Kim Kardashian caused outrage last month after telling Vogue she had dropped a whopping “16 pounds in three weeks” so that she could fit into the iconic Bob Mackie rhinestone dress worn by the late Marilyn Monroe when she sang Happy Birthday Mr. President to John F Kennedy in 1962. During her chat on the red carpet with the aforementioned publication, the Skims entrepreneur said she hadn’t eaten sugar or carbs in three weeks in order to be slim enough to fit Marilyn’s size.

And it wasn’t long before the 41-year-old was met with a heap of backlash for the remark as the likes of Jameela Jamil and actress Lili Reinhart took to social media to slam Kim for endorsing the idea that drastically cutting one’s diet for the sake of wearing a dress to an event was acceptable. Lili, in particular, was extremely vocal about the situation, saying, “the ignorance is other-worldly disgusting.” And while Kim never addressed the criticism she received at the time, in her recent chat with The New York Times, she defended her decision as she drew comparisons to Christian Bale, who famously lost 62 pounds for his role as Trevor Reznik in the 2003 thriller The Machinist.

“To me it was like, ‘OK, Christian Bale can do it for a movie role and that is acceptable.’ Even Renée Zellweger gained weight for a role,” Kim explained. “It’s all the same to me. I wasn’t saying, ‘Hey everyone, why don’t you go lose this weight in a short period of time?’” She stood her ground by saying that her 16-pound weight loss was not done in an unhealthy way, presumably because she would have had a nutritionist advising her what to eat and what not to eat ahead of her big night.

When Kim spoke to Vogue during her red carpet appearance at the Met Gala, she said that on top of cutting down the likes of carbs and sugar, she heavily relied on “the cleanest veggies and protein,” and she would wear a sauna suit twice a day before running on the treadmill to speed up her weight loss to fit into Marilyn’s dress.

Kim was then quizzed on what she would have done had she not reached her desired goal in time for the Met Gala, to which the SKKN by Kim founder quipped, “I just simply couldn’t have gone, which wouldn’t have mattered. It was just important to me to reach that goal.”

The mother-of-four attended last month’s Met Gala with her beau Pete Davidson, whom she has been dating since October, shortly after hosting NBC’s Saturday Night Live. The pair are said to have gone from strength to strength in their relationship, with Kim revealing in the latest episode of The Kardashians that she initially didn’t see herself settling down with the Trainwreck star.