She didn’t embark upon her weight loss journey to lose weight. Adele desperately needed to get a hold of her life if she was to deal with her increasingly overwhelming anxiety.
“It became my time,” she said. “I realized that when I was working out, I didn’t have any anxiety. It was never about losing weight. I thought, If I can make my body physically strong, and I can feel that and see that, then maybe one day I can make my emotions and my mind physically strong.”
Adele moved from London to a California compound outside of L.A. where she sought a total change in her familiar environment as the new foundation to a new, revitalized life. She had her house, and her ex-husband had his house to come to for prolonged visits, so they could continue to jointly parent their son, Angelo, as seamlessly as possible.
Photo courtesy of Graham Denholm / Getty Images
Before the move across The Pond, Adele had already started to lose weight to get ready for the grueling, 13-month tour of her album, “25,” by starting to train and making better food choices. Her adoring public took notice. Two years later, after she revealed her dramatic weight loss, her friend and personal trainer, Pete Geracimo, took the initiative to defend her on Instagram. “As Adele’s former London-based personal trainer, it’s disheartening to read negative commentary and fat-phobic accusations questioning the genuineness of her amazing weight loss,” he wrote. “In my personal experience of working with her through many highs and lows, she always marched to the beat of her own drum on her own terms. She never once pretended to be something that she wasn’t. When Adele and I started our journey together, it was never about getting super-skinny. It was about getting her healthy post-pregnancy and post-surgery.” Geracimo went on to say, “It’s only natural that with change comes a new sense of self and wanting to be your best possible version. She is doing this for herself and for Angelo. It’s about Adele and how she wants to live her life.”
Adele reinforces that sentiment. “People have been talking about my body for 12 years,” she acknowledged as cover girl and in her interview in the November 2021 issue of VOGUE U.K. and VOGUE USA. “They used to talk about it before I lost weight. But yeah, whatever, I don’t care. You don’t need to be overweight to be body positive, you can be any shape or size.”