FOR 10 years, wielding slabs of cream cheese and mounds of mayonnaise, Paula Deen has become television’s self-crowned queen of Southern cuisine and one of the country’s most popular chefs, with an empire built on layers of gooey butter cake, fried chicken and sheer force of personality.

On Tuesday, she suddenly unveiled a new career for herself: herald of a healthy life. In an interview on the “Today” show on NBC, she revealed — as has long been rumored — that she has Type 2 diabetes, a diagnosis that she said she received three years ago. In an interview with The New York Times, she said the delay in announcing it had been part of a necessary personal journey. “I wanted to wait until I had something to bring to the table,” she said.

Now, Ms. Deen, 64, has brought to her own table a multiplatform endorsement deal with Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical company that makes Victoza, a noninsulin injectable diabetes medication that she began promoting on Tuesday morning. She and her sons, Jamie and Bobby (who do not have diabetes), are all being paid to spearhead the company’s upbeat new public-relations campaign, “Diabetes in a New Light,” which advocates using the drug along with eating lighter foods and increasing physical activity. All the same, Ms. Deen said she would not change her own lifestyle or cooking style drastically, other than to reduce portion sizes of unhealthful foods. “I’ve always preached moderation,” she said. “I don’t blame myself.”

Bobby Deen, who was at his mother’s side throughout the day, has a new healthful-cooking show, “Not My Mama’s Meals,” that began last month. Through a spokeswoman, the Food Network said that that it did not know of Ms. Deen’s illness before last week.