"The View" host Sherri Shepherd, whose been diagnosed with diabetes since 2007, has had a 40 pound weight lose and looks healthier ad happier than she ever has. After years of being in denial over her illness, Shepherd is not confronting her diabetes head on. Her new book, Plan D: How to Lose Weight and Beat Diabetes (Even if You Don't Have It), is encouraging others to face their illness with the same ferocity that she has.

Sherri, who also stars in "30 Rock" as Tracy's girlfriend, went from 200 lbs to 157 lbs in one year by incorporating more veggies in her diet, and working out.  Shepherd realized that her pallet had changed when starting to eat healthy. She has a new found fondness for cauliflower and kale which she thought she's never have a taste for.

Shepherd said in an interview about her diabetes denial: "I ignored it for years because mostly everyone in my family had diabetes. My mom passed away from complications at 41. But there wasn't really an urgency to change anything because we called it 'the sugar' - we didn't call it diabetes. And when you have a term called 'the sugar,' it sounds kind of cute. So for years, I ate, because that's what I was taught: If something was going wrong in your life, there was a peach cobbler to fix it."

The co-host of ABC's "The View," was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in 2007. The formal diagnosis came after years of ignoring doctors' warnings that she was prediabetic - a wakeup call that led to her current pro-veggie mindset: "The other night, my husband sautéed the kale in olive oil with green, red and yellow peppers," she said. "And it was good! So now I'm a kale addict. I always challenge people to do things that are a little bit different with their veggies."

"People think that when they're prediabetic or diabetic, they're not going to be able to eat anything, but you can eat a lot."

Sherri recalls when she was first informed of her illness:

"When I finally went to the doctor and got the formal diagnosis, they gave me three different medications, and I went home and ate. First I went to IHOP, the pancake house, and had a big stack of pancakes, sausage and bacon. Then I made chicken pesto pasta - a bowl big enough to feed four people. My blood sugar spiked so high that I remember my head was on my chest, and I couldn't even hold it up because I was so tired. I had this vision of my son crying, clutching his teddy bear, trying to figure out where heaven was because that's where everyone said mommy was. That image made me put my head up and say, 'I don't want to do what my mother did to me,' which was leave me at an early age to fend for myself. And I realized, I gotta change my life. Because I don't want my son to be walking down the aisle with his wife one day, with a rose on the chair in honor of his mother."

The new change is Sherri's lifestyle will hopefully bring her millions of "View" viewers the motivation that they need to turn their lives around as well.