Oprah Winfrey's 40-Year Weight Loss Struggle: Inside the Billionaire Star's Ongoing Quest for Self-Acceptance
Oprah Winfrey has
somehow managed to carve out a private life for
herself, despite being one of the most famous women alive.
She goes out with longtime partner Stedman
Graham, she and BFF Gayle Kingare nothing if
not the picture of vacation goals and, obviously, if you end up on a yacht with Barack and Michelle Obama, Tom Hanks and Bruce Springsteen,
long-lens photos will be taken. But for the most part, she
has pointedly kept the particulars of her personal relationships
largely under wraps.
Except for one, that is.
Namely, her highly public relationship with her
weight. That love-hate relationship has been playing out on TV and the covers
of magazines for years.
Even if you're not a fan of Winfrey for whatever
reason (that much success, combined with her longevity, relative ubiquity and
her status as one of the most powerful African-American women in the world, in
2017 one of the world's only two black female billionaires, has certainly
made her a target for haters as well), you're most likely familiar with Oprah's
roller-coaster weight loss journey—which, at this point, is as much a part of
her life story as anything.
Photos
That story has been told time and again, and it
never gets less impressive. Though we've yet to check in with everybody, ever,
it can often feel as if no one has made more of her life after starting
off with less than Winfrey has. Over the course of her career, a
trajectory that dreams are made of, Winfrey has simply become one of the
most influential personalities of all time.
Said to be worth roughly $3.1 billion now, her
lifestyle rocketed past "attainable" decades ago, but there are
countless ways in which Winfrey has endeared herself to people of all ages and
from all walks of life—starting with her warm, booming personality that
makes you feel as if you've known her for years. Then again, we have known
the 63-year-old multi-hyphenate for years, be it through her talk show,
her magazine, her philanthropy, her cable channel or everything else that made
her acting career—which would have been significant on its
own—into almost a hobby, something she's returned to on and off over the years
when she felt like it, when the right projects came along as a performer
or producer. (We're in the midst of a scripted-Oprah renaissance, with the
recent HBO movie The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacksand the
upcoming big-screen adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time.)
But while she's never been one to shy away from
sharing her life's considerable low points (they're part of why she's such an
inspiration to so many), including the emotional effects of crash dieting
and her other stabs at rapid weight loss over the years, it's still hard to
picture Winfrey—the queen of self-reliance and self-made glory—not having
conquer-the-world-level self-esteem. Because if she's not living her best life
24/7, what hope is there for everyone else?
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
Yet that's exactly why Winfrey has been
sharing the gritty details of her relationship with food and weight since
the 1980s, after she lost 67 pounds with the help of a liquid diet and
daily 6.5 mile runs, only to gain it (and more) right back.
At first she tried to make weight loss look, if
not easy, then perfectly attainable, pulling a wagon loaded with 67 pounds
of gloppy fat behind her on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1988 on
an episode called "Diet Dreams Come True," a visual that still
resonates to this day, while showing off her trimmer figure in tightly
belted jeans and a sleek black turtleneck.
But it soon became painfully clear to Winfrey (and
subsequently to everyone following along) that maintaining a weight that she
found acceptable would end up being a lifelong fixation. She told People in
1991, "I thought I was cured. And that's just not true. You have to
find a way to live in the world with food." In 1996 she co-authored
with Bob Greene A Journal of Daily Renewal: The Companion
to Make the Connection, about staying in touch with your body's needs.
Winfrey looked as thin as ever on the cover.
Photos
In a 2002 essay for O Magazine called
"What I Know for Sure About Making Peace With My Body," she wrote
that she went to her first "diet doctor" in 1977, when she was 23,
and "thus began the cycle of discontent."
"Around 1995, after years of yo-yoing, I
finally realized that being grateful to my body, whatever shape it was in, was
key to giving more love to myself," she wrote. "Although I'd
made the connection intellectually, living it was a different story."
In 2009, a current photo of Oprah shared a cover of O with a photo of a
slimmer 2005 Oprah, with the quote, "'How did I let this happen
again?'"
There's a reason why weight loss is a
multi-billion-dollar industry—one that Winfrey herself recently bought into
after already having done more for the national diet conversation than almost
any celebrity over the past 30 years.
Hyperion
Just over two years ago, she bought a 10 percent
stake in Weight Watchers for $43 million. Strategic business move,
sure, but also perhaps an emotional one. According to The New York Times Magazine,
the company had extended many invitations to Winfrey over the years to get
involved with the company, but it wasn't until she had gained 17
pounds while nursing a sprained ankle that she decided the
timing was right in July 2015.
Weight Watchers' stock enjoyed a massive Oprah
bump and soon "I love bread" was everyone's favorite new mantra. By
September 2016, however, approximately $1 billion that had been gained on paper
during those heady early days of Winfrey's involvement had reportedly disappeared and CEO Jim Chambers
stepped down.
