Star Jones Says It Was ‘Shameful’ to Be Overweight 20 Years Ago: ‘I Was Hugely Criticized’

Star Jones is getting candid about the scrutiny she has faced regarding her body.

The Divorce Court star, 63, appeared on the May 7 episode of the Behind the Table podcast, and opened up about the lessons she’s learned over the course of her career — and how she’s “grateful” she never gave in to public pressure to lose weight in an unsafe way.

“Twenty years ago, it was shameful to be an overweight person,” Jones said. “It was something that the late-night hosts made tremendous fun [of]. People [were] stigmatized very much.”

However, Jones said that despite the fact that she was “hugely criticized,” she ultimately made the decision to get fit on her own terms — and at her own pace.

“I am so grateful that I followed my doctor’s advice and not the public’s advice, because the doctors really said to me, ‘Until you do the work on yourself to know why you have an addictive personality and [why] you can’t get control of your weight, you won’t be successful in this. Even if you use surgery to jump-start it,’ ” she recalled.

“Because I actually had to lose the weight in my head. Yes — before I could lose it on my body,” she continued. “And because I took that advice and because I listened to myself and my doctors, it’s [been] 22 years and I’ve kept the weight off.”

“That is not something that people can fully appreciate — how hard it is to really change your lifestyle and your life and to do it in the public eye,” she concluded.

Jones recently spoke to PEOPLE for Women’s Health Month, sharing that she began working with her doctors more than 20 years ago to implement lifestyle changes and regain control of her health.

“I changed my eating habits, I started to exercise regularly, and my body changed and my mindset changed,” she said. “So I was feeling really great.”

However, Jones said that a 2010 heart disease diagnosis and subsequent open-heart surgery pushed her to learn even more about health — and to help educate others about theirs.

“Anybody who says getting a diagnosis of heart disease doesn’t frighten them is not telling the truth. I was scared,” she recalled. “The doctor said, ‘We have to crack your chest and we will disconnect your heart and you’ll be on the heart and lung machine.’ So it made me face my mortality.”

“Once I kind of took my head out of the sand, after two weeks of eyes-wide-open scared, I became Star Jones again,” she explained. “And I’m a voracious reader. I wanted to know everything about heart disease and I discovered that I had been living in a bubble, which I think a lot of women are.”