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Pencil-slim "Access Hollywood" host Maria Menounos may look great now, but she once packed on an extra 40 pounds, she tells Fitness magazine.

Menounos says her problem was overeating in college, when she would easily down five slices of pizza at a time, going up to a size 14.

"I decided enough was enough," she tells Fitness. "Depriving myself didn't work because, yeah, I'd resist a craving one night, but then it'd come back the next day and it'd be worse," she says.

And she lost the weight — by eating right and doing regular exercise — before she became famous.

"I did it on my own, when I was dirt-poor," she says. "And I've kept it off for nine years."

Click here to read more from Fitness magazine