But if anyone has learned anything over the past
several decades, it's to never count Oprah Winfrey out. When OWN launched
in 2011 it was immediately plagued by stories that it was struggling,
plagued by ratings, programming and, summarily, financial issues. And it
was plagued by all of that, but by 2013 Team Winfrey had turned it around, thanks to, among other things, a
win-win production deal with Tyler Perryand strong
ratings for Winfrey's interview series Oprah's Next Chapter.
Photos
Similarly, Winfrey's visible presence has since attracted
more people to Weight Watchers. Per the NY Times, membership was up
to 2.8 million people within a year of Oprah buying in, and stood at 3.6
million by the end of the first quarter of 2017, Weight
Watchers' fourth straight quarter of reported revenue growth. Mindy
Grossman, formerly CEO of HSN, signed on as the company's new chief executive
in April.
Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images
Yet all this talk about weight on Winfrey's
part, though nothing new, has generated a new group of critics who don't think
that being skinnier should be on anyone's list of priorities when it comes
to self-worth, and Winfrey's continued public efforts to look a certain way is
sending a distressing and archaic message.
We won't say those critics are fighting a
losing battle, but it's still an uphill one. Even in this day and age when
messages of body positivity, body diversity, acceptance and inclusion are more
prominent than ever, there's a century of misguided precedent when it comes to
what people (mainly women) should look like if they intend to
look their "best."
So for now, Winfrey remains a famous voice
voicing universal concerns. It's not as though she only talks about skinny
jeans and size 2s. She wants to be healthy and feel good, physically and
mentally—and it's not very sporting of people to suggest that her feelings
about her own body are invalid. It's not right to shame those
who would like to lose weight, as though they can't still be strong or
empowered or are otherwise betraying womanhood by wanting to look a certain
way, any more than it's OK to shame someone's weight in general.
Besides, maintaining a certain weight is
important to her. She's not saying it should be important to
everybody.
As an influencer, Winfrey is perfectly aware that it's not de rigeur to
admit you care about what size you are.
Read
"This whole P.C. about accepting yourself as
you are—you should, 100 percent," Winfrey agreed in an interview with The New York Times Magazine.
But in response to questions about the prospect of accepting
one's body as it is (whatever that means, really), she explained,
"For your heart to pump, pump, pump, pump, it needs the least amount of
weight possible to do that. So all of the people who are saying, 'Oh, I need to
accept myself as I am'—I can't accept myself if I'm over 200 pounds, because
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."
Randy Holmes/ABC
In January, Winfrey proudly revealed that she had lost 42 pounds on
Weight Watchers since beginning the program in 2015.
"Before, when I was 150 pounds, I'd imagine
getting up to 200 pounds, and think, 'Oh my God,'" she said in O
Magazine. "But now I think, 'I never thought that at 200
pounds I could look in the mirror and love my body, love myself, not chide
and minimize myself for being 200 pounds.' At 200 pounds, I was OK. I have
never, ever, ever been at that point. And then at 190 pounds, I was OK. If I don't
lose another pound right now, I'm still OK.
"The fullness of life, the fullness of being,
the self-acceptance—I'd never done that before. I'd always beaten myself up
because I was tied to a number."
Winfrey continued, "When the weight
started to come off, I needed to get clear on my intention. I could lose weight
to fit a dress size, or attend an event, or to make other people like me. But I
couldn't keep it off for those reasons. I always put the weight back on. This
time I changed the intention to, 'I want to be the healthiest I can
be—physically, emotionally, spiritually.' So the process and purpose of losing
shifted for me. It was easier, because my intention was clearer."
It may not be cool to admit you care about your
weight, but it's real as hell. And honesty remains one of our favorite
things.
That story has been told time and again, and it
never gets less impressive. Though we've yet to check in with everybody, ever,
it can often feel as if no one has made more of her life after starting
off with less than Winfrey has. Over the course of her career, a
trajectory that dreams are made of, Winfrey has simply become one of the
most influential personalities of all time.
Said to be worth roughly $3.1 billion now, her
lifestyle rocketed past "attainable" decades ago, but there are
countless ways in which Winfrey has endeared herself to people of all ages and
from all walks of life—starting with her warm, booming personality that
makes you feel as if you've known her for years. Then again, we have known
the 63-year-old multi-hyphenate for years, be it through her talk show,
her magazine, her philanthropy, her cable channel or everything else that made
her acting career—which would have been significant on its
own—into almost a hobby, something she's returned to on and off over the years
when she felt like it, when the right projects came along as a performer
or producer. (We're in the midst of a scripted-Oprah renaissance, with the
recent HBO movie The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacksand the
upcoming big-screen adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time.)
But while she's never been one to shy away from
sharing her life's considerable low points (they're part of why she's such an
inspiration to so many), including the emotional effects of crash dieting
and her other stabs at rapid weight loss over the years, it's still hard to
picture Winfrey—the queen of self-reliance and self-made glory—not having
conquer-the-world-level self-esteem. Because if she's not living her best life
24/7, what hope is there for everyone else?
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