The singer admitted she tried GLP-1 after dissing GLP-1 rumors, explaining that she prefers to refer to her weight loss journey as a “weight release.”
Years of speculating about Lizzo’s body have culminated in the star admitting she “tried everything” to achieve the dramatic weight loss that has dumfounded her fans.
The 37-year-old singer told Trisha Paytas’ Just Trish podcast that she began to take GLP-1 medication at the outset of her weight loss journey in 2023, after shutting down rumours of her taking the medication. But despite taking it she soon came to the conclusion that it was not a long-term solution.
She said: “I tried everything. Ozempic works because you eat less food, yeah? So if you eat right, it makes you feel full. But if you can just do that on your own and get mind over matter, it’s the same thing.”
The Grammy winner described a lengthy and complex journey with food as frustrated by a time when she was consuming a lot of “fake” food.
She also rebuffed anyone who claimed that taking GLP-1 medication was “cheating,” claiming that this was a “fat phobic” dose. It’s difficult, they say. To assist someone in a problem, it’s a drug. When you tell someone they’re cheating, I believe people are acting fat phobic.
Instead, she altered her diet to meet her goals. From 2020 to 2023, Lizzo had been a plant-based diet for many years. She was vegan for three years.
She told Trisha, “It wasn’t being vegan, which did it for me.” Because I ate a lot of fake meat while vegan, I thought. I needed to consume a lot of it because I needed to eat a lot of it to stay full. I ate a lot of it when I needed to. Lizzo discovered that she ended up consuming 3, 000 to 5, 000 calories per day while still maintaining a healthy diet.
She noted that “fake sugar” can be found in some products that are marketed as healthy and leave you feeling hungry. For me, that is when I began eating whole foods, including beef, chicken, and fish. I put a lot of fake things in my stomach that didn’t actually fill me up, which made me feel full and not expand my stomach.
Lizzo’s body mass decreased by 10% and her body fat decreased by 16% as it was made public in January. She claims to feel great despite criticism from nay-sayers who claimed her weight-loss journey was a journey without body-positivity.
Lizzo explained, “I feel like I worked really really hard and it was intentional with what I did with my body. So when I get compliments, I go, ‘Thanks b***h.’ Like I really receive it because I need to receive that. I don’t take it any weird way because I tried to do this.”
Last year, the singer had shut down allegations that she was taking GLP-1 medications. She shared a short Instagram wearing a colorful, satin robe while her hair was pulled back captioned, “When you finally get Ozempic allegations after 5 months of weight training and calorie deficit.”
The user accused Lizzo of taking “Oxempic” or “coke,” and she then shared a screenshot of the comment. The troll asked whether she had snorted coke or used Ozempic. The Grammy-winning author responded, “Whyyyy do you follow me?” “followed by four crying face emojis. The Instagram user’s account, which had been set to private, was then shared by Lizzo.
She announced in January that she had successfully lost weight and that she had succeeded. I’ve reached my weight release goal today when I step on the scale! This number hasn’t been updated since 2014! You can do anything you want to do, let me remind you. Time for new objectives!
Then in April during an episode of the On Purpose With Jay Shetty podcast, Lizzo said she prefers to use the term “weight release” in place of weight loss. She credited her boyfriend Myke Wright saying, “My man, he’s so funny. He was the one that brought it to my attention at first. Because at first I was like, ‘Oh my gosh I lost five pounds’ and he was like, ‘Where did it go?’
“I was mad at him, I was like, “Why would he say that?” but he was like, “Where did it go?’I want to be very intentional about the words that come out of my mouth because there’s young people who are watching me and they’re experiencing what I’m putting into the world. They’re applying it to their own experience and their own life just like I did when I was a kid.”
She added: “Be careful with your words because it can affect somebody in ways you don’t even know.Even me releasing the weight has affected people and I take that seriously. I take that responsibility. And because of that I want to transmute it into something that makes people feel comfortable and less afraid of it.”
During an appearance on The Jason Lee Show, Lizzo explained why she hasn’t revealed her exact weight loss number. “If I say the number, I don’t think people could do the math. I’ve just seen a lot of TikToks where it’s like, ‘Lizzo talks about her 500lbs weight loss!’ Why are y’all putting numbers on me? It kind of annoys me.”
