Yes, Oprah Winfrey has spoken about her weight loss, weight gain, and weight in general before, many, many times before. The difference this time, he says, is how little food noise there is in his daily life and how little shame there is. In fact, it's so quiet that you can eat an entire croissant and simply recognize that you had breakfast.
“Food noise,” for those who don't experience it, is a virtually non-stop mental conversation about food that, according to Tufts Medicine, rarely goes silent and instead leads a person “to eat when they are not hungry, to obsess over meals, and to feel shame or guilt about their eating habits.”
“This type of obsessive food-related thinking can override hunger cues and lead to patterns of overeating, undereating, or emotional eating, especially in overweight people,” Tufts said.
Winfrey told People in an exclusive interview published Tuesday that in the past she would have been thinking, “How many calories are in that croissant? How long will it take me to get rid of it? If I eat the croissant, I won't be able to eat dinner.” I'd still be thinking about that damn croissant!
What has changed is her acceptance two and a half years ago that she has a disease, obesity, and that this time there was something not called “willpower” to help her control it.
The talk show host has been using Mounjaro, one of the GLP-1 drugs, since 2023. The weight loss version of Mounjaro is Zepbound, just as Wegovy is the weight loss version of Ozempic. Trulicity and Victroza are also GLP-1, and the FDA just approved a pill version of Wegovy.
When she began using the injectable, Winfrey told People that she welcomed the arrival of a tool that would help her get away from the yo-yo path she had been on for decades. After understanding the science behind it, she said, “I was completely done with shaming other people and particularly myself” after so many years of enduring public criticism about her weight.
“I have been blamed and shamed,” he said elsewhere in that 2023 interview, “and I have blamed and shamed myself.”
Now, on the eve of 2026, Winfrey says her mental shift is complete. “I came to understand that overeating does not cause obesity. Obesity causes overeating,” he told the outlet. “And that's the most mind-blowing, liberating thing I've ever experienced as an adult.”
He doesn't even share his current weight with the public.
Winfrey took a break from medication in early 2024, she said, and began regaining weight despite continuing to exercise and eat healthy foods. So for Winfrey the obesity prescription will be renewed for life. C'est la vie seems to be his attitude.
“I'm not constantly beating myself up,” he said. “I hardly recognize the woman I have become. But she is a happy woman.”
Winfrey needs to take a carefully administered magnesium supplement and make sure she drinks enough water, she said. Injections are done weekly, except when she feels she can last 10 or 12 days. But packing clothes for the Australian leg of her tour promoting her book “Enough” was a delight, not a trip down a shame spiral. He even totally likes regular exercise.
Additionally, along with the “quiet strength” she has found in the absence of food noise, Winfrey has experienced another interesting side effect: She practically doesn't mind drinking alcohol.
“I was a huge tequila fan. I literally had 17 shots one night,” she told People. “I haven't had a drink in years. The fact that I don't even feel like drinking it anymore is pretty surprising.”
So back to that croissant. How did you feel after devouring it?
“I didn't feel anything,” he said. “The only thing I thought was, 'I need to clean up these crumbs.'”
