Oprah Winfrey reveals what weight loss drugs taught her about ‘thin people’

She famously tortured herself for years with crash diets. Oprah Winfrey has now opened up about a life-changing realisation.

She famously battled with her weight for years with crash diets, including one that had her replace her meals with shakes for four months.

Talk show guru Oprah Winfrey is opening up about how weight loss drugs, such as Ozempic and Wegovy, have helped her make a life-changing realisation about “thin people.”

The 70-year-old media mogul once derided weight loss jabs as “the easy way out” for those wanting to shed the kilos.

Oprah Winfrey is opening up about her dramatic weight loss. Picture: Getty Images

But she now admits to using an unnamed GLP-1, a type 2 diabetes medication, to lose around 23 kilograms to reach her target  weight of 72 kilograms.  

The star said the use of weight-loss medications had opened her mind up to the mindset of those who are able to manage portion control. 

“One of the things that I realised the very first time I took a GLP-1 was that all these years I thought that thin people had more willpower,” Winfrey said in a discussion with Dr Ania Jastreboff on the latest episode of The Oprah Podcast.”They ate better foods. They were able to stick to it longer. They never had a potato chip.”

The star has been candid over the years about her struggles. Picture: Getty Images

Winfrey said she realised  that what she initially perceived as “willpower”  was actually an absence of intrusive hunger thoughts, which is often referred to as “food noise”.

“And then I realised the very first time I took the GLP-1 that they’re not even thinking about it,” the billionaire said.

“They’re eating when they’re hungry and they’re stopping when they’re full.”

During her chat  with Dr Jastreboff, Winfrey also spoke about being “publicly humiliated: for her weight over the course of her decades-long career.

Oprah Winfrey previously apologised for contributing to toxic diet culture. Picture: Getty Images

“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 said. 

In a three-hour Weight Watchers special that aired last year, Winfrey apologised for the role she’s played in “diet culture” over her 25-year career.

During a three-hour WW special, she admitted to being a “steadfast participant” through her platforms, magazine, and talk show.

“I’ve been a major contributor to it. I cannot tell you how many weight-loss shows and makeovers I have done, and they have been a staple since I’ve been working in television,” Winfrey admitted, according to Page Six.

She  discussed the infamous TV moment when she pulled a wagon stacked with fat  in front of millions of views on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1988 to represent the weight she had lost during a liquid-only diet.

“I’ve shared how that famous wagon of fat moment on the Oprah show is one of my biggest regrets,” she said. “It sent a message that starving yourself with a liquid diet - it set a standard for people watching that I nor anybody else could uphold.”

Originally published as Oprah Winfrey reveals what weight loss drugs taught her about ‘thin people’