NEWSHoda Kotb Claims Former Boss Urged Her to 'Try to Get on the Treadmill': 'I Always Assumed I Was in Shape'
Hoda Kotb claimed one of her former bosses urged her to 'try to get on the treadmill.'
Dec. 2 2024, Published 4:00 p.m. ET
Hoda Kotb claimed one of her former bosses told her something she'll never forget when she was first starting out.
During the Monday, December 2, Today with Hoda and Jenna episode, the TV star, who is leaving the Today show in January 2025, talked about how Timothée Chalamet allegedly lost certain parts for not having “the right body.”
Kotb, 60, told her co-host Jenna Bush Hager she understood, as she was in a similar position.
Hoda Kotb recalled one of her bosses telling her to go on the treadmill.
“I still remember I had just started working at a small market, and I played basketball in high school, so I always assumed I was in shape even though literally after college and stuff, I wasn’t,” she began.
“I still remember my boss going to me, ‘Hey, Hoda,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah?’ He goes, ‘Hey, I got an idea –– maybe you might wanna try to get on the treadmill,'" she continued. “He said it like that, and I go, ‘What?’ Like, you know when you have a perception of yourself that is not the perception in the real world?”
The star is leaving the 'Today' show in 2025.
Bush Hager gasped at the story, stating that it was “reverse body dysmorphia,” referring to a person not worried about their appearance.
“Yeah, so I was like, ‘What are you talking about?'” Kotb stated. “But, if you don’t fit, they want you to wear something a certain way, cut your hair a certain way, speak a certain way.”
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Hoda Kotb underwent a mastectomy in 2017.
Kotb didn't name the boss, but she first started working at a CBS local affiliate in Greenville, Miss., after graduating from Virginia Tech in 1986.
Hoda Kotb shares two kids with ex Joel Schiffman.
The journalist has been candid about body positivity in the past, as she underwent a mastectomy in 2017 after being diagnosed with b------ cancer.
"You don’t realize how long the journey is," she told Hager in 2022. "I remember really clearly, after my cancer surgery — I did a surgery where it was a mastectomy, but they also did a hip-to-hip incision to do some moving things around — but anyway, I remember, afterwards, having to get washed in the hospital. I hadn’t seen (the scarring), because I just hadn’t looked at it. A nurse came in to help me and she stood me in front of the mirror, and I was horrified."
“You know when you look, and you’re like, ‘That’s me now?! Like, this is the body for the rest of my life that’s going to carry me through?’” she continued. “You don’t see it as: The cancer is gone. Right then, that moment, you see it as this horrible (thing)."
However, she's learned to love her physique. "There was a person who was in my life at that time who saw me as really beautiful," she said of a man she once dated. "That was his purpose, I think, in my life. I remembered feeling not pretty and not worthy, and then somebody doesn’t see the scars. Like, someone looks at you and just doesn’t see that."
