Oprah Winfrey says a GLP-1 medication changed her relationship with weight, fitness and shame, and she’s talking frankly about why staying on the drug became part of her plan. This piece follows her experience quitting and restarting treatment, the role of daily exercise, expert context from Dr. Ania Jastreboff, and the broader stigma people with obesity face.
Oprah, now 71, began a GLP-1 treatment in 2023 and later tried to stop after six months to see if she could keep the weight off without it. Even while keeping to her usual diet and workouts, she found she regained about 20 pounds after stopping the medication. That setback helped shift her thinking about what these treatments actually do for long-term health.
“It’s going to be a lifetime thing,” she shared. “I’m on high blood pressure medication, and if I go off the high blood pressure medication, my blood pressure is going to go up. The same thing is true now, I realize, with these medications. I’ve proven to myself [that] I need it.” Oprah said her default weight of 211 pounds left her pre-diabetic and with high cholesterol, facts that framed her choices.
She reports a major turnaround in body composition and energy, saying she’s down to 155 pounds and plans to hold that weight. “The combination of the medication and hiking every day and resistance training has given me the body that I had when I was running a marathon,” she said. “So, I was 40 and feeling really good, but to be able to be 71 and feel that I am in the best shape of my life feels better than it did when I was 40.”
The conversation came during a new episode of The Oprah Podcast with endocrinologist Dr. Ania Jastreboff, who also co-wrote the book Enough with Winfrey. Oprah admitted that stigma made her reluctant at first, saying, “One of the reasons I was reluctant to use them in the beginning, when I was trying to lose weight after my knee surgery, [is] because I also felt it’s cheating, it’s the easy way out.” She wanted to prove she could do it on her own.
“I think that that’s one of the major issues that people who are now open to using the drugs are experiencing from their friends or colleagues, their families and also within themselves.” As a high-profile figure, Oprah said she was “publicly humiliated” for her weight for 25 years, and that public judgment left long-lasting wounds.
“It feels like the punishment you deserve,” Winfrey said. Jastreboff pushed back on that cultural framing: “And none of this is in our control. Somehow, in society, we think that how much we weigh is in our control. And it’s not. Our brain is in control.” Their exchange reframed obesity as a condition involving brain pathways, not just willpower.
Winfrey likened the struggle to addiction and to hardened assumptions about thinness: “All these years, I thought that thin people … just had more willpower, they ate better foods, they were able to stick to it longer, they never had a potato chip,” she said. “And then I realized the very first time I took the GLP-1 that … oh, they’re not even thinking about it. They’re only eating when they’re hungry, and they’re stopping when they’re full.”
Jastreboff clarified that obesity is “not an addiction,” but that the “food noise,” or the impulse to eat, uses many of the same neural pathways as habit-driven behaviors. The podcast also included the story of a patient identified as Amy, who lost 160 pounds in a year and still faces public shaming despite dramatic results.
“You’re shamed if you have obesity. You’re shamed if you don’t try to lose weight. You’re shamed if you lose weight,” the doctor said. “You’re shamed if you use the medicines, if you don’t use the medicines … there’s literally no winning.” She added, “What’s right is to stop shaming and blaming people … [when] you’re taking care of your health.”
GLP-1 medications are linked mainly to gastrointestinal side effects, including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation and abdominal discomfort, with less common reports of fatigue, dizziness and injection-site reactions. People considering GLP-1s should consult a doctor about recommended dosing and any personal risk factors before starting treatment.
