Oprah Winfrey’s weight has been a subject of conversation her whole career. It has not been easy to cope with the shame and blame of public opinion over the years. After the Los Angeles premiere of her newest film project The Color Purple on December 3, 2023, Oprah’s weight was again in the headlines. She dazzled at the event in a fitted purple floor-length gown with a slit, causing people to speculate all over again.
Oprah opened up to People about how she lost the weight and is planning to keep it off. She lost the weight through diet and exercise but is using an unnamed weight loss drug to help her maintain her progress. She refuses to feel any shame about this decision.
"It was public sport to make fun of me for 25 years," Oprah shared. "I have been blamed and shamed, and I blamed and shamed myself." She has had enough.
Since her 2021 knee surgery, she has been steadily losing weight. Before that the ups and downs of her weight "occupied five decades of space in my brain, yo-yoing and feeling like why can’t I just conquer this thing, believing willpower was my failing.” Oprah has changed her mindset around her weight fluctuations.
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During a taped panel called “The State of Weight” for Oprah Daily’s Life You Want series, she had an epiphany. "I had the biggest aha along with many people in that audience," Oprah recalled. "I realized I’d been blaming myself all these years for being overweight, and I have a predisposition that no amount of willpower is going to control. Obesity is a disease. It’s not about willpower — it's about the brain."
Oprah initially lost the weight through diet and exercise. "After knee surgery, I started hiking and setting new distance goals each week. I could eventually hike 3 to 5 miles every day and a 10-mile straight-up hike on weekends," she shared. "I felt stronger, more fit, and more alive than I’d felt in years."
She is working hard to maintain a healthy lifestyle. "I eat my last meal at 4 o’clock, drink a gallon of water a day, and use the WeightWatchers principles of counting points,” she revealed. “I had an awareness of [weight loss] medications, but felt I had to prove I had the willpower to do it. I now no longer feel that way."
Oprah is using an unnamed weight loss medication to help maintain her weight. "I now use it as I feel I need it, as a tool to manage not yo-yoing," she stated. She considers it a valuable part of her arsenal.
Oprah is so thankful for the medication and refuses to be embarrassed for utilizing it. "The fact that there's a medically approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier, in my lifetime, feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift, and not something to hide behind and once again be ridiculed for. I’m absolutely done with the shaming from other people and particularly myself,” she stated.
Oprah views her weight loss medication as part of her holistic wellness routine. "I know everybody thought I was on it, but I worked so damn hard. I know that if I’m not also working out and vigilant about all the other things, it doesn’t work for me," she stated.
Oprah used the medication over Thanksgiving. In 2022, she gained 8 pounds during the holiday feasting. This year, she only gained half a pound. “It quiets the food noise," she concluded.
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