Oprah Winfrey Says Participating in ‘Diet Culture’ Is ‘One of My Biggest Regrets’

Oprah Winfrey takes responsibility for her contribution to food culture — and shares her plans for “better.”

At an event she hosted with WeightWatchers — titled “Making The Shift: A New Way to Think About Weight” on Thursday, May 9 — the legendary talk show host said she’s “done” with allowing the diet culture and “shaming” that comes to manage her life with him.

“So many of us have adopted a food culture and body standards that have brought us so much shame,” Winfrey, 70, said, introducing the event, which included conversations with Rebel Wilson, Busy Philipps, joy alum Amber Riley and more.

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“We were criticized. They checked us. We were shamed and told that we didn’t deserve to be accepted or even loved unless we met a certain size standard,” she continued. “And what I know for sure is that I’m done with it.”

The TV icon went on to say that the purpose of the conversation is not only to free yourself from that surveillance, but also to stop questioning those around you. Or, in Winfrey’s words, to “stop judging others for the way they choose to live” — something she not only admitted to doing, but also called one of her “biggest regrets.”

“I also want to admit that I have been an unwavering participant of this food culture through my platforms, through a magazine, through a talk show for 25 years, through the Internet,” she admitted. “I made a big contribution to it. I can’t tell you how many weight loss and makeover shows I’ve done, and they’ve been a staple since I’ve been in television.”

”I shared how that famous ‘fat wagon’ moment on Oprah show is one of my biggest regrets,” she continued, referencing the 1988 moment on her eponymous talk show when, while revealing her weight loss, she pulled out a cart loaded with lard as a physical representation of the pounds she’d lost.

Oprah Winfrey in March 2024.

Michael Kovac/Getty

“It sent the message that liquid diet starvation was setting a standard for people watching that neither I nor anyone else could support and — I’ve said it before — the very next day, I started gaining weight back,” she said.

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To show how her views on food culture — which sees weight and thinness as the main indicator of health — have changed over the decades, Winfrey quoted Maya Angelou, who told the audience, “When you know better, you do better.”

“That’s why these conversations are an effort for me to be better,” she added.

“I own what I did and now I want to be better, so now I know that ‘fat wagon’ moment was triggered after years and years of thinking that my weight struggles were my fault,” she said. “And it took me until last week to realize the shame I privately felt as my very public yo-yo diet moments became a national joke.”

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In December 2023, Winfrey described how her weight loss and health journey played out in the media over the years, telling PEOPLE, “It was a public sport to make fun of me for 25 years.”

She added: “I was blamed and shamed, and I blamed and shamed myself.”

Oprah Winfrey in December 2023.

Eric Charbonneau/Getty

Elsewhere in the conversation, Winfrey told PEOPLE about her current holistic approach to health, which includes regular exercise and lifestyle changes, as well as weight-loss drugs.

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She also revealed that her perspective on using pharmaceutical aids has changed in July 2023 during a panel discussion with weight loss experts for Oprah Daily’s The life you want series called The State of Weight.

“I had the biggest aha along with a lot of people in that audience,” she recalled of the discussion. “I realized that all these years I blamed myself for being overweight, and I have a predisposition that no amount of willpower can control.”

“Fatness is a disease,” she added. “It’s not about willpower – it’s about brains.”

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Source: HIS Education