Oprah Winfrey opens about her weight loss journey

Oprah Winfrey opened up about her weight loss challenges.

In an online interview over Zoom call, Oprah, in a very casual appearance from her hotel room in Australia, described her recent breakfast and subsequently discussed her health struggles. She stated, “I’ve just had a croissant, and I ate the full thing”.

She further explained, a buttery indulgence would have been an all-day obsession. I would have been thinking, ‘How many calories in that croissant? How long is it going to take me to work it off? If I have the croissant, I won’t be able to have dinner.’ I’d still be thinking about that damn croissant!” This morning, however, she is blissfully unbothered: “I felt nothing. The only thing I thought was, ‘I need to clean up these crumbs.’ ”

The insignificance of her breakfast is a monumental shift for Winfrey, who two and a half years ago started using a GLP-1 weight-loss medication. She began taking the drug following an aha moment of understanding that she suffers from obesity and that she can’t fight it without help.

“I thought it was about discipline and willpower. But I stopped blaming myself,” says Winfrey, who shares her journey in a new book with obesity expert Dr Ania M. Jastreboff, Enough: Your Health, Your Weight and What It’s Like to Be Free, out Jan. 13. “I feel more alive and more vibrant than I’ve ever been”.

Her new outlook and the medication have utterly transformed her life, she says. As she approaches her 72nd birthday on Jan. 29, Winfrey has gone from someone who saw exercise as punishment to happily “side-planking and deadlifting”.

She’s also stopped drinking alcohol (once, “I could outdrink everyone at the table,” she noted with a laugh) and is amazed that she’s satisfied after she eats. She noted, “I’m not constantly punishing myself. I hardly recognise the woman I’ve become. But she’s a happy woman”.

Winfrey’s weight has been the subject of public curiosity and tabloid fodder for more than four decades, ever since she starred in 1985’s The Colour Purple and took her eponymous talk show into national syndication the following year.

Some of the cruellest headlines are still fresh in her mind: “Oprah Fatter Than Ever”; “Oprah Warned: ‘Diet or Die.’” Her ups and downs were a regular punch line on late-night talk shows, starting with her first appearance on The Tonight Show in 1985, when she was goaded into agreeing to lose 15 lbs. by host Joan Rivers.