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Melinda French Gates is sharing more stories about the turning points in her life.
The billionaire philanthropist appeared Monday, April 14, on The Jamie Kern Lima podcast ahead of the release of her new book, The Next Day, which is a blend of advice and memories from the “transitions” throughout her own life.
“Transitions can be scary, exhilarating or both,” she told PEOPLE in a recent cover story about The Next Day and her divorce. “But anything’s possible. And when you get to the other side, you’re going to be okay.”
On the new podcast episode with Lima, a cosmetics entrepreneur, French Gates, 60, opens up about her experiences with her body image — including when she gained 79 lbs. during her first pregnancy and the years it took for her to move past toxic messaging about her weight that she absorbed from others around her, including an ex-boyfriend.
Looking back at her pregnancy with daughter Jennifer in the ‘90s, French Gates recalled that she gained weight in part from a sense of freedom.
That also led to conflicts with her doctor until they eventually came to a “truce,” she said.
“Every time I would go in, they always, they put you on the scale, right? And he really was concerned,” she recalled. “And I finally said to him, ‘Okay, are you concerned because this is a problem for my health or my baby’s health?’ And he said, ‘No.’ “
“And I said, ‘So what’s the problem?’ “ she continued. “And he said, ‘I’m afraid you’re gonna be mad at me because when this is over, it’ll take you a while to get the pregnancy weight off.’ “
That’s when she made him a deal: “You never bring up my weight unless it’s a health problem for me or the baby, and I promise to not be mad at you when this is over.”
French Gates said on the podcast that her joy at being pregnant was intertwined with something like relief from society’s expectations.
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“I was so excited to grow a baby, but it was like finally I didn’t have to worry about, you know, looking good, trying to be thin, what I put in my mouth, other than things that I knew and wanted to eat healthy,” she said.
By her own account, she was “enormous” at one point before giving birth to her daughter, but her health wasn’t affected.
“It was like this, for me, this freeing of — oh my God, these expectations of society that I look a certain way or be a certain way,” she said. “And then much later in my life I realized, hmm, yeah, what are the expectations I have of myself, who’s putting that on me? Maybe society, but maybe myself?”
“So you have to really, you know, eventually look at that too, right?” she said.
Her own issues with body image went back well into her young adulthood, she said.
“I remember caring in high school, but I felt good about myself, or I should say good enough about myself,” French Gates told Lima on her podcast. “But then I had a boyfriend in college that really was not a positive relationship for me at all. And he cared a lot about how I looked and said a lot of things about it to me. And that really is not okay.”
“Eventually, obviously, [I] got out of that relationship,” she continued, “but it took me too long and I inculcated too many of those messages. … It wasn’t probably until I got to 40 that I got more okay with who I was.”
Time, therapy and motherhood all helped, French Gates said.
“I realized that I was role modeling — right? — for my daughters,” she said. (She shares Jenn, Phoebe and son Rory with ex-husband Bill Gates.)
And she found freedom with that, too.
“When you take that down, that perfectionism around weight and body image you wanna talk about, you take that down — whew,” she said. “You have so much more mind space.”
The Next Day will be published on Tuesday, April 15.
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