Oprah Winfrey says taking Ozempic made her come to realisation about ‘thin people’
Oprah Winfrey has said taking weight-loss medication changed her preconceptions about “thin people”.
The billionaire, 69, who confirmed she uses an unnamed drug as a tool to manage her weight after heavy speculation in 2023, admitted she previously thought slighter people had “more willpower”.
Winfrey – formerly a member of the WeightWatchers board – has praised the medication for allowing her to live a healthier lifestyle, after career-spanning scrutiny over her figure.
The media mogul, who previously slammed weight loss drugs as the “easy way out”, said on her Super Soul podcast: “One of the things that I realized the very first time I took a GLP-1 was that all these years I thought that thin people had more willpower.
“They ate better foods. They were able to stick to it longer. They never had a potato chip”
However, Winfrey claimed that what she initially thought was “willpower” was actually a lack of intrusive hunger thoughts, also known as “food noise”.
Experts have claimed GLP-1 medications, such as Ozempic, Wegovy, may help lessen or even stop “food noise” by slowing down digestion and reducing cravings.
Winfrey continued: “I realised the very first time I took the GLP-1 that they’re not even thinking about it. They’re eating when they’re hungry and they’re stopping when they’re full.”
Winfrey claimed this intuitive way of eating “doesn’t work” if you struggle with obesity and reflected on her own experience of being “publicly humiliated” for her size throughout her career.
“Every week [I was] exploited by the tabloids, anytime any comedian wanted to make fun or make a joke about it, they would make a joke about it,” she said,
“And I accepted it because I thought I deserved it.”
Back in December 2023, Winfrey said that despite initially denying she was using weight-loss drugs, she was “done with the shaming” for using GLP-1 medication.
“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 said.
“It was public sport to make fun of me for 25 years,” the Color Purple star added. “I have been blamed and shamed, and I blamed and shamed myself.”
The former talk show host stressed that the prescription drug she uses isn’t singularly responsible for her weight loss. Rather, Winfrey credited her overall weight loss to her regimen and added that the medication is just one of many tools in her arsenal.
