Oprah Winfrey says taking a GLP-1 drug similar to Ozempic and Wegovy has modified her total perspective on “thin people.”
The media icon, 70, took to her podcast final week to share her expertise with an undisclosed sort of GLP-1 drug that she started taking in 2023.
A sort 2 diabetes medicine that may additionally assist in weight reduction, GLP-1 scripts embrace the well-known names Ozempic and Wegovy.
Whereas discussing the use, security and efficacy of GLP-1 medicine with Dr. Ania Jastreboff on the Jan. 14 episode of “The Oprah Podcast,” the Harpo Productions founder stated her total mind-set about how “thin” folks method meals was all unsuitable.
“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 — those people — had more willpower,” Winfrey instructed Dr. Jastreboff, including that she believed, “They ate better foods. They were able to stick to it longer. They never had a potato chip.”
Nonetheless, after beginning on a GLP-1, Winfrey got here to consider that “willpower” was in reality an absence of intrusive starvation ideas, which is commonly known as “food noise.”
“And then I realized the very first time I took the GLP-1 that, they’re not even thinking about it,” the Oscar-winner stated of “thin people” and meals.
“They’re eating when they’re hungry and they’re stopping when they’re full.”
That mindset “doesn’t work if you have obesity,” Winfrey added.
Whereas discussing how weight problems is a illness, Winfrey additionally shared how her struggles with weight reduction performed out within the public eye and took a toll on her.
“Every week [I was] exploited by the tabloids,” she stated, referring to the years she spent internet hosting her hit daytime talkshow. “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.”
The media queen additionally confessed that she was reluctant to take a GLP-1 drug as a result of she felt it was “the easy way out.” That modified after a particular on weight reduction with specialists and clinicians that she taped in July 2023. The panel dialogue left her together with her “biggest aha moment” in regards to the medicine.
“I had an awareness of [weight-loss] medications [before], but felt I had to prove I had the willpower to do it. I now no longer feel that way,” she stated.
“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. Obesity is a disease. It’s not about willpower — it’s about the brain.”
She continued, “This is a world that has shamed people for being overweight forever and all of us who have lived it know that people just treat you differently. They just do.”
“And I am Oprah Winfrey and I know all that comes with that and I get treated differently if I am 200 plus pounds versus under 200 pounds.”
Winfrey added, “There is a condescension. There is a stigma.”
