Ree Drummond has made her brand The Pioneer Woman. She’s been pushing her form of modern frontier maven for over a decade, and built a small empire on it. She has a blog, a Food Network show and has written many cookbooks (and non-cooking books). I haven’t read or used them so I can’t speak from absolute experience. Leafing through the previews Amazon provides, her recipes are hearty, farm food. CB has seen some of her shows and Ree double fries French fries and leans into the fattening food for flavor. She also feeds her many children, so her quantities are huge. Eating the food she promotes over a sustained amount of time would be a problem if you don’t work it off in a field. Like Ree herself, apparently. She recently posted a video to TikTok in which she admitted her weight had “crept up on” her over time and she found herself wanting to make a change. So she did. In January of this year, she started dieting, exercising and using weights. Ree claims she didn’t use any “gimmicks” just good old-fashioned calorie cutting, and so far, she’s shed 38 pounds.
Ree Drummond is making strides on her weight loss journey and now, she’s sharing her secrets.
The Pioneer Woman star, 52, recently showed off the results of a health journey that she started in January. In a video posted to her TikTok and Instagram story over the weekend, Drummond started by explaining that the COVID-19 pandemic had affected her diet.
“I can’t get away from food and I love to eat. Of course it crept up on me through the years, especially during COVID,” she told her followers.
“Starting in January, I decided to get busy and lose some weight,” Drummond continued, noting that she’s lost 38 pounds already. “No gimmicks at all. I just cut calories, exercised more, lifted a lot of weights. I look better but I feel so much better and that’s what really counts.”
In the clip, the food blogger stepped back and showed off her new physique, saying that despite her new body, she’s still the same “goofball,” just with a lot more energy.
“Moving more and building muscle has been the key for me! 💪 I still love fries, though,” she captioned her video.
I applaud anyone who wants to lose weight and does. It’s a hard journey and I can only imagine harder for someone who has made a lifestyle around a certain style of food. It seems, from what I could read in her later books, that Ree has clued in to the fact that no one could eat her food all the time. I noticed some low-carb options and more greens popping up in the table of contents. But one thing I see in all of her books is a heavy reliance on canned and boxed goods, which is weird for a farmer. I know it makes mid-week meal prep easier, but it has its drawbacks in large quantities, especially in weight management. I’ll take her at her word that she didn’t use gimmicks, but I can promise you she used trainers, probably the best money can buy. And I’ll bet she turns her weight loss into her next cookbook – that’ll be the gimmick.
I also feel the motivation is slightly buried. I’m sure she wanted to lose weight, in general. But her sudden motivation in January to drop weight was more likely the family’s decision to push through with daughter Alex’s May 1 wedding, pandemic be damned.
Photo credit: Instagram
Lol this headline 😆 I have two of her cookbooks and have several of her recipes from her blog on repeat. But I use them for potluck family dinners and holidays mostly. It’s not food we eat on a regular basis.
If I was her and my daughter was getting married, knowing the pictures and video would be out there in the world, I would definitely be motivated.
For me, it’s a health thing too. I lost my mom to complications of heart disease (she was also obese and had diabetes) the year after I got married. I sure wish she had been able to take charge of her health like this! Hopefully Ree will be healthy to meet future grandchildren for years to come.
Yes! I use her mashed potatoes recipe every time I’m assigned to bring a dish because it’s easy, but most of all, it’s consistently a hit with friends and family. The reason it’s a hit is because there’s an entire block of cream cheese in it!
Ahh those mashed potatoes are so darn good! I make them too. Between the 1.5 sticks of butter and block of cream cheese, you can’t really screw them up. 😅
The cake that my son requests every year for his birthday is one of her recipes. She has a lot of good ones but yeah, they’re not for daily consumption.
Since when is eat less and move around more a weight loss “secret”?
@ Nancy, 🤣
I guess it was to her!!!
