Winfrey fights back tears as she opens up over weight-loss battle
OPRAH WINFREY fought back tears as she described how taking weight-loss drugs helped stop her “blaming” herself for being unable to control her body shape with willpower.
The broadcaster, 70, said she now feels a “sense of hope” after internalising decades of vitriol when mocking her figure was a “national sport”.
“When I tell you how many times I have blamed myself, because you think ‘I’m smart enough to figure this out’, and then to hear all along it’s you fighting your brain”, Winfrey said.
She added: “This is what I got for the first time after I took the medication – all these years I thought all of the people who never had to diet were just using their willpower and they were for some reason stronger than me. And now I realise y’all weren’t even thinking about the food.
Winfrey came under fire last year after she revealed she used an undisclosed weight-loss drug as a “maintenance tool”.
Her admission came as medication such as Ozempic has become popular, presenting a challenge to traditional weight-loss plans and dieting methods.
Yesterday she hosted a TV special looking into weight-loss medication during which she discussed her own battles with losing weight.
“In my lifetime, I never dreamed that we would be talking about medicines that are providing hope for people like me who have struggled for years with being overweight”, she said.
“I come to this conversation in the hope that we can start releasing the stigma and the shame and the judgment to stop shaming other people for being overweight, or how they choose to lose or not lose weight, and more importantly to stop shaming ourselves”, she added. “I took on the shame the world gave to me.”
In the hour-long show An Oprah Special: Shame, Blame and the Weight Loss Revolution, Winfrey said: “I have to say that I took on the shame that the world gave to me – for 25 years, making fun of my weight was national sport”, she added, before showing cruel headlines describing her as “fatter than ever”.
“In an effort to combat all the shame, I starved myself for nearly five months and then wheeled out that wagon of fat that the internet will never let me forget”, she said.
Discussing her relationship with food, Winfrey said she would think about what she would eat for lunch while she was eating breakfast.
“The difference between, for me, being on the medication is now I can eat a half a bagel and be fine... I still want the bagel, I just want less of the bagel”.
Winfrey also likened the discussion around the “disease” of obesity to those towards alcoholism in the late 1980s and early 1990s when sufferers were told to “just put the bottle down”.
Winfrey also said she had stepped down from the board of Weight Watchers because she had wanted “no perceived conflict of interest” over the show.
The TV star, who has been on the board since 2015 after buying a $43 million (£34 million) stake in the company, said she will not stand for re-election in May at its shareholder meeting.