Oprah Winfrey has revealed why she left her nearly 10-year position as a WeightWatchers board member last month.
His resignation was motivated by his work on an upcoming television special about the rise of prescription weight-loss drugs, he said during a Thursday. appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
“An Oprah Special: Shame, Guilt, and the Weight Loss Revolution” airs Monday on ABC and the next day on Hulu. During the broadcast, filmed in front of a live studio audience, the 70-year-old media mogul will sit down with medical experts and patients to discuss prescription weight loss medications, including Ozempic, Mounjaro and Wegovy.
“I decided that because this special was really important to me and I wanted to be able to talk about whatever I wanted to talk about, and WeightWatchers is now dedicated to being a weight health company that also administers weight medications, I didn't want to make it appear of any conflict of interest,” Winfrey told Kimmel.
Winfrey added that she donated her company's stock to the National Museum of African American History and Culture “so that no one can say, 'Oh, he's doing something special, he's making money.'”
In December, Winfrey revealed to the people who had been using an unspecified weight loss medication along with lifestyle changes to maintain a healthy weight.
“The fact that there is a medically approved prescription to control my weight and stay healthier throughout my life seems like a relief, a redemption, a gift,” she said in the cover story. “Now I use it when I feel I need it, as a tool to manage the non-me-me.”
Until then, Winfrey said she had been wedded to the idea that maintaining a healthy weight was a matter of sheer willpower.
She told Kimmel on Thursday that after double knee surgery in 2021, she promised God she would get back in shape if he helped her walk again. She ate well and gritted her teeth as she slowly progressed from a few steps a day to a two-hour mile, she said.
“I felt like I had to do it my way and I had to prove that I could do it on my own even though I heard people talk about medications all the time,” she told the talk show host.
Throughout her decades-long career, Winfrey said, “I have been in the storm of losing weight, gaining it back, losing weight and gaining it back. And what I realized when I heard what the doctor said, is that you're always going to put it back on, and it's like holding your breath underwater and trying not to get up. “You are always going to get up.”
In addition to the science behind obesity, the special will address the granular details of prescription weight-loss drugs: who they are intended for, their short- and long-term side effects, and why no one wants to talk about them.
“This is a very personal issue for me and for the hundreds of millions of affected people around the world who have struggled with weight and obesity for years,” Winfrey said in a statement. statement about the prime-time event. “This special will bring together medical experts, industry leaders and people fighting every day to talk about health equity and obesity with the intention of ultimately releasing the shame, judgment and stigma surrounding obesity.” weight”.
“For the first time in history, new drugs could be a game-changer in stemming the tide of people living with obesity, an epidemic that has grown exponentially since the 1970s, costing $173 billion a year in medical costs. only in the United States. “the network said in the statement.