Well, the thing is–and I swear I am not trying to come off as preachy or know it all–a lot of people really honest to God do not realize that. I have personally found that a huge majority of people really do think weight loss is next to impossible and that in order to lose weight they have to resort to gimmicks. I can’t tell you how many grown adults I know who are clueless about how simple weight loss works. My mother-in-law will look at me like I have three heads when I try to explain it. She thinks as long as it says “gluten free”, “low/no carb”, or “low-cal” then she’s doing her part. I only say this as someone who has been on a weight loss journey for a loooong time. It’s taught me a lot about denial, which I had to overcome myself.
Yes! So many people think, “Well, if I load up on granola bars, smoothies, and juice, I’ll lose a ton of weight!” and then they wonder why they are gaining. Or finishing off an intense workout with Gatorade and ingesting more calories than they just burned in a fraction of the time. I think the mentality of many is “I have to eat xyz to lose weight,” when it’s really about NOT eating as much. Also, wine is a huge culprit, IMO. There are twice as many calories per ounce in wine than regular coke, and I know so many people who have been drinking half a bottle to a bottle a day.
Oh yeah, wine…that’s also got my MIL written all over it.
Yeah, some people really don’t know. I’ve been gluten-free for over 10 years because I have a sensitivity (not full-blown celiac) but it doesn’t help you lose weight. Going GF might make you gain because people think it equals calorie-free and they can eat all they want. It’s that gimmicky quick-fix thinking that leads people to jump from fad to fad without making any permanent or meaningful changes.
It would be really, really nice if this de facto fat shaming didn’t happen here. I haven’t been able to lose ever (unless I’m pregnant; that’s not really a sustainable way to live though), so I just focus on not gaining. Reducing calories makes me climb the walls and it just whips around and I overeat.
I promise. I’m not a moron, but reading about how it’s “So EaSy” when it’s not for me is really hurtful.
co-sign
I’ve been trying to lose weight all year with cutting calories and walking a lot and nothing is making the scale budge. I’ve been to my doctor and a nutritionist and nothing is working
I appreciate you saying this, Betsy. I’ve never lost weight unless my eating was disordered, ie 500 calories a day or biking 25-60 miles a day when I was in grad school and had no income so I couldn’t eat much. I’m not stupid, I’ve taken multiple nutrition classes, and I still can’t lose weight. So it’s just calories in-calories out for everyone.
I never said it was easy. And I am not fat shaming anyone. I am a chubby girl and struggle with my weight every single day. But I have been on the end where I have lost weight–when I get past my own excuses and eat healthy and exercise. I am the queen of sliding back into old habits, so believe me, I know every angle of this. And I understand that weight doesn’t fall off even if you do those things, especially when age, medical conditions, etc. factor in. I’m simply saying, at the end of the day, eating healthy and exercising isn’t a huge secret, but to a lot of people, it’s surprisingly a huge mystery.
@L84tea – but you are. You are implying that people are too stupid to know how to do it, or what it means, when CICO very clearly does not work given that something like 90% of people who lose weight regain it. You talk about your own denial, as if your denial is a universal experience with a universal meaning. Whether or not you have a weight problem is immaterial if you’re still shaming the rest of us like we’re too stupid or in too much denial to see reality.
I remember a pastry chef I follow (David Lebovitz if you want amazing recipes) was on a panel with her, around the time of her first cookbook. He mentioned in the blog that he asked about the reliance on boxed and canned food, and she said it takes almost two hours round trip for her to get to a grocery store with fresh ingredients.
I remember that even though it was more than ten years ago I read it 😂.
Good for her on losing weight? I guess?
Lol. I bet David Lebovitz, who I’m sure is at gorgeous Parisian markets every week, was side-eyeing that.
Then I’d side-eye him. That’s reality for people who live rurally. If you don’t have your own garden, you are a long distance from fresh produce.
It’s true though. I have a lot of friends and family in central Illinois. The vast majority of America’s farms are commodity farms. They are growing 1-2 things on large scale with huge and sophisticated equipment. Many very small towns have a meager or non existent grocery store. Therefore, many farming families basically live in a food desert. Of course it is different if someone in the family has kept the tradition of gardening alive, but that’s not the case for many folks.
Lol. The title made me laugh. It would be like losing weight on a Paula Deen butter diet.
