Oprah Winfrey is opening up about her weight-loss journey.
During a recent interview with People magazine, the 71-year-old television personality discussed her new book, "Enough," which she co-wrote with obesity expert Dr. Ania M. Jastreboff, which details her journey with obesity, saying, "I feel more alive and more vibrant than I’ve ever been."
"I feel like I have more to give to everybody. I’m just more open to all," she said. "I was a big fan of tequila. I literally had 17 shots one night... I haven’t had a drink in years. The fact that I no longer even have a desire for it is pretty amazing."
The former talk show host began taking GLP-1 weight loss medication over two years ago, when she realized her lifelong struggle with her weight was due to obesity, a word she "avoided" before.
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Her epiphany came in 2023 when she hosted a special featuring experts on obesity, saying filming the special helped her realize that "overeating doesn’t cause obesity. Obesity causes overeating," calling that moment "the most mind-blowing, freeing thing I’ve experienced as an adult."
"If you have obesity in your gene pool, I want people to know it’s not your fault," Winfrey said. "I want people to stop blaming yourself for genes and an environment you can’t control. I want people to have the information, whatever you choose to do with it, whether you get the medications, or whether you want to keep dieting."
After starting the GLP-1 medication, Winfrey feels like "everything is just calmer and stronger" by helping her "manage the messages that are being sent to your brain about overeating."
Without the constant messaging about food, the "A Wrinkle in Time" star said she has been given "a quiet strength that comes with everything I do."
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Winfrey discussed her struggles with losing weight and the media's obsession with her size during a March 2024 ABC special, called "An Oprah Special: Shame, Blame and the Weight Loss Revolution."
During the special, she admitted she once starved herself on a liquid diet "in an effort to combat the shame" for nearly five months in 1988 "and then wheeled out that wagon of fat [on her show] that the internet will never let me forget and after losing 67 pounds on a liquid diet, next day, y’all, the very next day, I started to gain it back."
She later added that it's "wrong to be shaming people" with obesity if you don't struggle with it, because it's hard to truly understand what the person is dealing with.
"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 realize y'all weren't even thinking about the food. It's not that you had the willpower. You weren't thinking about it. You weren't obsessing about it. That is the big thing I learned."
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Winfrey told People in December 2023 that she had begun taking weight loss medication.
