Jennifer Lopez was told to lose weight

Jennifer Lopez was told to lose weight at the beginning of her career.

The ‘On the Floor’ hitmaker is known for her curvaceous figure and she has always resisted people who urged her to slim down as she felt she wouldn’t be herself anymore if she changed her body shape.

She said: "They kept telling me to lose weight, and I was a dancer and I was athletic and even my manager at the time who I no longer work with was telling me, ‘You need to lose weight. You need to be thinner.’

"I was like, ‘No I don’t. If I lose any more weight it won’t be me.’ You know what I mean?"

The 46-year-old singer – who has eight-year-old twins Max and Emme with ex-husband Marc Anthony – admits she had a "fight" to stand her ground but is thankful she did as her curvy frame is an inspiration to many women.

After a fan told Jennifer she had inspired her to stop wearing sweatshirts around her waist, the former ‘American Idol’ judge said: "It was a fight. It was definitely a fight, and so it’s good to hear that it helped anybody in some way because at the end of the day I was just trying to be myself without trying to fit into a mold of what everybody else should be.

And the ‘Maid in Manhattan’ star is thankful we now live in a "more accepting" time and thinks attitudes have changed dramatically in recent years.

She added: "It’s a different time now you know, which is awesome to see for me where it is about our differences. It’s about all the diversity.

"It’s just a more accepting time of everything whether it’s body type or race or gender. We’ve come a long way."