Featured Image Credit: Paras Griffin/Getty Images for ESSENCE
Topics: Celebrity, Health, Oprah Winfrey, Ozempic
Britt Jones
Topics: Celebrity, Health, Oprah Winfrey, Ozempic
Oprah Winfrey has revealed that taking weight loss drugs made her realize the truth about ‘thin people’.
Wegovy and Ozempic have been taking the market by storm, with a slew of celebrities admitting to taking the medication to lose a few pounds.
However, Oprah, who has been honest about her weight yo-yo struggles recently, defended the drugs after even more celebrities came out to slate it.
The 70-year-old admitted to using a GLP-1 medication, though she didn’t disclose which one.
Advert
This is a type 2 diabetes medication that dampens a person’s appetite, helping them to lose weight.
For Oprah, she saw herself lose 50 pounds,and nearly reached her goal weight of 160 pounds, and she’s defending a person’s choice to use the meds.
"For 25 years, making fun of my weight was national sport,” she said on her show and labelled obesity as a ‘disease’.
"I come to this conversation with the hope that we can start releasing the stigma and the shame and the judgment, to stop shaming other people for being overweight or how they choose to lose - or not lose - weight, and most importantly, to stop shaming ourselves."
While she had gone on this journey, it has also taught her about 'thin people.'
She spoke with Dr Ania Jastreboff on the latest episode of her podcast, discussing the safety of the drugs.
While on the topic, she explained that she held a misconception surrounding what thin people think, and now she understands the difference between her and them.
She said: “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.”
But after taking the GLP-1, she realized that it wasn’t ‘willpower’ at all, it was a lack of intrusive hunger thoughts.
Oprah revealed that ‘the very first time I took the GLP-1’, she realized that thin people don’t even think about food.
She said: “They're eating when they're hungry and they're stopping when they're full.”
The host went on to say that the media has made fun of her struggles, which she calls a ‘disease’.
“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. And I accepted it because I thought I deserved it,” she explained.
Since meeting her weight, she has now gone on to use the drug as a top-up, and told PEOPLE: “I now use it as I feel I need it, as a tool to manage not yo-yoing.
“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.”