Oprah says weight-loss drugs allow her to stop the 'food noise'
Oprah Winfrey has admitted to using an unnamed weight-loss drug to manage her weight and says doing so has changed her perception of thin people. Prior to taking the drug, Winfrey says she thought thin people had 'more willpower'. 'One of the things that I realised the very first time I took a GLP-1 was that all these years I thought that thin people had more willpower,' she said on her Oprah Winfrey podcast. 'They ate better foods. They were able to stick to it longer. They never had a potato chip. 'I realised 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.' Winfrey also deduced that thinner people do not have the same intrusive thoughts about food, which she calls 'food noise'. Weight-loss drugs, she claims, allow her to quieten or stop 'food noise' by slowing down digestion and reducing cravings.
The Oprah Winfrey Show host claimed this intuitive way of eating 'doesn’t work' for those who struggle with obesity and spoke candidly about her own experience of being 'publicly humiliated' for her weight throughout her career. 'Every week [I was] exploited by the tabloids, anytime any comedian wanted to make fun or make a joke about it, they would make a joke about it,' she said. 'And I accepted it because I thought I deserved it.' Winfrey came under scrutiny in 2023 during The Color Purple press run after losing a considerable amount of weight, with 'Oprah Winfrey's weight loss' becoming a breakout search term on Google. Despite initially denying that she was using weight-loss medication, speaking to People later that year the presenter said she was 'done with shaming' people for using GLP-1 drugs. '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. 'It was public sport to make fun of me for 25 years. I have been blamed and shamed, and I blamed and shamed myself.' During the interview, she recalled one particularly hurtful moment when was on fashion critic Mr Blackwell's list. 'I was on the cover of some magazine and it said, "Dumpy, Frumpy and Downright Lumpy,"' she explained. 'I didn’t feel angry. I felt sad. I felt hurt. I swallowed the shame. I accepted that it was my fault.' Winfrey, who was once a member of the WeightWatchers board, has since praised the use of weight-loss drugs for allowing her to live a healthier lifestyle. Injectables like Ozempic were originally designed to treat people living with type 2 diabetes. While its weight loss properties have been widely lauded, many of the side effects are still unknown, and it is common for users to experience nausea, diarrhoea, abdominal pain, vomiting and constipation.
Nikki Peach is a writer at Grazia UK, working across pop culture, TV and news. She has also written for the i, i-D and the New Statesman Media Group and covers all things TV for Grazia (treating high and lowbrow shows with equal respect).
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