Remi Bader Addresses All the Weight-Loss Speculation

It’s the classic influencer arc: Relatable person starts posting about their relatable life; relatable person becomes so relatable to so many people that suddenly they’re known as the relatable person; relatable person no longer relatable. In most cases, the influencer-relatability paradox is a problem of wealth. For Remi Bader, it is her body. When she began posting TikToks of her Zara and Free People try-on hauls in 2020, she was curvy — around a size 14–16, roughly the size of the average American woman. But after a period of weight gain followed by a year of dramatic weight loss, her audience demanded answers to two questions: How’d she do it? And why wasn’t she sharing?

Remi Bader is ready to tell her side of the story. We’re talking about her body transformation, heartbreak, and everything the internet got wrong. Watch the full episode now on @X. pic.twitter.com/8xQV5hjVNw

— Khloé (@khloekardashian) March 26, 2025

In an interview with Self and an appearance on Khloé Kardashian’s podcast, Khloé in Wonder Land, both of which dropped at 9 a.m. on March 26, Bader reveals the answer to both. In December 2023, she underwent a new procedure called SADI-S, which she describes as a cross between a gastric sleeve and gastric bypass. The recovery period, however, was “hell”: For six weeks, she couldn’t eat or drink and began regretting her decision. “I’d gotten into a very, very deep depression, and it was truly the scariest time of my life,” she says in Self. “I couldn’t tell people. I really — I wanted to die.”

Bader occupies a strange place in the influencer universe. Early on, she was sometimes labeled as “body positive” simply because she was curvy and posted content of herself trying on clothes that seemed “realistic” rather than aspirational. Yet unlike many other plus-size or midsize creators, she was open about the fact that she often felt deeply uncomfortable in her body. “I’ve been this person that people looked up to online for this whole time of, like — I won’t say body positive, because that wasn’t me,” she says to Kardashian. “I always said if I was uncomfortable in my body or if I was struggling.” Her struggles with weight loss while being diagnosed with binge-eating disorder were often a central part of her content, until a tearful September 2023 video in which she stated she’d no longer be sharing updates on her health owing to the onslaught of critical comments and DMs. “You should see the messages I get on the daily,” she says. “And that actually makes me want to tell my story and my journey less.”

But it was a different kind of commenter who Bader says finally helped her feel ready to share the full story. She tells Kardashian part of the reason she wanted to be open about the surgery was because she saw herself in followers that were asking her for genuine advice. “I used to actually message people … when I would see people lose weight or just going through any sort of life journey and look happier, and I would be like, ‘I need help.’ I remember being that.” Influencers can relate, too.

• [self]

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