Oprah Winfrey faces backlash for making bold claim about ‘thin people’ after taking weight-loss drug

Oprah Winfrey faced backlash on social media after making a bold claim about “thin people” in light of her experience using a weight-loss drug to shed pounds.

“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 — those people — just had more willpower,” the former talk show host said during a conversation with Dr. Ania Jastreboff on “The Oprah Podcast” Tuesday.

“They ate better foods. They were able to stick to it longer. They never had a potato chip.”

“And then I realized the very first time I took the GLP-1 that, oh, they’re not even thinking about it,” Winfrey, 70, continued. “They’re only eating when they’re hungry and they’re stopping when they’re full.”

After the brief clip of the conversation was shared via Instagram, many people sounded off with their disapproval in the comments.

“Thin people also think about food all the time, but they work hard to manage their physical and mental needs in a healthy way, and not by taking medication,” one user wrote.

Another echoed, “I think about it constantly but just don’t eat it.”

A third netizen called the media mogul’s epiphany “just a lie.”

“There are many thin people, or others who are a healthy weight but not necessarily ‘thin’ who do in fact draw on willpower and strategic tactics to keep their weight down. They create an environment that unlike most of our society, is NOT obesogenic,” the user wrote, adding that they “forbid” themselves from eating until they have “walked for an hour.”

“Just because you are on a new bandwagon doesn’t mean that you should speak in a way that suggests your perception of reality is definitive. It is not,” the person concluded.

Winfrey confirmed she was taking a weight-loss drug in December 2023 after years of yo-yo dieting.

“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,” she said at the time.

After making the announcement, she resigned from her position on the board of WeightWatchers.