I Got This

by Jennifer Hudson

  I GOT THIS

  JENNIFER

  HUDSON

  I GOT THIS

  How I Changed My Ways and

  Lost What Weighed Me Down

  DUTTON

  DUTTON

  Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.); Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England; Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd); Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd); Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India; Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd); Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First printing, January 2012

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Copyright © 2012 by JHud Productions, Inc.

  Weight Watchers recipes copyright © Weight Watchers International, Inc. Printed with permission.

  All insert photographs, unless otherwise stated, are courtesy of the author.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without written permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Hudson, Jennifer, 1981–

  I got this : how I changed my ways and lost what weighed me down / Jennifer Hudson.

  p.cm.

  EISBN: 9781101565780

  1. Hudson, Jennifer, 1981–2. Singers—United States—Biography.3. Motion picture actors and actresses—United States—Biography.4. Overweight persons—United States—Biography.

  I. Title.

  ML420.H835A3 2012

  782.42164092—dc23

  [B]

  2011043578

  Printed in the United States of America

  Set in Walbaum MT Std

  Designed by Alissa Amell

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  ____________________________

  Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity.

  In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers;

  however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.

  To my cousin Angela White—who is the ultimate health fanatic, my workout buddy, and a huge part of my inspiration.

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER ONE BELIEVE

  CHAPTER TWO INVISIBLE

  CHAPTER THREE SPOTLIGHT

  CHAPTER FOUR WHERE YOU AT

  CHAPTER FIVE I’M YOUR DREAMGIRL…

  CHAPTER SIX AND I AM TELLING YOU I’M NOT GOING

  CHAPTER SEVEN GIVING MYSELF

  CHAPTER EIGHT I AM CHANGING

  CHAPTER NINE FEELING GOOD

  CHAPTER TEN DON’T LOOK DOWN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN I REMEMBER ME

  CHAPTER TWELVE I GOT THIS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  WEIGHT WATCHERS RECIPES

  PHOTOS

  INTRODUCTION

  “Jennifer! Over here!”

  “Jennifer, look this way.”

  “Jennifer, Jennifer.”

  “Over here!”

  “No, over here!”

  “Jennifer, turn to the right!”

  I always dreamed of someday walking the red carpet in Hollywood. Let’s be real. It’s fun. Everyone there is shouting out your name just to get a glimpse of what you’re wearing. The press asks you to pose, wave, and smile as they snap photo after photo, with flashes popping so bright you can hardly see. It’s a moment in time a girl feels truly beautiful. And on this particular night, I thought I was looking fierce.

  It was one of my first red-carpet events. I was a contestant on American Idol, and was living my dream of singing for millions of people on the highest-rated show on television. I was a long way from singing in church and talent shows on the South Side of Chicago. I was excited, taking in the red-carpet finery for the first time. I felt on top of the world.

  “Jennifer, are you insecure about being a ‘big girl’ in Hollywood?”

  That is, until that question.

  Oh, hell no. She didn’t just ask me that.

  But she did.

  It took me a minute to figure out who the reporter was actually talking to.

  Who, me? I thought. Insecure?

  Surely, she wasn’t addressing me that way. I had the height of a supermodel, breasts that were naturally big and real, and a God-given shape. Why would I feel insecure about that? I looked around hoping to spot another Jennifer—an insecure “big” girl, but there wasn’t anyone else there.

  Nope.

  Just me.

  Like Randy Jackson said to me after my American Idol audition: “Welcome to Hollywood, girl!”

  CHAPTER ONE

  BELIEVE

  I was born on September 12, 1981, in the Englewood area of Chicago. I am the third child of my parents, Darnell Hudson Donnerson and Samuel Simpson. My mama raised me, my sister Julia, and my brother Jason on her own as a single parent. We were a close family, surrounded by lots of aunts, uncles, cousins, and our grandparents.

  I come from the South Side of Chicago, where a lot of the girls have curves. Most of the men there don’t want their ladies too skinny. Oh, no. They want a little meat on the bones, and a little something to hold on to. Most of the girls in my neighborhood were built just like me—and that’s what we wanted. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather have my share of nice curves than no shape at all. That’s not to say that I didn’t know I was bigger than some girls—I just never really felt all that insecure about it.

  My sister, Julia, has been a big girl for her entire life. My brother, Jason, was built exactly the same.

  As for me?

  Comparatively speaking, I was the skinny one in my family! In fact, I was so thin as a little girl that you could see my ribs beneath my shirts. My mama took me, not Julia and Jason—the heavy kids in our family—to the doctor. She thought something had to be wrong.

  “My child must be very sick! I can see her ribs!” Mama spoke desperately to the doctor as if I was dying. I wasn’t sick and I surely wasn’t dying—I was just thin.

