Lifestyle

WALTZ THIS WAY

‘Dancing With the Stars’ Winner, 42, Hits Back at Weight Critics

The two-time champion hopes the show’s viewers will back off.

Tamilore OshikanluContributor

PublishedJul 6, 2026, 2:59 PM EDT

UpdatedJul 6, 2026, 3:55 PM EDT

Updated Jul 6, 2026, 3:55 PM EDTPublished Jul 6, 2026, 2:59 PM EDT

Comments

Award-winning dancer Cheryl Burke wants fans to stop comparing her current figure to the body she had 22 years ago.

The 42-year-old Dancing With the Stars alum pushed back against the latest wave of comments about her appearance during a Wednesday episode of The Dory Jackson Interview series, telling viewers to stop scrutinizing her body for not looking the same as when she first entered the ballroom scene decades earlier.

“Like, stop comparing me to when I was 20,” Burke said. “Yeah, you’re going to look different.”

At 21, Burke joined Dancing With the Stars in 2006. The talented performer quickly became one of its breakout pros, winning back-to-back Mirrorball Trophies in Seasons 2 and 3 with 98 Degrees boybander Drew Lachey and NFL star Emmitt Smith, respectively.

But the attention also came with years of tabloid fixation on her weight, including one headline that has stuck with her.

“Is Cheryl too fat for TV?” Burke recalled one headline asking during her early years on the show. “I will never forget that,” she added.

The comments have not exactly disappeared since Burke’s departure from Dancing With the Stars after 26 seasons. They have just taken on a new shape.

Online commenters have speculated about her body changing after she left the show, with some suggesting that GLP-1 medications and plastic surgery are the reasons for her physical transformation.

But the reality is much less mysterious, she says. She stopped training like a professional ballroom dancer.

“I was jacked,” Burke said. “Like my legs were—I was like a bodybuilder down there.”

The champion dancer said her body changed once she was no longer putting it through the punishing schedule that came with rehearsals, performances, and years of live television.

“When you’re not pounding on your body, it’s changing,” she said. “Maybe not for the best, but it’s just—that’s life.”

Burke said the adjustment has been physical and psychological, especially while navigating aging and perimenopause. The “stressful” process has been made worse by viewers assuming they are entitled to weigh in.

The irony, Burke has argued, is that the version of herself that some fans now praise was not actually the healthiest.

“What kills me now? Genuinely makes me furious? That people look back at photos of me from that era and say I looked so much healthier,” she wrote in Glamour.

Burke said she was drinking every night at the time, eating fast food from Del Taco at midnight to “soak up the alcohol,” and trying to get through live shows while struggling behind the scenes.

Speaking to Jackson, Burke said leaving the show forced her into a completely different kind of reckoning.

After being “stressed for 17 years straight,” she said, she suddenly had to sit with herself without the constant structure of rehearsals, scores, costumes, and cameras.

GET WELL SOON

‘Dancing With the Stars’ Coach Hospitalized During Tour

Roosa Rahkonen

That shift has also followed her into the beauty space, where Burke said she now spends more time looking in the mirror—but not in the same way she did as a performer.

Instead of using makeup to create “more cheekbones” or “bigger lips,” Burke said she is trying to accept her face as it is.

“Here’s my canvas,” she said. “This is who I am.”

Burke admitted the comments still get to her, even if they have not been “too bad lately.” But she said there comes a point where hearing the same criticism over and over starts to lose its grip.

Once validation starts coming from within, she said, “You naturally start to not care what people think.”

Tamilore OshikanluContributor

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast.