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After discussions with her doctor, she took control of her health, and with the help of a trainer, improving her diet, and semaglutide, she is 40 lbs down and baring it all in new single “Monsters in the Closet.” I asked Syleena what woke her up, and in a way she could only say, she shared “My scale, girl, that scale was it. So at that point, I knew it was time for a supplement. I wanted to go to a doctor because I didn’t want to be on something that be in these black markets that people be on, and then you end up sick or hurting yourself. I was pre-diabetic, and my doctor informed me that Semigluide would help but that I still needed to eat right and I still needed to do the stuff I needed to do. But he said it would help with my appetite and facilitate my workout or have full-blown diabetes.”
Johnson’s doctor prescribed Ozempic® (semaglutide) which is an injection once-weekly GLP-1 RA medicine that, along with diet and exercise, may help improve blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes. The drug has become quite popular, and many assume it to be a weight loss drug when in fact it’s a drug to treat diabetes that may or may not assist with weight loss as well. When Johnson’s insurance didn’t cover Ozempic, she began taking semaglutide which is the generic under the same name. While the medication was helpful to her she did admit that she had questions about it and urged her followers to consult their doctors before considering the injections.
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“Anybody that knows me knows I hate to take anything. I’ll do my protein shakes, I’ll take omega 3s, MCT oils, all those little things that help with weight loss and help to help speed up your metabolism. But I’m always very scared to take any type of under-the-counter substances or medicine. I just be scared of medicine. But what else was I supposed to do? Just have a bad time, and then I’m a health and wellness person (as Johnson has naturally loss weight previously and competed in fitness and body-building competitions.) I’m a health and wellness advocate. I’ve lost weight 1,000 times naturally, even though that’s still natural to me because I still had to eat right. I know people who took the medicine and changed nothing about their diets or exercised and didn’t lose a pound; that wasn’t my story. I was told to do it while eating a good diet. And I talked to not just my family practitioner; I talked to my heart doctor because I was scared about that. I talked to my neurologist; I told him I was on it. I told the blood man because I’d be scared. I wanted to make sure that doctors and they were like, oh, no, it’s a good drug, you’ll be fine. And they said it’s not even bad to be on in a long time. But I just don’t want to be on it for a long time.”
But what Syleena wants you to know is for her this is about health, not about fitting in with the entertainment industry because for her, her goal is to do the exact opposite as she’s had her share of pain within the music industry and how their standards of beautify impacted her and inspired her single “Monsters in the Closet.”
“This industry makes you think we have to be almost perfect. And now, when I was coming in, you had to be super thin; now they want you to have huge butts and breasts and little bitty weights. So now you have people running around here trying to go look like Betty Boop, which is also dangerous with the surgeries that come with that. So the pressure that is put upon women to look the way that society picks in the moment is absolutely absurd. It’s ridiculous and naturally, it has affected me. I wrote a whole book called ‘The Weight is Over.’ That depicts that entire story and what I went through in the music business in regard to what they thought of me and my body. And then I’m 5’10″.”
“The industry is changing so much and now there is diversity. There’s Black, White, transgender, women of all sizes in campaigns, women with natural hair, we have come a long way. But back then, the average woman in the industry was like 5’5”. So they not only didn’t wanted me because I wasn’t skinny, but I also was too tall. There was a lot of pressure to kind of fit the status quo. To have that be instilled in me at 21 years old, it’s taken years, I’m talking about just recently to be in a place of peace and freedom about my body and who I am. Even with me taking Semaglutide that was for my saving my life, and not feeling good in my body and letting depression just really take me down. I was drinking every day. My best friend’s daughter killed herself. She was 15 years old, that had just happened. Then my makeup artist, which was one of my closest friends, died of cancer. That was just this February. And last year, my dad died. So I’m already having a time. My friend Jason died right after my niece. So, yeah, I’m having a time, you know what I’m saying? I had to do what I needed to do to be okay. Medicine is out here for us to feel better. And I want to feel good inside of my body, but just recently, I found that freedom.”
That freedom is explored in Johnson’s new talk show “Crowned,” an engaging new talk show hosted by Vivica A. Fox, Syleena Johnson, Kendra G., and Chanel Nicole Scott! “When we started filming for the show, I was about to start that whole routine of being down on myself physically and I stopped myself in my tracks, and I said, you know what? I’m not a size 2, and I’m okay with not being a 2. I’m going to put on clothes that I think are cute, that I like and you’re not getting ready to get high heels every show, you’re going to get Syleena at her truest essence.”
As the singer embarks on this new chapter, her new single “Monsters in the Closet” is where she shares her inner thoughts on the music industry, healing, and therapy — a practice that so many in the Black community are beginning to discuss more than ever.
“Creating ‘Monsters in the Closet’ was absolute healing, but it was birthed from pain. My dad died on February 6, 2022. That was my youngest son’s birthday. My father died on my youngest son’s birthday, and he died at, like, two in the morning, something like that. And I had to, later that day, do a whole birthday party with cakes and kids and everything. Following that, I didn’t have time to process; I had to go right to work. The good thing about my work is, as a musician, I was able to utilize that space to have emotion, to put my feelings into words. That was the very first song I recorded the rest of February. As you can imagine, the funeral services arguing with siblings it was just a mess. It was horrible. People act a fool in death, and that is when the drinking started. I was on a real good, strict diet before my father died, but that’s when the drinking started. That’s when it’s bad eating, staying up late, I didn’t sleep well. So that’s when the bad habits kind of set in. And when you’re going through stuff, you develop the attitude that’s like this, I don’t care. Because it’s like you’re already going through something and you’re already feeling pain, so you’re like, you know what else matters?”
“I started talking to my therapist, and I was complaining to her about or just kind of explaining to her not complaining, but explaining to her how I felt about a situation and she said, Syleena you don’t have to worry. There are no monsters in the closet. And I sat and thought, who are the monsters in my closet. Is it my mom? Is it my dad? Is it certain record execs? Because I like to think of it like this. You know how when you were a kid, right, and let’s say the closet was cracked. It’s dark in the closet. And so when we’re kids, we going to be like, oh, hell no. Right? And put the covers over my head, and whoever in the closet, good luck. You can have everything in the closet. I’m good. You know what I’m saying? We’re not going to deal with it. We’re going to take the covers and we’re going to put it over our head, and we’re not going to deal with it. Well, that’s what we’re doing in life.”
“We take the covers, and we pull them over our heads. And so I was just like, this needs to be a song. Nobody’s saying anything about what’s going on in this music business and having all these fears. Nobody’s saying nothing. We’re just supposed to deal with it and gone ’bout our business. And so I was like, you know what? I’m tired of writing records about only love. We got enough records like that, but it was time to tell this story.”
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited and condensed. BlackLove.com is not a health and wellness or medical site. Please consult your doctor for any weight loss questions or concerns regarding Ozempic®.
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