Christie agreed to undergo the operation after his 50th birthday. | AP Photos Christie: 'Nobody's business'

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Tuesday that his decision to have weight loss surgery “was nobody’s business other than mine.”

“I don’t mean to demean what you all do,” Christie told a crowd of reporters at a press conference in Newark. “But this is silly.”


“For this kind of attention to be drawn to the fact that I’m pursuing a weight-loss measure shows how really shallow a lot of this coverage has become and why a lot of people ignore it,” the Republican governor continued. “It was not your business. It was nobody’s business other than mine.”

( Also on POLITICO: What Christie's surgery means for 2016)

Earlier in the day, aides confirmed to POLITICO that Christie secretly had lap band stomach surgery in February in hopes of losing some of his bulk.

Christie gave an exclusive interview to The New York Post, which broke the news on the front page of its Tuesday edition.

“I’ve struggled with this issue for 20 years,” Christie told The Post. “For me, this is about turning 50 and looking at my children and wanting to be there for them.”

The governor said at the press conference that he only talked to the paper after a reporter directly asked him about. While he didn’t want to discuss the issue, he decided not to lie about it. “It wasn’t my choice,” Christie said. “If I had a choice, I would’ve never talked about it.”

Christie decided to undergo the operation after his 50th birthday in September, when friends and family urged him to do it. The governor said the decision wasn’t about slimming down before potentially making a presidential bid in 2016, but about staying alive for his four kids, the youngest of whom is still in elementary school.

“I’m in this father business for a while,” he said. “And I hope someday, God willing, to be in the grandfather business.”

( PHOTOS: Chris Christie’s career)

Earlier in the day, aides confirmed to POLITICO that Christie secretly had lap band stomach surgery in February in hopes of losing some of his bulk.

In another interview, Christie said a conversation with Dr. George Fielding, a weight-loss surgery expert at NYU School of Medicine, helped persuade him to proceed with the lap band process.

“He says to me, ‘If you came in here with cancer, and I told you that I had a 40-minute surgery that would give you a 90 percent chance of cure, would you sign up?’” Christie told Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News, in an interview that aired Tuesday night. “And it just really crystallized it for me. And I said, ‘Yeah, I would.’ And he said, ‘Why wouldn’t you do that to cure obesity?’”

In the segment, Williams said that last fall’s Hurricane Sandy delayed Christie’s surgery.

Christie earlier gave an exclusive interview to The New York Post, which broke the news on the front page of its Tuesday edition.

“I’ve struggled with this issue for 20 years,” Christie told The Post. “For me, this is about turning 50 and looking at my children and wanting to be there for them.”

The governor said at the press conference that he only talked to the paper after a reporter directly asked him about. While he didn’t want to discuss the issue, he decided not to lie about it. “It wasn’t my choice,” Christie said. “If I had a choice, I would’ve never talked about it.”

Christie decided to undergo the operation after his 50th birthday in September, when friends and family urged him to do it. The governor said the decision wasn’t about slimming down before potentially making a presidential bid in 2016, but about staying alive for his four kids, the youngest of whom is still in elementary school.

“I’m in this father business for a while,” he said. “And I hope someday, God willing, to be in the grandfather business.”

( PHOTOS: Chris Christie’s career)

Christie said it was difficult for people without weight issues to understand the importance of losing pounds.

“People who don’t have a problem with their weight don’t understand how it can dominate your whole thought,” he told The Post. “For me, the pressure I put on myself about it is so much worse than what anyone can say publicly about it. The idea that public criticism or ridicule or a public race could force me to do this is laughable to me. Any of that stuff is miniscule pressure compared to what I put on myself when I look at my children and look at my wife and say, ‘What are you doing for them?’”

In the past, Christie has portrayed his weight as life-or-death issue. “My doctor continues to warn me that my luck is going to run out relatively soon, so believe me it’s something that I’m very conscious of,” he said at a February press conference.

The governor checked into a surgery center Feb. 16, according to the report. The operation involves placing a silicone tube at the top of the stomach and inflating it, which reduces the appetite by making a person feel fuller, quicker. Christie said he has already seen results.

Aides told POLITICO on Tuesday morning that only Christie’s immediate family and his chief of staff knew about the surgery until Monday, when the rest of his staff was told. Christie said at the Tuesday press conference his reelection campaign manager, his campaign chairman and his communications director were all left in the dark and that when The Post first directly asked, a spokeswoman wanted to know how hard to push back on what she assumed was a false report.

Sources told POLITICO that Christie had been talking with doctors about the surgery for the better part of the last year and that by the time he ate a doughnut with David Letterman on “The Late Show” in early February the surgery had already been scheduled.

Christie’s heft has long been political fodder. In 2009, then-Gov. Jon Corzine ran ads accusing Christie of “throwing his weight around.” Earlier this year, a former White House doctor said Christie’s weight was life-threatening and that he could die in office if he became president, prompting a fierce comeback from the Garden State’s governor.

Christie said he first got the idea from the surgery after seeing how much weight New York Jets coach Rex Ryan lost.

“I said, ‘Man, you look great, what did you do?’ He said, ‘Gov, it works great. Look at me! You believe this? It’s amazing — I’m not hungry,’” Christie told The Post, recalling a meeting with Ryan at Jets training camp. “I was thinking to myself, I could not conceive of not being hungry.”

Ryan is a paid spokesman for lap band surgery, according to ESPN.

“Sometimes whether you want to listen to the band or not, it forces you to listen,” Christie told Brian Williams. “But the biggest thing about it for me has been, I’m just not very hungry anymore. That’s a huge change for me. The sausage and peppers are the problem…but I don’t feel every day like I have a significant amount of hunger and that really helps.”

While Christie was open about his decision-making process during the interview with The Post, he wouldn’t reveal his exact weight. “I just don’t talk about it,” he said. “I think that there are all false markers. I’ve lost and gained more weight in my life than I can count and what I know is what really matters — the weight numbers are an indicator of how I’ll feel in the long term.”

Christie said he didn’t feel the surgery had made him more effective as a governor. “I don’t feel any more effective today than I felt 12 weeks ago,” he said at the press conference.

He also told reporters he felt no need to transition power over to his lieutenant governor, Kim Guadagno, while he was under the knife for less than an hour.

“I was in charge,” he said. “It’s like asking if I decide to take a nap for 40 minutes on a Saturday afternoon, do I call her and say: ‘Hey Kim, I’m taking a nap for 40 minutes. You’re in charge.’ It’s ridiculous.”

Maggie Haberman and Katie Glueck contributed to this report.