Mariah Carey Transformed After Weight Loss & Now Looks Like A Model

May 05, 2021

Mariah Carey is a legendary singer-songwriter, record producer and actress. She is known for her signature use of the whistle register, her melismatic singing style and her impressive five-octave vocal range. She rose to fame in 1990 with her self-titled debut album. Carey has achieved many accolades and awards, including being the first artist in history to have her first five singles reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The songs were “Hero,” “Without You,” “All I want for Christmas is You,” “Fantasy” and “Always Be My Baby.” 

Carey released her debut album under the guidance of Tommy Motolla, a Columbia Records executive who she would later marry and then separate from. While signed to Columbia Records, Carey released some of her most popular albums, including her famous Christmas album in 1994 titled, “Merry Christmas.” The album is still beloved by audiences and regains popularity every year around the holiday season. 

After her separation from Mottola, Carey underwent a self-transformation and added more hip-hop elements into her music, beginning with her sixth album “Butterfly.” Carey left Columbia Records in 2001. Billboard has named her the most successful artist of the 1990s. The World Music Awards also recognized her as the best selling artist of the 1990s and the best selling pop-female artist of the millennium. 

Carey has been through many transformations in both her career and personal life, including an incredible 70-pound weight loss transformation in 2011. This came after the birth of her fraternal twins, Morrocan and Monroe Cannon. She looks glamorous at any weight, but her dedication to health and fitness is inspiring. Read on to learn more about Carey’s inspiring weight loss journey. 

Carey was born on March 27, 1969 in Huntington, New York. She is the youngest of three children born to Patricia Hickey, a former opera singer and vocal coach. Her father, Alfred Roy Carey, was an aeronautical engineer. Carey’s parents split up when she was three, which is something she only opened up about recently. She spoke in her memoir “The Meaning of Mariah Carey” about the difficulties of growing up with divorced parents and described her childhood as violent and challenging. Fortunately, she has always been able to find an escape in music.

Carey has always been known for being a bit nocturnal, often staying up all night to work. In an interview with The Guardian, she opened up about her childhood and how it has affected her life. “I think my staying up all night started from having such a dysfunctional family. Oftentimes, whoever was in the house was doing whatever it was that they were doing, and that felt kinda unsafe to me, so I started staying up,” said Carey.

She has been known as the Queen of Christmas since the release of her album “Merry Christmas” in 1994. Carey said her passion for the holiday comes from not having had much to enjoy during Christmas as a child. She said her motivation behind the hit single “All I Want for Christmas is You” was “to write a song that would make me feel like a carefree young girl at Christmas.”

During her time at school, Carey excelled in music and literature. She graduated from Harborfields High School in Greenlawn, New York in 1987. While attending she first began writing poetry and song lyrics. She ended up missing school often due to her work as a demo singer. This job helped her make connections with other artists who would then help her produce her own demo tape.  

After high school, Carey moved to New York City to pursue a full time music career. Her first gig was performing as a backup singer for Puerto Rican artist, Brenda K. Starr. In 1988, Carey attended the CBS record executive’s gala with Starr. This is where she first met producer Tommy Mottola from Columbia Records. The pair would later marry in 1993. They were separated in 1997 and had their divorced finalized by 2000. 

Carey handed Mottola her demo tape that night and he listened to it in his car on the way home. It was after hearing her tape that Mottola decided to sign her to Columbia Records, and her debut self-titled album was released two years later. Columbia spent around one million dollars promoting the album and marketed Carey as their main female artist. 

In 1991, Carey won the awards for Best New Artist and Best Female Vocal Performance for her single “Vision of Love,” at the Grammy Awards. Her debut album was the best selling album in the United States that year and sold 15 millions copies worldwide. This was quite impressive for her first studio effort. 

After releasing her second album, titled “Emotions,” Carey refused to go on a worldwide tour to promote it. She claimed it was because of stage fright, which instigated rumours that she was only talented in the studio and was unable to perform live. This pushed Carey to appear on an episode of the show “MTV Unplugged” where she performed live with no studio equipment. She sang a cover of The Jackson 5’s “I’ll Be There.” This performance proved to audiences and critics that she is a legendary vocalist.

In 2001, Carey parted with Columbia Records and signed an incredible $100 million and five-album contract with Virgin Records. Her first project was both an album and film titled “Glitter” which starred Carey in the leading role. Both the film and the soundtrack were heavily influenced by 1980s disco and the film is set in 1983. 

In the film Carey played an aspiring singer and club dancer who meets a record executive and is signed to perform backup dancing and vocals for another artist. The film is a love story that both mirrors and deviates from elements of Carey’s actual life. The album and the film were both reviewed negatively by critics and did not live up to the success of Carey’s previous work. 

