Shonda Rhimes Reveals the Moment That Inspired Her Weight-Loss Journey

Continuing her year of saying yes to intimidating opportunities, Shonda Rhimes visited The Ellen DeGeneres Show to talk about her new book, The Year of Yes and some of the changes she's made since beginning her personal mission.

After giving a commencement speech at Dartmouth that made her realize that public speaking (which she had been afraid of) could be a good thing, Rhimes set out to do more and learned that "the more fears I conquered, the more I felt like, 'Oh wait, I can do this too,'" she told Ellen.

One of the challenges the Grey's Anatomy creator gave herself was losing weight. Rhimes has lost 127 pounds and said the change was sparked by an incident on an airplane when she couldn't buckle her seat belt. "It wasn't the seat belt, it was me," she said of the embarrassing moment. "And I decided that I would risk just flying out of my seat because I wasn't going to say anything.

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"It really was about the fact that I have a 3-year-old and a 2-year-old and a 13-year-old and I kind of wanted to be around for them," she said.

Take a look at the segment, in which Rhimes also gifts Ellen a special Scandal­-themed surprise.