Oprah admits she was a ‘major contributor’ to diet culture that led to her own shame

Oprah Winfrey has expressed regret over the role she played in diet culture.

The 71-year-old media mogul’s new book, titled Enough: Your Health, Your Weight, and What It's Like To Be Free, hit shelves Tuesday, as she and her co-author, Dr. Ania M. Jastreboff, wrote about weight and obesity.

In the book, Winfrey acknowledged the infamous scene from her eponymous talk show where she rolled out a red wagon filled with 67 pounds of fat to represent how much weight she had lost at the time. Over the years, she continued to talk about her dieting efforts while also being on the WeightWatchers board — which she left in 2024.

However, Winfrey wrote that speaking about her dieting efforts is now one of her “biggest regrets.”

“I want to acknowledge that I have been a steadfast participant in the diet culture that contributed to some of this shame,” she wrote in the new book. “Through the magazine, through the talk show for twenty-five years, through online channels – I’ve been a major contributor to it.”

open image in gallery

open image in gallery

“It sent a message to the people watching that starving yourself with a liquid diet was a standard – that neither I nor anybody else could uphold.

“Recognizing once and for all that obesity is not a moral failing, that it’s a chronic, relapsing disease – that has been life-changing for me. I did not get the memo 10 years ago, but now I know and I want to spread that information to as many people as I can,” Winfrey wrote.

Prior to her WeightWatchers departure, Winfrey revealed that she started taking a GLP-1 to manage her weight after previously being hesitant to, thinking she simply was not trying hard enough. In December 2023, Winfrey said that despite initially denying using weight-loss drugs, she was “done with the shaming” for using GLP-1 medication.

“The fact that there’s a medically approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier, in my lifetime, feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift, and not something to hide behind and once again be ridiculed for. I’m absolutely done with the shaming from other people and particularly myself,” she said.

At the time, the former talk show host stressed that the prescription drug she uses isn’t singularly responsible for her weight loss. Rather, Winfrey credited her overall weight loss to her regimen and added that the medication is just one of many tools in her arsenal.

During an episode of her Super Soul podcast last year, she discussed the biggest change she witnessed since taking the medication, which was the elimination of “food noise” or intrusive hunger thoughts.

“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 had more willpower,” she said. “They ate better foods. They were able to stick to it longer. They never had a potato chip.”

Winfrey continued: “I realized the very first time I took the GLP-1 that they’re not even thinking about it. They’re eating when they’re hungry, and they’re stopping when they’re full.”