Oprah Winfrey has taken to the airwaves again to talk about her weight loss experiences, this time focusing on how drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound can change the lives of obese people.
During the hour-long ABC broadcast, An Oprah Special: Shame, Guilt, and the Weight Loss Revolutionthe media mogul highlighted how stigma shaped her struggles with weight and how medications not only changed her body size, but also her understanding of what causes obesity and what to do about it. She didn’t say what medications she takes, but the special did highlight newer injectable weight loss medications like Wegovy and Zepbound.
“In my entire life, I never dreamed that we would be talking about medicine that offers hope to people like me who have struggled with being overweight or obese for years,” Winfrey said during the special, which is now available on Hulu.
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“So I come to this conversation hoping that we can begin to let go of the stigma, shame and judgment… to stop shaming other people for being overweight or the way they chose to lose weight and not losing weight,” Winfrey said. “And most importantly, to stop shaming ourselves.”
Here are some key takeaways from the special, including tips from Oprah and several medical experts who joined her for the weight loss conversation.
It’s time to let go of the shame surrounding obesity
One message came through loud and clear: shame doesn’t solve anything.
During the special, Winfrey recalled how she felt about herself and her body, and how weight loss medications helped her distance herself from those negative thoughts.
“There’s a sense of hope now, number one and number two, you don’t have to blame yourself anymore,” she said of her experience with weight-loss drugs. “When I tell you how many times I’ve blamed myself because you think, ‘I’m smart enough to figure this out, only to be told all the time that it’s you fighting your brain.
Crash diets don’t really help in the long run
In the past, Oprah said she viewed dieting and weight loss as an exercise in willpower.
She recalled that what was presented earlier in her career as a triumph over obesity — the day in the late 1980s when she wheeled around a cart of fat on her talk show to represent her “hugely successful” weight-loss efforts — happened because she ” was starving’. herself for five months.
“After losing 67 pounds on a liquid diet, the next day, the next day, I started gaining it back,” Winfrey said.
New medicines can dampen ‘food noise’
There’s a name some people have for obsessive thoughts about what to eat: food noise. In short, food noise involves intrusive thoughts about food that can contribute to disordered eating.
Oprah said that, looking back on her past struggles with her weight, it’s possible that food noise may have played a role. Medication helped quiet that noise, she said.
“For the people who think this could be the relief, support and freedom you’ve been looking for all your life, blessings, because there’s room for all points of view,” she says of people who think medication can help silence quiet their own internal monologues about food.
Following food is not always enough to achieve long-term weight loss
During the special, Winfrey, who left the WW (Weight Watchers) board last month after a decade of promoting the brand, said she invited WW International CEO Sima Sistani to join her on stage. to tackle a very difficult topic: why some people succeed with weight loss and others do not. Sistani described why WW is now embracing weight loss medications, along with her long-standing support for lifestyle changes.
“We are the most clinically tested, evidence-based, science-based behavior change program, but we were missing the third track, which is biology,” Sistani said. “There could be someone who needs medication because they have that biological basis, and what was so important is that we provide that care and also help people let go of the shame.”
Echoing Oprah’s message during the special, Sistani also acknowledged that dieting alone is not necessarily enough for people to maintain their weight.
“For all those people who came side by side and took on the behavior change, some of them walked away without success,” Sistani said. “And I want to say to those people: it’s not your fault.”
Weight management is not one-size-fits all
Two doctors also joined Oprah for the special: W. Scott Butsch, MD, the director of obesity medicine at the Bariatric and Metabolic Institute at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, and Amanda Velazquez, MD, the director of obesity medicine at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. They both have financial ties to companies that make weight-loss drugs, and they talked about how these drugs can address the biological basis of obesity.
“There is a spectrum of obesity; it’s not one disease, it’s many different subtypes of a disease,” says Dr. Butsch. Without realizing this, it is easier to believe the false idea that obese people have made poor choices and failed to control their weight with good eating and exercise habits.
“This is just a reflection of someone’s uneducated belief that this is a self-inflicted condition, as if people who are obese want to be obese too,” Butsch added. “That these are weaker people who have no willpower and who can’t cut, and that people who are thin have willpower and who can.”
Losing weight is absolutely not about willpower
After years of thinking that gaining and losing weight was a matter of willpower, Oprah now has a new perspective. And with that knowledge, she said she has found a new way to combat the shame and stigma that can come from being obese or taking weight-loss medications to treat the condition.
“All those years I thought that all the people who never dieted were just using their willpower and were somehow stronger than me,” Winfrey said.
“But now I realize you guys didn’t even think about dinner,” Oprah said. “It’s not like you had the willpower. You didn’t even think about it. You weren’t obsessed with it.”