Gala gown.

How did Kardashian lose weight? She says she cut carbs and ate “just the cleanest veggies and protein.” She also ran on a treadmill and wore a sauna suit twice a day.

Kardashian’s 3-week weight loss sparked concern over the impact on mental health. Critics also worried about the physical effects of copying her methods. Other celebrities, including Jameela Jamil and Lili Reinhart, took her to task.

We asked Catherine Varney, DO, a board-certified obesity medicine doctor at UVA Health, to weigh in on the health effects of this story.

Impacting Teenage Mental Health

When she saw the story on social media, Varney’s first thought was “concern for adolescents and teenagers.”

“I want to believe that most people know her weight-loss techniques were concerning and unrealistic,” she said. “But I've seen enough adolescents in my primary care practice to know that normalizing this behavior by indirect promotion in the media is harmful.”

Varney pointed to a 2019 study in the journal Lancet that shows the negative impacts social media can have on teens. Using social media more than 3 times a day predicted poor mental health.

3-Week Weight Loss Doesn’t Last

Another complaint about Kardashian’s 3-week weight loss is that restrictive eating leads to yo-yo dieting.

There’s no consensus on the health effects of this weight cycling. But most people who do it agree it’s “mentally, emotionally, and physically hard,” Varney points out.