Contributor: Carrie Blackshaw 

Remember when Simon Cowell dissed Mandisa’s badunkadunk during Season 5’s American Idol auditions? (He said they’d need “a bigger stage.”)

Well, check out homegirl now! Right before dropping her new album, she reveals a new body and she looks amazing 75 pounds later. 
The Grammy-nominated gospel singer’s weight battle was borne of early trauma – she was told People magazine that she was sexually molested as a child and raped at 16. “A lot of girls turn to men to fill that void and some turn to drugs,” Mandisa, 32, said. “I turned to food as my drug of choice.”

She set a goal to drop 100 pounds after feeling winded at a trip to Mt. Rushmore last summer.

“I thought I couldn’t get up and sing about freedom when I had been chained for so long,” she says.

How’d she do it? Cardio workouts five days a week, a diet heavy on salads, lean meats and fiber, and counseling to work on her childhood issues.

“Being able to fit into clothes I couldn’t before is great,” she says. “To be able to walk into a room and not feel self-conscious, I don’t ever remember feeling this way.”