Lizzo ditched weight loss drug Ozempic and instead "worked really, really hard" to slim down.

The 37-year-old pop star has been sharing updates from her weight loss journey and she has now revealed she briefly used the controversial medication to help her shift some pounds, but she gave up and focused on improving her diet instead.

During an appearance on the Just Trish podcast, Lizzo explained: "I tried everything. Ozempic works because you eat less food, yeah? So if you eat right, it makes you feel full."

She added of the medication: "It's not easy. It's a drug to help somebody with something they're struggling with. I think people ... it's their way of being fat phobic when you're telling someone they're cheating.

"But if you can just do that on your own and get mind over matter, it's the same thing."

Lizzo went on to reveal her biggest breakthrough came when she ditched her vegan diet.

She said: "What did it for me is, it was not being vegan. Because when I was vegan, I was consuming a lot of fake meats.

"I was eating a lot of bread, I was eating a lot of rice and I had to eat a lot of it to stay full. But really I was consuming 3,000-5,000 calories a day ...

"So for me, when I started actually eating whole foods and eating like beef, and chicken, and fish. Like, I was actually full and not expanding my stomach by putting a lot of fake things in there that wasn't actually filling me up."

She added of making healthy changes: "I feel like I worked really really hard and it was intentional with what I did with my body.

"So when I get compliments, I go: 'Thanks b****.' Like I really receive it because I need to receive that. I don't take it any weird way because I tried to do this.'"

It comes after Lizzo admitted she previously used food to "distract" herself when she was battling anxiety issues, but she's managed to boost her mental health using meditation.

In a video posted as a TikTok Live, she explained: "I've been working to get my anxiety under control for years. And then I decided that I want to release and I'm ready to stop waiting to be myself like fully and be happy.

"And I meditated. I calmed myself down. And I isolated a little bit, but not like made myself lonely, not the way I used to when I was depressed. I isolated myself in a mindful way where I had no distractions.

"I loved to distract myself with people. I loved to distract myself with food. I loved to distract myself with drinking. I loved to distract myself with problems that I would create. I would love to do that. And I stopped doing that. And I just focused on me."

In the video, Lizzo also spoke about her weight loss admitting she stopped drinking "two to three" large Starbucks drinks a day and swapped sugary treats for savoury snacks.

She said: "I do something sweet. It's gotta be with some sort of like carb. I'll have like almond butter and toast. So, everybody's body is different. "Find out what works for you ... [I believe the only thing that] works across the board, science-wise, is calories in versus calories out.

"That's just how the human body works."