Good for her. Wonder if she gave up diet Dr. Pepper. Cutting out all sodas can really help the weight loss process too.
I find this article a little triggering. It’s not always ‘just’ exercise and weights and calorie cutting. I’ve put on 2.6 stones in a year due to the Gabapentin I’ve been prescribed for chronic ME-related nerve pain and can’t get the additional weight off – I’ve cut down to 1200-1600 calories p.d. of low-carb, high protein, decent food (because every calorie is certainly NOT created equal), take the good pain meds and do step aerobics or interval training plus a late afternoon yoga session 3-6 times a week depending on exhaustion, use weights and resistance bands and – nada. Nothing. It makes me want to scream and, as a former anorexic (can one ever really BE a former anorexic, though?), it makes me cry quite often.
As someone whose auto-immune disseases mess with my weight beyond my control I’m going to give you some gentle, though unasked advice (sorry dor that): do whatever you need to do to become okay with who you are right now. Because it’s hard to lose weight when medications and symptoms mess with your body and it’s going to be so frustrating if you keep trying to what at times will be impossible to do.
I’m sorry this sounds incredibly frustrating. I hope that all of the exercise makes you feel strong and flexible, but I’m sure it must be hard to feel like you’re fighting your body.
I’m so sorry, Andrews Nemesis. I am in recovery from eating disorders (they have plagued women in my family for generations). Wilma’s advice above is good, I think. I’ve put on some weight during the pandemic, but it doesn’t say anything about me as a person. My body will always change, as bodies do, and that’s ok.
There are no easy answers. But I encourage you to be kind to yourself when you are able to. And if you have “the voice” in your head, as I did/do, know that it is not your friend.
I think i am most annoyed when people consider my weight gain to be purely unhealthy. I have done loads of unhealthy things in my life to be thin. Right now i exercise daily, i wear sunscreen and work outside a lot building things and gardening, and eat a healthy plant-based diet but pandemic stress and a second baby have added weight that i didn’t have before. the weight gain doesn’t mean I’m teetering on the edge of death. I wish people didn’t associate thinness with health and pretend they care about my health when they’re really concerned about my appearance. The closer i get to 40 the more i work to reprogram my brain to view myself through the lens of my happiness and my good choices and not by how much i look like a 20 year old or have a certain body type.
Yes!!! I’m at my personal heaviest (size 18-20) and it’s hard (because we live in a world that glorifies thinness at any cost), but I’m also at my healthiest (mentally). I work out 3-4 times a week, am concentrating on eating more veggies and fruits, and for the first time in my 40+ years am not obsessed with food. It’s such a beautiful relief! I definitely recommend the podcast Maintenance Phase – particularly the episode called Anti-Fat Bias as well as well as Michael Hobbes Everything You Know About Obesity is Wrong article https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/everything-you-know-about-obesity-is-wrong/
These have helped me embrace some personal acceptance. Sending love to everyone who’s struggling.
Thank you all for your support. You’re so kind! I’m trying not to listen to the voice that says ‘fat and disgusting’ and has been with me since I was in my teens, but it’s hard. I’ll try to get to an okay place.
Big hug to you! I know it is really hard as people reward perceived weight loss with positive remarks. It took me a while to get there myself after I gained 66 lbs after getting diabetes type 1 and a thyroid problem. Never managed to lose it and still swing about 25 lbs under influence of hormonal problems. It took me several years to get to a friendly relationship with my body again, but in the end it’s the only body I’ll ever have and I might as well be nice to it and love it as is. Eve Ensler wrote a really nice mantra to repeat to yourself at the end of her book The Good Body.
I find her smug, and her eye makeup aging. This elevation of the uber-womanhood trope of cooking dated food for your manly man and family, and all the superficial wholesome Christian-y bit is grating and old school (Not to be confused with real Christ-like ness which is truly inspiring)
@ Dawn child, she is smug. That wedding was ridiculous, to top it off with the number of guests during a pandemic which was still raging and no distancing, masks or regard to peoples health in their own communities. Also, as a farmer, she should be growing her own vegetables, given all of the crap in canned food. Nothing good comes out of a can unless it’s tuna for sandwiches.