  In my family, if you were too skinny, something had to be wrong. My family likes to see some shape, too, and if you don’t have that, they’ll feed you until you do. And trust me—when it comes to food, the Hudsons don’t play around.

  Like a lot of families in my neighborhood, food was a central focus for all types of gatherings, from family reunions to Sunday-night dinners. There were, of course, the exceptions, and I grew up knowing kids from school who were rarely served home-cooked meals—they ate TV dinners and frozen vegetables—but that wasn’t our family. My mama would never allow that kind of food in our house. She loved to cook. I never knew times were tou
gh or that money was short in our home because Mama always had a hot meal on the table. And if she cooked it, we ate it. My grandma and mama were the best cooks, and later, Jason became a good cook, too. Not me—I didn’t start cooking much until I got older and had a family of my own.

  It gave my mama a lot of joy to make meals for her kids. She especially loved making hot breakfasts so we could start our days off right and nourished. Before school, we filled our plates with bacon, ham or sausage, pancakes, waffles, eggs, and biscuits. I said nourished…not healthy! But oh, that food was so good.

  When it came time for dinner, meals were always prepared fresh and from scratch, too. We were a family of tradition and creatures of habit, so Wednesday was spaghetti night, Friday was always our fried fish night, and Sunday was strictly about praising God, spending time with family, and eating really good food. We’d all go to church in the morning and then stop someplace after service for a bite to eat for lunch. Sundays were the only day of the week that we ate out. It was a special treat I looked forward to every week. My grandma and mama loved to stop at Kentucky Fried Chicken, but we kids always wanted to eat at McDonald’s. I usually ordered a cheeseburger with no onions—I hated onions as a kid and still do. If my burger came with onions, I’d sit there, cry, and refuse to eat it until my mama picked the onions off—or my brother ate my burger for me.

  Whenever we ate out, I nitpicked my meal so I could make it last longer, and I was a slow eater, anyway. Eating out was that much of a treat. We weren’t allowed to order a drink because it cost too much money. Mind you, this was before the days of value meals, so everything on the menu was à la carte. Jason told my mama that if he didn’t have a drink he’d throw up his food. That was his way of being slick to get himself a drink. It worked every time, too.

  Sunday nights were full-on family-style dinners with all the fixings. Those meals were like a traditional Christmas dinner at my mama’s house every week, with most of my favorite foods being served—collard greens, creamy mashed potatoes, pork chops with heavy gravy, macaroni and cheese, fried chicken with biscuits, and more. Just talking about those meals takes me back to the days of mindless eating without a care. And when it came to dessert, Mama made the best peanut butter cookies and pound cake on the planet. Everyone loved her pound cake. It tasted like she used at least two pounds of butter. For that reason alone, we should have called it “two pound cake.” All that butter made it taste so much better.

  One thing is for sure: We ate very well seven days a week. It wasn’t just at my mama’s house that we ate this way. It was at Grandma’s house and our aunts’ houses, too. I always ate my fill, but I hardly ever finished all of the food I piled on my plate back then. My brother didn’t mind, though, because he got to eat all of my leftovers.

  When we weren’t eating those delicious meals, my granddaddy used to spoil us with goodies from the gas station where he worked. He frequently brought home chips, candy, and other special treats. On payday, he gave each of us some money to walk to the store and pick out all of the junk food we wanted. We loved when Granddaddy got paid because Mama only gave us a quarter when we wanted to buy something special. If I asked for fifty cents, it was as if I was trying to rob a bank.

  “Mama, it’s only fifty cents!” I’d plead.

  “Jenny, money doesn’t grow on trees!” And then she’d send me off to ask my granddaddy for the money.

  Now, he’d give us three dollars—each! It felt like I could buy up the whole store with that money. I have always had more of a taste for salty treats than sugary ones, so as a kid I preferred eating pickles and potato chips over candy and cakes. The saltier the better for me.

  As I got older, all of those big meals and all that junk food began to catch up with me. I went from being a skinny chicken to a round and robust young woman. I wasn’t fat, but people were no longer seeing my ribs. I was starting to look like the rest of my family.

  As I gradually gained weight, I started to develop my own way of dressing. I liked to call it “free style.” I chose clothes I liked, not things that were trendy or name brands, which is what my brother and sister always went for. I chose to accentuate my curves, or to just show my personal flair. Some might have thought my outfits were a little weird—but I liked to think of them as unique. I didn’t care what size I wore, I just wore what I liked. One of my favorite outfits included a pair of overalls, which I wore to high school at least once a week. I was establishing a personal style…and flair, in lots of different ways, something my mama started to notice.

  For example, I have always signed my name with great flourish. Even as a child, I made big swoops and grand letters.

