Oprah Winfrey Keeps It Real on Weight Loss, Explains Why She Worries About Her Health If Over 200 Pounds
Oprah Winfrey is all for accepting your body -- but she has her limits when it comes to her own physique and how it affects her health.
The 63-year-old media mogul gave an interview to The New York Times Magazine for an in-depth story focusing on the changing dieting culture over the years, and discussed her own well-known struggles with her weight. Oprah discussed the movement of women accepting their bodies at any weight, but acknowledged that this thinking doesn't work for her.
"This whole P.C. about accepting yourself as you are -- you should, 100 percent," she says. "[But] for your heart to pump, pump, pump, pump, it needs the least amount of weight possible to do that. So all of the people who are saying, 'Oh, I need to accept myself as I am' -- I can't accept myself if I'm over 200 pounds, because it’s too much work on my heart. It causes high blood pressure for me. It puts me at risk for diabetes, because I have diabetes in my family."
WATCH: Oprah Reveals She's Lost Over 40 Pounds Since Joining Weight Watchers -- 'I Struggle No More'
According to the magazine, Oprah says she doesn't care if she's never skinny again, but rather, that she feels as if she has control. Oprah shares that she decided to get involved in Weight Watchers in 2015 -- which uses a point system that assigns points to foods based on their caloric and nutritional content -- to be more conscious of her eating. She admits she used eating as a way to deal with stress during the height of her career though she wasn't aware of it, eating bags of potato chips instead of confronting emotions.
"It's a mechanism to keep myself on track that brings a level of consciousness and awareness to my eating," she explains about Weight Watchers. "It actually is, for me, mindful eating, because the points are so ingrained now."
"In the particular moment in time that I got the call, I was desperate: What's going to work? I've tried all of the green juices and protein shakes, and let's do a cleanse, and all that stuff," she adds. "That doesn't work. It doesn't last. What is going to be consistent, keep me conscious and mindful?"
However, Oprah acknowledges that people have to find what works for them.
"I used to say this to my producers all the time. We are never going to win with this show looking back to see what other people are doing on their shows," she says. "The only way you win is to keep looking forward for yourself. What’s best for you?"
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ET spoke to Oprah last July at the Essence Festival in New Orleans, where she explained that she doesn't actually have a goal weight in mind.
"It's a feeling where you get to the point where [you think], 'Oh, I can go to the store, I can pick that size, it's available, I don't have to, like, have it altered and all that stuff,'" she explained. "So I'll know when I'm there."
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