BTW, WTF is she wearing? Is it the ‘90’s again? Though she didn’t crimp her hair!!
Not to come and defend her but I thought they were ranchers, not farmers. So they have a lot of cattle–probably have their own meat.
Not saying she *couldn’t* grow her own food, with all her spare time…
The recipes I’ve used of hers don’t really have canned food. Maybe tomatoes? Not every recipe has canned stuff.
In fairness, everyone should have a good supply of canned foods on hand. You never know when a weather event or other disaster may prevent you from getting fresh food. And many canned foods are perfectly good and much easier than their fresh form – like beans and tomatoes. The health issues I see with her food are using a lot of beef – not surprising since they’re cattle ranchers – and butter, cream, cheese, etc.
Her eye makeup is…not good. I also hate the flowy flowery shirts she always wears. She didn’t use to dress like that, look back at the cover from her first cookbook, she looks super cute, her eye makeup is still a little heavy but not like it is now, her hair is more of an auburn, she’s just wearing a simple sweater and shirt, etc.
she used to have the best clothes back in the day, but I believe she sells her own clothes now in “the merc’, and they are no where near as cute.
I can find tops in Target that are way cuter.
They’re white Republicans, who made a big show once out of mocking food from another culture. They’re not good people.
Whatever. She perfectly embodies the double message of all the homey women’s magazines. Recipe for 600-calorie muffins on one page, weight loss article on the next.
100% confident this was the result of weight loss surgery. Even while schlepping the cookbooks with the 600+ calorie muffins and cheese/butter-laden everything.
I saw her TikTok and my first thought was surprise that she didn’t use this as an opportunity to be paid heaps by Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig. She obviously did this for her daughter’s wedding, as that is a huge motivator for many women. The two biggest reasons women go to plastic surgeons are high school reunion and “My daughter is getting married.”
I managed to not gain weight during the height of the pandemic but we redid our kitchen over the winter (full gut job because our contractor gave us a deal since no one wants to do a renovation over the holidays and now I understand why) and take out became the go-to. I gained holiday weight and then some. Since then I have been writing down everything I eat in a Word Document, drinking more water (I barely drank water before), and stepping up on the exercise. It is working. Consistent take out really warped my portion size perception. I am someone who can easily eat a lot quickly and I was worried initially that going back to “normal” portions would leave me feeling starved but I’m actually doing fine. Take out also gets expensive so it’s nice to save money as well! My sister and brother-in-law are doing Weight Watchers and they love it.
I find her voice not-good-for-television, but I highly recommend her super easy Best Tomato Soup Ever recipe. It really is. There’s cream and butter, but since I make it only once or twice a year I don’t care. It’s a perfect winter soup.
Her italian chicken soup is *amazing.* And serves an army.
She’s not a farmer, she’s a rancher. She lives in ranch country, the land is used for horses and cattle. She’s about 20 minutes from Pawhuska, which has a dinky grocery store, and then about 30-45 minutes from bartlesville, which is bigger, and a solid hour, maybe 90 minutes from Tulsa? That’s why she relies so much on canned and boxed goods – if she runs out of something, it’s kind of a trek to get it. When her blog used to be more about her actual life (I dont know what it is now, I dont read it lol) she would detail their semi-annual trips to Sam’s or Costco or wherever to stock up. One of her cookbooks…..Dinnertime maybe?….has a section on what she always keeps on hand and its a lot, but its because she cant just pop down to the corner store.
Anyway for weight loss, I’m sure it had a lot to do with Alex’s wedding and also that she probably works the ranch very little these days with everything else going on for her business-wise, so if she’s eating the same that she did when she was more involved with the ranch, and younger, it makes sense that the weight can creep up.
I’ve told you all before that my mom has a weird fixation with her, she used to be a big fan and now she kind of hate-follows her, but in a way that makes me laugh because Ree is how my mom figures out the social media game. “well do you think she’s ACTUALLY making all that food herself?!?!” “I doubt she came up with THAT recipe on her own!!!!” Of course not Mom, that’s not how this works, lol.
