The media mogul explains how she eliminated 'shame' from her feelings about managing obesity.
Oprah Winfrey is getting candid about staying fit at 69. The media mogul say she's "done with the shaming" surrounding weight-loss medication, revealing that she uses it as a "maintenance tool" for her own body.
"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," Winfrey tells People in a new interview. "I'm absolutely done with the shaming from other people and particularly myself."
Winfrey's figure has once again become a topic of speculation as the talk show icon stepped out for the Hollywood premiere of The Color Purple looking svelte. Speaking with People, Winfrey detailed her approach to weight loss after "five decades" of weight fluctuations, "yo-yoing and feeling like why can't I just conquer this thing, believing willpower was my failing."
She shared that a life-changing shift in perspective came earlier this year during a panel conversation for Oprah Daily's The State of Weight panel, in which she spoke with several weight-loss experts and clinicians.
"I had the biggest aha along with many people in that audience," she says. "I realized I'd been blaming myself all these years for being overweight, and I have a predisposition that no amount of willpower is going to control."
She continues, "Obesity is a disease. It’s not about willpower -- it's about the brain."
After discussing it with her doctor, Winfrey was prescribed a medication and now uses it "as I feel I need it, as a tool to manage not yo-yoing."
Winfrey said she previously began incorporating hiking into her routine after undergoing knee surgery in 2021. "I could eventually hike three to five miles every day and a 10-mile straight-up hike on weekends," she says. "I felt stronger, more fit and more alive than I’d felt in years."
The star also shared details about her diet, revealing, "I eat my last meal at 4 o’clock, drink a gallon of water a day, and use the WeightWatchers principles of counting points. I had an awareness of [weight-loss] medications, but felt I had to prove I had the willpower to do it. I now no longer feel that way."
Talking with ET earlier this month, Winfrey addressed her recent physical transformation when asked what she's been doing to get results.
"It's not one thing, it's everything," she said.
Winfrey emphasized just how much she's had to change and do to look fantastic, and added, "I intend to keep it that way."
She continued, "I was on that treadmill today."
Winfrey serves as an executive producer on this new take on The Color Purple -- adapted from the Broadway musical which, itself, is based on the original 1985 drama and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name from 1982.
Winfrey starred alongside Whoopi Goldberg in the 1985 film directed by Steven Spielberg and produced by Quincy Jones. The story follows Celie, a young Black woman living in the South from the early to mid-1900s, who finds strength in an extraordinary sisterhood and unbreakable bond. Winfrey earned an Oscar nomination for her performance.
In a full-circle moment, Spielberg and Jones served as producers with Winfrey for the story's current iteration.
Many of the cast members have mentioned that Winfrey frequently visited the set during filming, a tidbit that Winfrey herself admitted when talking to ET. "I was there all the time, and I was watching the dailies, so I actually saw Shug Avery jump up on that table 88 times, OK? So I was so worried about her. I was so worried about, [like], 'Girl, how are your knees?'" she quipped.
Winfrey added, "I believe that there's something really divine about The Color Purple. I believe that there's something special that, whenever Alice Walker wrote this in 1982 when it was first released, it put something into the world that was deeply meaningful, powerful, resilient, hopeful, and I think that that message of forgiveness and joy is always needed."
The Color Purple -- starring Fantasia Barrino, Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, Colman Domingo, Corey Hawkins, H.E.R., Ciara, Aunjanue Ellis, Jon Batiste, Louis Gossett Jr., David Alan Grier and Deon Cole -- comes out Dec. 25.
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