Before the release of the film, in July 2001, Carey was hospitalized for “extreme exhaustion” and said she experienced a total “physical and emotional breakdown, ” according to MTV. Carey posted concerning messages on her personal website and acted bizarrely during live appearances. 

One of the voice notes she posted to her website said, "I'm trying to understand things in life right now and so I really don't feel that I should be doing music right now. What I'd like to do is just take a little break or at least get one night of sleep without someone popping up about a video. All I really want is (to) just be me and that's what I should have done in the first place ... I don't say this much but guess what, I don't take care of myself."

After that, Carey took an extended break from releasing music and spent some time in Italy writing songs. She eventually bought out her contract with Virgin Records and said, “I made a total snap decision which was based on money and I never make decisions based on money. I learned a big lesson from that,” according to BBC News. It's nice to hear that Carey learned a lesson from the past and doesn’t regret the mistake.

In 2009, Carey performed her rendition of “I’ll Be There” at Michael Jackson’s funeral. She revived her career as an actress the same year, appearing as a social worker in the critically acclaimed film “Precious” which is based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire. Carey won the Breakthrough Actress Performance Award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival for the role. Carey hasn’t been in any other films and instead has remained focused on music and her family.

No matter how you look at it, Carey is a living legend. She has sold over 200 million albums globally and is still making music. In 2008 she was named one of Time’s 100 most Influential People in the World. Her musical style and ability have forever impacted popular and contemporary music. She is a pop icon and holds a valuable place in music history, and is treasured by adoring fans around the world.

Carey has been referred to as a diva and called high-maintenance throughout her career. In her memoir she shared that her career and personal life have centered around much more than that. “It’s like I’ve been telling this story if someone cared to look deep enough. I just feel like there’s no way anybody could have known the complexities and the layered situation that is my life,” Carey told Vulture while promoting the book. 

Carey married actor and comedian Nick Cannon on April 30, 2008 in the Bahamas. Then on April 30, 2011, Carey gave birth to her twins Morrocan and Monroe when she was 35 weeks pregnant. Monroe is named after Marilyn Monroe, Carey’s favorite actress, while Morrocan was named after the morrocan decor in the room where Cannon proposed to her. The room is located in her famous New York City penthouse apartment. 

In 2014, Yahoo reported that Cannon confirmed that the pair were separating. Their divorced was finalized in 2016 according to E! News. Cannon told E!, "My ex and I are in a great place and are diligently moving things along so we both can continue to be happy. I am happy for her and all her new endeavors, both personal ones and professional ones.” It sounds like the couple are still on good terms, which is important for their kids.

Both Cannon and Carey continue to co-parent their children. “They know that I’m here for them. They know that if they want to talk with their father, he’s a phone call away. They have stability,” Carey said to Vulture in a 2020 interview. She added, “That’s what I didn’t have. They will never have a holiday that’s not happy unless something I can’t do anything about happens. They understand that they are Black. They have a whole lot of self-esteem and self-worth that I never had. And I probably still don’t now. I know that I still don’t.”

Carey is also a philanthropist; she is involved with numerous charities including the Make A Wish Foundation. The organization awarded her the Foundation’s Wish Idol for her generosity and the many wishes she was able to grant for sick children. 

One of Carey’s most impressive accomplishments has been her 70-pound weight loss journey after the birth of her children in 2011. She told Rosie O'Donnell on an episode of “The Rosie Show” that 40 of those pounds were water weight due to her irregular pregnancy.   

In 2011 she told ABC News, “If they want to rag at me for looking like a huge boat, like that wasn’t my fault, I couldn’t help it. Carrying two human lives inside me and doing the best I could. What am I going to do?” Carey worked off the remainder of her weight by exercising regularly and controlling her diet, she was also a spokesperson for the Jenny Craig weight loss program.

Carey also told ABC News that she likes to use the outfits from her previous music videos as inspiration for weight loss instead of a scale. “Honestly because it’s so much like do I fit into my shorts from the ‘Fantasy’ video, OK, I’m good. And I have those things. Honestly it’d be like the ‘Heartbreaker’ video, do I fit into these jeans? ‘Touch My Body.’ ‘Touch My Body’s’ the goal.” 

In 2019, Marie Claire covered Carey’s diet and exercise routine."Mariah loves smoked salmon and capers, so she eats a lot of that lean protein, but the secret to her success has been the one thing that she cut out almost completely, and that is processed sugar,” said a source close to Carey, according to the magazine. 

They also claim that her exercise routine is primarily aerobics and that she works out three times a week. Carey’s routine differs from her peer artists Beyonce and Jennifer Lopez who cite dancing as their secret to staying slim. Carey performs all the time but focuses only on singing instead of dancing, so she prefers aerobics.

What do you think of Mariah Carey’s weight loss transformation? Do you like her method of using outfits to measure weight-loss? Let us know your thoughts and be sure to pass this along to your friends and family.