Melissa Gilbert opened up about her plastic surgery experiences, and she revealed why she wanted her breast implants “permanently” removed.
While appearing on the Tuesday, July 29, episode of Jennie Garth‘s “I Choose Me” podcast, Gilbert, 61, explained that marrying her husband, Tim Busfield, in 2013 inspired her to question her past decisions.
After she met Busfield, 68, Gilbert eagerly left Los Angeles to live with her husband in his home state of Michigan. She explained that her excitement stemmed from believing that life out of Los Angeles would subside any pressures she felt about her appearance.
“I said, ‘That’s great. Please get me out of L.A. I have to go somewhere I can age,'” she jokingly said.
She explained that living in Michigan was “amazing,” as well as so “different and peaceful” than her life in Los Angeles. “It was a really great kind of honeymoon period, but it was also a really great time for me to land into my own skin,” Gilbert said.
The Little House on the Prairie alum explained that she was “at peak filler, Botox, big boobs” when she left Los Angeles. However, she decided to change her appearance after she saw paparazzi photos of herself.
“It startled me and I thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s not who I am or who I wanted to be.’ I made a decision to back off all of that to see what was underneath it and to figure out who I was,” she said. “And then I met Tim a while after that and I started expressing this to him and he was all for it.”
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Gilbert recalled telling her husband, “I really wanna take out my breast implants permanently … I don’t want them anymore.” She then said that he was “all for it.”
Gilbert explained that the decision came after she realized she didn’t want to “make a decision in my 80s to have them replaced” and that she wanted her “body back to what it was.”
“I want to feel strong and healthy as I age now,” she concluded.