Vickie Winans: at home with the gospel star who lost 75 pounds and reenergized her career

GOSPEL great Vickie Winans has overcome many personal challenges in her life--poverty, divorce, illness, and deaths of loved ones--but she says that one of her greatest victories was overcoming a decade-long weight gain that pushed her over 200 pounds.

Although the gospel star is still topping the charts, she's no longer topping the scales, having lost 75 pounds over the last three years and moved into a new orbit of stardom.

Her weight-loss odyssey began with a fat joke. Winans was clowning around at a Las Vegas luncheon two years ago and gospel's Stellar Awards producer Don Jackson was in the audience. "I guess if I lose weight, they would let me host the Stellar Awards," she said into the mike. The offhand remark brought the house down. Three days later, the producer called her bluff and asked her to host. "I almost had a heart attack," she says, because she weighed about 230 pounds and had only three months before the show. After a crash diet, she lost 35 pounds and called the producer's bluff.

The show received one of the highest ratings ever, and she was asked to host again the following year. The day she got the call she was on her way to get ice cream, and she decided, in the days that followed, that she had to make a life-changing decision to lose weight. "So I kept it off and lost another 40 pounds to where I am now," she says. "It's been three years in July. It hasn't been easy."

How did she do it?

"I did quite a few things, and the Atkins diet is my main diet," she says. "No bread, no starch, no sugar." She also skipped dairy products and had a tummy tuck to remove excess skin and fat in her waist area.

Did she follow a strict diet?

"I dieted and I cheated," she says. A self-professed "riceaholic," Winans says she snacked and cheated by sneaking fruit into the Atkins diet (a no-no on that plan).

Despite occasional lapses, she followed the protein-packed plan, and it paid off. Her powerhouse voice is now better than ever. "I sing better," she says. "When you don't have a lot of garbage in your system, you sing better."

And you receive more critical acclaim. Her new CD, Bringing It All Together, debuted at No. 1 on the gospel charts, and she has embarked on an exhaustive 48-city promotional concert tour. She attributes her new success not only to a new diet and new energy but also to nearly 20 years in the business and her relationship with her public.

The album is a family project for Winans, who was supported by her two producer sons. Her son, Mario (Yellowman) Winans, who has made a mint remixing and producing hits with P. Diddy, Jennifer Lopez and the Notorious B.I.G., remixed the CD's slammin' first single, "Shake Yourself Loose." Her younger son, Marvin (Coconut) Winans, wrote, tracked and co-produced more than 70 percent of the project.

Bringing It All Together has something for every generation, from kids to elders. "But what I'm most excited about is that this album was created to bring the family closer together," she says. "There's music for grandma, mom and dad and the kids. So I'm really excited about families coming together to listen to gospel music."

Winans knows a lot about families. Born into a hardworking but poor family, she is the 7th of 12 children. Her parents provided love, but couldn't provide a lot of material things, and Winans suffered, she says, a lot of losses. "I've been through so much in my life," she says. "I've been sick, down to 99 pounds, lost my beloved father and other relatives, two divorces."

In addition to all that, there was another devastating blow that she has never revealed publicly--the loss of her only daughter, Destiny Joy, who was born prematurely and lived only one hour and five minutes.

Not always heavy, Winans gained weight after her 16-year marriage to another gospel great, Marvin Winans, the father of her children, ended in divorce. "I gained the bulk of the weight right after I divorced Marvin," she says. "I really went through a lot. I got ulcers and I was on medication. I was sick from the stress of the divorce." She says the divorce was "nobody's fault." Although the marriage didn't work out, she says, "Marvin is a great person, a fabulous pastor and a wonderful father, but we grew apart, and after I look back at it, I find that I really did love him. It really hurts that [we] just didn't conquer the enemy that came to attack our marriage."

Ironically, she was singing in the group Winans II with Bebe and CeCe Winans when she met and married their brother Marvin. Although Vickie had been singing in church since she was 8 years old, she was comfortable as a backup singer for the famous brother/sister duo, and she says she never wanted to sing solo. "I always sang background in family groups," she says. When Bebe and CeCe Winans began their duet career, she says she tried to get more singers for the group, but it never happened. "So I started singing by myself," she says. In 1985, she released her first solo effort, the now classic Be Encouraged, which yielded her signature song, "We Shall Behold Him."