I live in Bartlesville, we have 1 Walmart but it serves 65k people for an hour in every direction. Its often out of a lot of stuff. Yesterday they had no parsley, cucumbers, red onions or russet potatoes. Thats not uncommon for them to just not have things because so many people depend on that store. We have 3 grocery stores, but they are all homeland, 2 are so gross people don’t want to go there and all 3 are prohibitively expensive. I personally go in them about once a year. We also have an Aldi, but its the smallest lay out and again it serves EVERYONE so the selection can be bare.
Most of our produce is at the farmers market on Saturday, but its kind of elitist to judge about canned food. The farmers market in this area is EXPENSIVE and the stores very often don’t have a lot because its too few stores for so many people and honestly, this isn’t a rich area.
Canned food is fine. Anyone poo pooing over preserved food need to assess their personal issues and the type of anti poverty propaganda that demonizes food.
It takes me sometimes an hour to get stuff home because we drive an hour to tulsa and I bring coolers and ice and make my husband follow me in the second car because shopping out of town costs me a whole day so I have to make it worth it.
I pickle, jar, freeze dry and vacuum seal food all the time because we have limited resources here and a lot of it is expensive. At the height of the pandemic there was nothing left in town and people had to share from home to home because the stores serve sooooo many people. Our stores emptied out in 9 hours after that ice storm/snow storm that took out Texas was confirmed because there is just less.
Our power went out for 3 weeks last summer because of storm damage. We would have starved without our canned food because our refrigerator was wasted before the storm was even over.
There is nothing wrong with canned food and its essential in this area. We just don’t have the option. Especially when we have storm damage every other year.
Yep. They’re ranchers, not farmers, and even farmers don’t necessarily grow their own food. We’re a long way from that being the regular thing.
It’s amazing to me that she lives on this big ranch and she really never mentions a garden….lots of talk about beef, but never anything about a garden. Whereas, you have lots of other Food Network chefs who have much smaller ‘yards’, for lack of a better word, and they have herb gardens, raised beds, or just regular gardens. This chic has thousands of acres…you’d think she’d be incorporating that somehow into her schtick.
Not a fan.
Her very first cookbook mentions it – one of the recipes is because they had too many tomatoes and she had to use them up – but it’s not a common theme.
Interesting. I liked her early, but then she wore me out once I realized that she was/is fairly fake.
My mom too used to be a big fan, then she gained a bunch of weight from her recipes and realized that those recipes were pretty much simple things that anyone could make, plus they are almost ALL unhealthy. Most good cooks/chefs have a well-rounded repertoire of recipes. PW has 95% fattening things (stolen church cookbook recipes)…but as has been noted above, I bet that all changes with the weight loss.
I am an old woman (48 but seriously been trying since I was 15) who has never been able to make sausage gravy for biscuits and gravy. I’ve had 3 absolute pro gravy makers give up on trying to teach me. Never thickens, tastes like flour, soupy grease floating mess. I read her recipe and thought what the hell, I’ll try again- it worked! I’ve made it several times since and it always works! I don’t know why I don’t try other recipes of hers but….
All you have to do, regarding fattening and high caloric recipes you love, is alter ingredients. The two hour trip for fresh is worth eyerolls…she lives on a farm. She’s as ridiculous as Paula Deen, and I highly doubt she hops in her fancy crossover and travels two hours to do her own shopping. Her fingers are in many pies. Wonder how many assistants it takes to keep The Pioneer Woman looking pioneerish.
Her kitchen is my dream kitchen. Beautiful woodwork.
Her shows bug me. She seems so phony to me.
The kitchen is phony too!! That’s the lodge kitchen, its used for filming the show and her cookbook pics, etc. In her first cookbook and way back in the day on her blog you could see pics of her real kitchen, it has white cabinets.
Well, crap. Disappointing. lol
Well, to clarify, it’s not “fake” – its a fully functioning kitchen (there’s actually a second one where they do the bulk of the cooking) and it IS gorgeous, but it is designed that way – to be a gorgeous kitchen for filming the food network shows and taking cookbook pics. It’s not the Drummond family kitchen.
