The Tragic Truth About Monica Lewinsky's Weight Loss Transformation

One of the most tragic details about Monica Lewinsky's life after the Bill Clinton scandal was the sheer amount of fat-shaming she had to endure. Instead of focusing on the gross power imbalance between an intern in her early 20s and the President of the United States, talk show hosts and news outlets resorted to making offensive remarks about Lewinsky's weight and slut-shaming her. For instance, during an episode of David Letterman's talk show, he "joked" that Hillary Clinton had gained so much weight during her term as a New York Senator that her husband had started flirting with his intern. Meanwhile, Page Six bestowed a brutal nickname upon Lewinsky: "Portly Pepperpot." 

When the former White House staffer took the stage at Forbes' "30 under 30 Summit," in 2014, she admitted to being "shattered" by all the name-calling (via Page Six). Lewinsky also disclosed that she had started eating peanut M&Ms in place of Xanax to quell the anxiety from all the public backlash, ultimately losing her will to live. Meanwhile, in a 2015 TEDxTalk, the activist asserted, "Overnight, I went from being a completely private figure to a publicly humiliated one, worldwide." She continued, "I was patient zero of losing a personal reputation on a global scale almost instantaneously." 

When Lewinsky appeared on the "Call Her Daddy" podcast, in 2025, she shared that a media outlet had done a study on one of her most vocal fat-shamers, Jay Leno, and found that she was in his "top 10 targets" despite not being a celebrity in the traditional sense. Additionally, the Bill Clinton scandal cost Lewinsky a staggering amount of money too, prompting her to rely on the negativity surrounding her weight to earn some of it back. 

In 1999, Monica Lewinsky became a spokesperson for the Jenny Craig program and later claimed that she had lost 31 pounds following their recommended diet plan. However, her 5-week ad campaign wasn't well-received, garnering intense criticism from the general public and Jenny Craig franchises alike. Just four months later, Lewinsky was nowhere to be seen in their promotional material. At the time, Jenny Craig COO Patti Larchet confirmed that they would reconsider the former White House staffer for the role if she shed a few more pounds. Tragically, at one point during the ad campaign, Lewinsky appeared on "Larry King Live" and stated that she wished people wouldn't judge her too harshly for the move as it was one of the few ways she could pay her legal bills and make ends meet. 

Decades later, in 2021, Lewinsky acknowledged in an interview with People that the horrific fat-shaming from that era continued to impact her mental health. "I still don't like having my photo taken professionally," she confessed. "Twenty-plus years on, there's still a mental tape that holds some of those traumatic experiences of hearing people say awful things, seeing cartoons of myself and this idea that the only reason an actual relationship [with Bill Clinton] could have been possible was if I were more attractive." Likewise, in a 2019 tweet, the activist divulged that the slut- and fat-shaming deeply affected her self-worth too, and she only got better thanks to her mental health team. Suffice it to say that the admission was a tell-tale sign that Lewinsky's Bill Clinton affair was more traumatic than she let on.