  “Jenny, you have an artistic signature. I think you can draw!” my mother said with great enthusiasm.

  “Whatever,” I said.

  At the time, I had no interest in drawing. But then, one day, I gave it a try and I’ve not put my pencil down since. My whole bedroom was covered in my sketches. I have an uncanny ability to draw whatever I see. I always tell people that I got my grandma’s voice and my mother’s artistic talent.

  Then my mother came to me and said, “Jenny, you’re such a prankster, I think you might be able to act. I really believe you will be an actress someday.”

  It’s true that as a kid, I was a real practical joker. I loved (and still love) to play tricks on my family and did so whenever I had the chance.

  “Whatever,” I said.

  Do you see a pattern? My usual response of “whatever” turned out to be quite appropriate because whatever my mama spoke of inevitably came true.

  My family always says my voice is a gift—a precious jewel I inherited from my maternal grandmother. My grandma’s name was Julia Kate Hudson. My sister and I used to joke that the Kates in our family got all the talent. (My middle name is Kate, and one of my names in my family is Jenny Kate—which I call myself when I’m just being me, hanging out and doing ordinary things.)

  People often spoke about how beautifully my grandmother could sing. She was also the sweetest, kindest, most loving, and giving woman. I absolutely loved spending time with her, and especially listening to her sing. She loved to sing hymns and praise God with her voice.

  Grandma’s house had high ceilings and hardwood floors, which resulted in amazing acoustics. The openness created a sound as if I was singing into a microphone. I would sit on her stairs and just sing my heart out. We have a lot of great singers in our family, so my voice wasn’t all that unusual, but some of my older family members told me I had “the gift.” They also often said I reminded them of my grandma. I loved to sing and perform. People responded to my voice when I started singing in church or at local talent shows. People would come from all over Chicago just to hear me sing. I became aware that I could move them with my music and I liked the way that felt. There was a certain sense of power that came with capturing my audience that left me wanting more. They say that most performers live for the applause. Even as a little girl I understood what that meant, and the more I got, the more I wanted.

  Even though Grandma had a beautiful voice, she used to tell me that she never wanted to become famous because she’d have to move and perform on demand even if she didn’t feel like it—what we would call being “on” today. There are plenty of days performers need to be lifted up and are expected to have the energy to do the lifting. Grandma was perfectly content singing for the Lord. As long as she was reading her Bible or singing in church, she was happy. I remember being mesmerized watching her sing in our church choir. She did more than one hundred solos in that church. Grandma taught me her favorite gospel songs, which I loved to sing. They were powerful and emotional, and everything I thought a song should be to evoke those same reactions from the audience. Grandma’s love for gospel is the reason I make sure to have at least one inspirational song on my albums. It is my way of keeping her close, even now.

  Around my thirteenth birthday, Grandma had her first stroke and then started having seizures. I never wanted
her to be alone so I spent most of my free time keeping her company. I was always quick to volunteer to spend the day at her house so she wouldn’t get lonely. There were some good days when Grandma would be up and well, shuffling her feet, singing her hymns; but then there were days when she couldn’t get out of bed. Those days were my inspiration to write my first song called “To Love Somebody,” so Grandma would know how much she meant to me. I sat on the side of her bed and sang it to her.

  “It feels good to love somebody, but it hurts to let them go. And it hurts to love somebody when you know you have to let them go.”

  Grandma passed away when I was sixteen years old. Since then, I’ve carried a heart-shaped stone with me wherever I go, as a way to connect to my grandma. I inherited her gift, and I try to keep her memory close.

  After Grandma died, instead of wallowing in my sadness, I vowed that I would go on with my life, follow my dream, and make good decisions along the way so I would make her proud. My grandma and mama were the two most important women in my life because they showed me that with the faith of a mustard seed, anything was possible.

  In high school, I wasn’t what you’d call a typical teenager. I didn’t hang out much with girlfriends, other than my friends from choir. I spent most of my free time with my family. I did have a boyfriend, but he went to a different high school and we only saw each other in the neighborhood. My life wasn’t full of the typical teenager things like movies and parties and dances and things like that. I was focused, even then, on my music.

  I still love spending time with my family and old friends from home. Being with these familiar touchstones helps me to stay grounded. I am still the same person I’ve always been, which I think surprises people. I remind them that my career doesn’t define me. Sure, it’s a part of who I am but it doesn’t determine how I act.

  I do.

  I’ve never forgotten where I came from, so when it comes to family and good friends, bring it on. The more the merrier. That is why my cousin helps me with my son and one of my brothers works security for me. Even my best friend from middle school, Walter Williams III, works for me as my executive assistant. He’s my gatekeeper, and my best friend in the whole world.