Oprah Winfrey has always been open about her battle with her body and as she promotes her new book on weight loss she defends plus size people
Oprah Winfrey has claimed that obesity isn’t caused by overeating as she opened up about her lifelong struggle with her weight.
The 71-year-old talk show host, who weighed over 16 stone at her heaviest, previously shared how making fun of her size became a ‘national sport’ in America, where she was once cruelly labelled ‘bumpy, lumpy and down dumpy’ by a fashion critic in the Nineties.
Oprah recently lost four stone thanks to weight loss jabs, after realising obesity is a ‘disease’ that she couldn’t fight without help and has gone on to write a book about her journey titled, ‘Your Health, Your Weight and What It’s Like To Be Free,’
In a new interview with PEOPLE magazine as she promoted her new book the TV icon said: “I came to understand that overeating doesn’t cause obesity. Obesity causes overeating. If you have obesity in your gene pool, I want people to know it’s not your fault. I want people to stop blaming yourself for genes and an environment you can’t control..”
READ MORE: Inside Oprah Winfrey’s weight loss journey after she sheds 5 stone
Shortly before the self-made billionaire appeared on a cover of Vogue in 1998 she said editor Anna Wintour ‘gently suggested’ she lose 20 pounds (around one and a half stone) – something she achieved.
Describing her ‘epiphany’ in 2023, Oprah shared she had put off using medication to lose weight as she believed it was “my responsibility to fix”, believing that “willpower was my failing”. She said: “I thought it was about discipline and willpower. But I stopped blaming myself. I’m not constantly punishing myself. I hardly recognise the woman I’ve become. But she’s a happy woman.”
Revealing she would now be on medication for life, which she combines with healthy eating and exercise, Oprah said that finally having a medical solution after years of yo-yo dieting “felt like a relief . . . a gift”.
Detailing her struggles with weight and food, Oprah shared thati no matter what she did her body would try to get back to 211 pounds (15 stone), even when she only ate one meal a day and went on 10-mile hikes.
This is what expert and her co-author Dr Ania Jastreboff calls the body’s ‘Enough Point’, a set weight your body maintains based on environment and genetics, no matter what diet or exercise routine you follow.
Now her weight has stabilised thanks to weekly weight loss jabs, which she says are “a tool to help you manage the messages that are being sent to your brain about overeating”.
She shared: “Sometimes I can go 10 or 12 days [in between jabs] because I still feel the effects of the week before. I had some digestion issues, so I have to drink enough water, and I have to take magnesium. The trick is to start slow and gradual. If you start by taking too much at one, you have more of a chance of messing yourself up”.
Oprah added the absence of food noise has “given me a quiet strength that comes with everything I do. Everything is just calmer and stronger.”
*Oprah’s new book Enough: Your Health, Your Weight and What It’s Like To Be Free is available to buy from January 13
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