After Oprah Winfrey revealed to PEOPLE in December that she takes prescription weight-loss drugs as part of her health and wellness regimen, she quickly realized the conversation was just getting started.
Not one to waste an opportunity to educate herself and use her massive platform to educate others, Winfrey, 70, sought to explore timely issues surrounding the use of popular weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro. Among the questions she considered: Why is there shame around taking medication, and who are these medications intended for? What are the side effects? Should minors be taking them and how do we deal with supply chain challenges?
“It’s a very personal topic for me and the millions of affected people around the world who have struggled with weight and obesity for years,” Winfrey said ahead of a new prime-time TV special dealing with the issues and related current issues.
Amy Kane (left) and Oprah Winfrey.
Disney/Eric McCandless
Oprah Winfrey reveals she uses diet pills as a ‘maintenance tool’: ‘I’m absolutely done with the shame’ (Exclusive)
It was called a television interview The Oprah Special: Shame, Guilt, and the Weight Loss Revolutionaired Monday on ABC and will be available Tuesday on Hulu.
“Never in my entire life did I dream that we would be talking about a drug that gives hope to people like me who have struggled with overweight or obesity for years,” Winfrey said during the open-dialogue special, which included a live audience, some of the nation’s leading medical experts and ordinary people, including a teenage girl named Maggie, who have a number of personal experiences with prescription weight loss drugs.
“So I’m coming to this conversation in hopes that we can begin to free ourselves of stigma, shame, and judgment… to stop shaming other people for being overweight or for choosing to lose weight and not lose weight,” Winfrey continues in her introduction. “And more importantly, to stop being ashamed.”
In addition to the important, if sometimes overlooked, fact that the American Medical Association declared obesity a disease in 2013, Winfrey considers how the proper use of weight loss drugs could have a “radical impact” on combating the crisis affecting our health care system, economy, lifestyle and cultures.
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Oprah Winfrey at the premiere of “The Color Purple” in LA on December 6, 2023.
Eric Charbonneau/Getty
Medical experts participating in the show include Dr. W. Scott Butsch of the Cleveland Clinic, ABC News Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton and Dr. Amanda Velazquez of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Other guests include executives from the two global pharmaceutical companies, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, behind the drugs to address what it could mean for the 100 million Americans and more than 1 billion adults worldwide living with obesity. (Eli Lilly makes Zepbound and Mounjaro; Novo Nordisk makes Ozempic and Wegovy).
Perhaps most of all, Winfrey hopes the special will help break free of the shame, judgment and stigma surrounding weight.
This is something she knows all too well.
Since going public, the icon’s physical journey has been featured in the media, on magazine covers and in episodes of her own hit talk show of the same name, which ran for 25 seasons. “It was a public sport to make fun of me for 25 years,” Winfrey told PEOPLE in December. “I was guilty and ashamed, and I blamed and shamed myself.”
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dr. Amanda Velazquez (left), Dr. W. Scott Butsch and Oprah Winfrey.
Disney/Eric McCandless
Winfrey is optimistic that she now knows how to maintain a healthy weight long-term and get rid of shame once and for all. Using a holistic approach that includes regular exercise and other lifestyle changes, Winfrey added a weight-loss drug to her regimen last year. (He does not disclose what medications he is taking.)
The weight changes “took up five decades of space in my brain, yo-yoing and feeling like I just couldn’t beat this thing, believing that willpower was my failure,” says Winfrey, whose dogged rehabilitation after knee surgery in 2021 launched what in for the last two years he has been losing weight steadily.
“After knee surgery, I started walking and setting new distance goals every week. Eventually, I could walk three to five miles every day and 10 miles straight over the weekend,” she says. “I felt stronger, fitter and more alive than I had felt in years.”
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Sima Sistani (left), Amy Kane and Oprah Winfrey.
Disney/Eric McCandless
Oprah Winfrey opens up about the moments that changed her life
A turning point for Winfrey’s approach to using pharmaceutical aids came last July during a taped panel discussion with weight loss experts and clinicians, the so-called Weight condition and part of Oprah Daily’s The life you want series.
“I had the biggest aha along with a lot of people in that audience,” she recalls of the discussion. “I realized that I’ve been blaming myself for being overweight all these years, and I have a predisposition that no amount of willpower can control.”
She adds, “Obesity is a disease. It’s not about willpower — it’s about the brain.”
After coming to terms with the science, Winfrey told PEOPLE that she “let go of my own shame about it” and consulted her doctor, who prescribed a weight-loss drug. “Now I use it as I feel I need it, as a management tool, not a yo-yo,” she says. “The fact that there is a medically approved prescription for weight control and health maintenance, during my lifetime, feels like a relief, like a redemption, like a gift, not something to hide behind and be ridiculed for again. I’m absolutely done with the embarrassment. by other people, especially me.”
Oprah Winfrey was ‘blamed and shamed’ for 25 years because of her weight: ‘It never happened to me that I could be angry’ (exclusive)
Winfrey is aware of the buzz surrounding her body size, especially as the use of weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy, Ozempic and Mounjaro has become increasingly popular. But she stresses that it’s not a magic bullet or a one-size-fits-all solution.
“That’s it,” she says of her comprehensive health and fitness routine. “I know everyone thought I was on it, but I’ve been working so damn hard. I know if I don’t work out and take care of all the other things, it doesn’t work for me.”
Finally, she said, “It was a second attempt for me to live a more vital and vibrant life.”
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Source: HIS Education