Shonda Rhimes: 'People found me valuable' after 150-pound weight loss

— -- When Shonda Rhimes lost 150 pounds a few years ago, she discovered that her entire life was transformed, and not necessarily in a good way.

The creator of ABC shows including "Grey's Anatomy" and "Scandal" wrote in her Shondaland newsletter that once she shed the weight, people began treating her differently.

For the first time, she noticed that people complimented her and seemed excited to chat with her -- a shift she found more "horrifying" than the weight loss process itself.

"What the hell did they see me as before? How invisible was I to them then? How hard did they work to avoid me? What words did they use to describe me? What value did they put on my presence at a party, a lunch, a discussion?" she wrote.

She continued: "After I lost weight, I discovered that people found me valuable. Worthy of conversation. A person one could look at. A person one could compliment. A person one could admire. A person. You heard me. I discovered that NOW people saw me as a PERSON."

Rhimes, 47, spoke out about her weight loss in 2015, saying in a "Nightline" interview that she spent more than a year getting into shape and changing her diet. Today, she added, she does not enjoy discussing her transformation, which, she wrote, she only made because she found simple tasks to be physically exhausting. The conversations that revolve around her body bore her, she added, because she hated -- and still hates -- the process. However, she opened up about it in her newsletter to tee up an interview with "Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body" author Roxane Gay, which can be found in Rhimes' newsletter.

"These days, I feel like a chunky spy in a thinner world. Strangers tell fat jokes in front of me. Jokes not meant for me. But ... completely for the woman I used to be 150 pounds ago. The woman I could be again one day. The woman I will always be inside," Rhimes wrote. "Because being thinner doesn’t make you a different person. It just makes you thinner."