Oprah Winfrey is opening up about how her weight loss journey has emotionally impacted her over the years.
While recently hosting an Oprah Daily panel on the obesity and weight crisis, the talk show queen revealed she felt mistreated when she was at a higher weight and would go out shopping.
“It’s that thing where people are like, ‘Let me show you the gloves. Would you like to look at the handbags? Because we know that there’s nothing in here for you,’” Winfrey, 68, said of her past shopping experiences to the panel’s attendees. “There is a condescension. There is stigma.”
The billionaire media executive also tapped obesity specialists Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford and Dr. Melanie Jay; psychologist Dr. Rachel Goldman; and Sima Sistani, the CEO of Weight Watchers, to join the conversation.
Winfrey, who has had a long, public battle with her weight, often taking viewers along on her healthy journey, says she dieted a lot because her “body always seems to want to go back to a certain weight.”
“You all know I’ve been on this journey for most of my life. My highest weight was 237 lbs. I don’t know if there is another public person whose weight struggle has been exploited as much as mine over the years,” Winfrey shared.
The media mogul recalled being “shamed in the tabloids every week [for] about 25 years” for “not having the willpower” amid her weight journey.
“This is a world that has shamed people for being overweight forever,” Winfrey declared.
Paras Griffin via Getty Images
She added: “And all of us who’ve lived it know that people treat you differently, they just do.”
Winfrey got candid about how she considered jumping on the celebrity trend of taking weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro after having knee surgery, but realized she had to “do this on my own.”
“Shouldn’t we all just be more accepting of whatever body you choose to be in? That should be your choice,” she said. “Even when I first started hearing about the weight loss drugs, at the same time I was going through knee surgery, and I felt, ‘I’ve got to do this on my own.’”
Winfrey added: “Because if I take the drug, that’s the easy way out.”
Back in 2017, Winfrey told The New York Times Magazine that she “can’t accept myself if I’m over 200 pounds” because of the health concerns it causes.
“It’s too much work on my heart. It causes high blood pressure for me. It puts me at risk for diabetes, because I have diabetes in my family,” she told the outlet.