She’s anti-masker, so… whatever.
I have gained weight over the last few years without making anything but positive changes to my lifestyle. I exercise a ton, eat well and have cut back on calories as much as I can while still maintaining my exercise routine, stopped drinking…and still can’t manage to lose a bit.
In my completely unscientific observation, this happens to a lot of women going through perimenopause. Once they go through full menopause, within a year or two, it becomes easier to lose the weight and they do. I’m hoping this holds true for me as it did for my mom and my bestie and several other women in my social circle. Again, totally unscientific, but I can still hope!
Just a quick note. She is a rancher. Not a farmer. There is a big difference. They raise cattle and provide mustang land.
I really don’t think she is smug. Everything I’ve read says she is nice. Her restaurant serves good food, her store has cute stuff and her recipes work. Her Walmart products are pretty.
Does she love that money? You know she does! She may not be your style but she is what she is.
Agreed. I’m not a stan, but I said already that a couple of her recipes are my go-to for family gatherings. But I do really like her Walmart kitchen stuff. It makes me happy in a way I can’t really articulate–so cute, bright and flowery, just the right colors. Good quality for the price. Whoever is designing her stuff is very smart.
I side-eyed her initially years ago, but I’ve grown to like her. She also wore a Jovani dress to her daughter’s wedding because of Real Housewives of NY which is kind of amazing. (My sister is currently trying to find a mother-of-the-bride Jovani dress for our Mom to wear to her wedding at the end of the year because she is obsessed with RHONY as well – my sister, not our Mom.)
Eh, there have been some stories about her and her husband that aren’t the most flattering, and I def remember reading some stories about her at the Merc that were not that positive but I cant remember the specifics (kind of “I’m so much more important than everyone else” stories), but I think a lot of those have been scrubbed at this point. But it doesn’t bother me anyway because I don’t have to like someone to like their recipes. I mean paul hollywood comes across as an a-hole LOL but I love his Bread cookbook.
I guess the casual racism was okay with you.
https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/ree-drummond-offended-some-fans-with-controversial-joke-about-chicken-wings-back-in-season-2-of-the-pioneer-woman.html/
Her husband’s family own a significant percentage of their state. They are extremely rich and can eat whatever they want. In fact if they really cared about their community, they could sponsor a community garden or a good food co-op and it wouldn’t even be a dent in their monthly budget.
What’s with the hate on for canned food? You have a woman with many kids and her own business and shes supposed to spend hours a day growing vegetables and prepping them? Because she’s a cattle farmer? That’s a ridiculous standard. Surely we can normalize pantry and food prep with regular and (gasp!) Low cost Ingredients.
The Drummonds are extremely, extremely wealthy. They don’t just live in Oklahoma; they OWN a large percentage of it. Could some of us stop pretending this woman is just a humble simple middle-class or working-class mom just trying to take care of her large family on a tight budget. That has never been her situation. And frankly it’s insulting to those of us who ARE in something like that situation.
The problem with canned food (some, not all) is the sodium content. It is NOT the same nutritionally as fresh.
This woman could have a greenhouse to rival Princess Anne’s if she wanted. She just likes … shall we say the not-so-healthy stuff.
I bought one of her cookbooks and her food is awful.
It depends on the cookbook. Her more recent ones aren’t as good IMO because she’s trying to make things that aren’t in her wheelhouse, but her first one, her dinnertime one and her holidays one are in constant rotation at my house. Her pizza dough recipe is basically foolproof, and her recipe for burgundy mushrooms is amazing. But her second one, come and get it and the new frontier are more meh in my opinion. (my mom sends them all to me, its not my fault, lol.)
Congrats to Ree. It takes discipline. I lost 25 pounds during the pandemic by simply counting calories and walking more. Tracking every morsel you put in your mouth is key. Yes, make Ree’s high-fat recipes but count EVERY calorie. This method works for me because no food is off limits and it’s a diet I can incorporate for the long run.
I’ve made that chocolate strawberry cake and it’s fab!