Queen Latifah explains why she was angry when trainer said she was obese

Queen Latifah is speaking out about her weight and why she’s angry about being categorized as obese.

The actress and singer opened up on a new episode of Red Table Talk about the day a personal trainer told her she would be considered obese.

“I was mad at that,” Latifah said in a clip for Wednesday’s episode of the Facebook Watch show. “It pissed me off,” she said, stunned at finding out that what she thought of as being “just thick” turned out to be “30% over” where she should’ve been in terms of weight, according to the trainer.

“She’s showing me different body types and she’s telling me, this is what your BMI is, this is what your weight is, and you fall into this category of obesity,” said The Equalizer star, referring to body mass index, a measure of body fat based on height and weight, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Latifah also opened up to Red Table Talk hosts Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith and Adrienne Banfield-Norris about the scrutiny she received early on in her acting career, including during her time on the hit ’90s show Living Single.

”We looked like four women who live in Brooklyn, and that’s what we were supposed to be representing,” she said. “But the word came down that we needed to lose weight.”

As a result of her desire to spark more conversation around weight loss and obesity, Latifah joined the It’s Bigger Than Me campaign and is currently on a three-city tour encouraging honest discussion with audience and panel members.

She told ABC Audio of the tour, “The only way we’re going to change the stigma that comes along with it and really educate people is to sit down, to have conversations.”