Shonda Rhimes has opened up about her health decline before her 117 pound weight lossrevealing it got so bad she thought she would be ‘dead in 10 years.’

The acclaimed director, writer, and producer, 55, spoke about her dramatic transformation during the Shonda Rhimes in Conversation with Robin Roberts: Year of Yes at 92NY event on Tuesday.

The Shondaland creator – who never got married – explained that she spent years turning to sweets and fast food to combat ‘sadness’ and ‘heartbreak.’

‘I’d been saying like a happy yes to being out of shape and uncomfortable because food works guys,’ she told the audience.

‘You can put fried chicken on your sadness, you can put cheesecake on your heartbreak.’

She also admitted that she was so unhealthy she could hardly walk up stairs or lift up her children.

‘I really thought I might be dead in 10 years, that’s how bad I felt,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t put my 20-pound kid on my shoulders and run around, which I should have been able to do.

‘At a certain point I started to truly feel terrible, like having a hard time going up the stairs, getting breathless all the time.

‘I developed sleep apnea and I woke up all the time, choking in my sleep. I started to feel awful and I was like, I have to do something about this.’

Elsewhere during the conversation, the star, who adopted three daughters over the years, recalled her joy after she was finally able to hold her kids on her shoulders following her 117-pound weight loss.

‘When that moment happened, when I could do that, it was such a moment of both relief and revelation for me that it’s one of those memories I’ll take with me forever,’ she said. ‘(I felt) like, “Oh my God, I feel myself again.””

Rhimes previously spoke about how much her life changed following her weight loss in an emotional blog post.

She revealed that ‘women she barely knew’ gushed over her and men finally ‘spoke to her’ following her body transformation.

‘Losing weight is annoying and hard and painful and no fun,’ she wrote. ‘But you know what was worse than losing weight? What was SO MUCH MORE HORRIFYING? How people treated me after I lost weight.

‘All these people suddenly felt completely comfortable talking to me about my body. Telling me I looked “pretty” or that they were “proud of me” or (said) that, “Wow, you are so hot now” or, “You look amazing!”‘

The Emmy-award nominee said she felt like people ‘now saw her as a person,’ adding: ‘What the hell did they see me as before? How invisible was I to them then? How hard did they work to avoid me?

‘When I was fat, I wasn’t a PERSON to these people. Like I had been an Invisible Woman who suddenly materialized in front of them. Poof! There I am. Thin and ready for a chat.’

She also spoke about what led to her transformation on the Ellen DeGeneres on her show in 2015, explaining that it came down to her kids.

‘It really was about the fact that I have a three-year-old and a two-year-old and a 13-year-old, and I kind of wanted to be around for them, to be healthy,’ she said at the time.

‘I’m super feminist, and I’m like, “Everybody should be whatever shape they want to be, how dare anybody tell anybody anything.”

‘But then I thought like, “I’m going to fall over, cause I don’t feel good.” So it was really about that.’