Oprah Opens Up About Her Year Without GLP-1s and What She Learned
Oprah Winfrey photographed for PEOPLE in December 2025.
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NEED TO KNOW
- In 2023, Oprah Winfrey revealed she began taking GLP-1 weight loss medication, describing it as “a gift.”
- However, just months into the treatment, Winfrey stopped the injections, aiming to “beat the medication,” as stated in a recent cover story from PEOPLE.
- She acknowledged that using these drugs is likely “going to be a lifetime thing.”
Oprah Winfrey expressed feeling “shaking” during her initial revelation of taking a GLP-1 weight loss medication in a PEOPLE interview two years ago. “I knew that admitting to being on medication was going to be a big freaking deal,” she shared in PEOPLE’s latest cover story. “I knew I was going to get lots of push back. And I did.”
What Winfrey didn’t foresee was that she would end up challenging the medication herself in the months that followed.
Less than six months after beginning the GLP-1 injections, Winfrey stopped them completely on her 70th birthday in January 2024. “I tried to beat the medication,” she recalled.
PEOPLE’s new cover featuring Oprah Winfrey.
After years of grappling with her weight, Winfrey turned to GLP-1 medication following an “aha moment” in July 2023 while filming a show about obesity with experts. “I came to understand that overeating doesn’t cause obesity. Obesity causes overeating. And that’s the most mind-blowing, freeing thing I’ve experienced as an adult,” she stated.
Despite this realization, she felt compelled to demonstrate her ability to maintain her weight independently. “I said, ‘I’m going to see if the science is right. I want to see if I can do without it,’” Winfrey recalled.
After discontinuing the medication, she adhered to a healthy diet and exercise regimen, believing she could defy expectations. “Everybody was saying if you get off the medication, you’re going to immediately put the weight back on,” she noted.
While the weight didn’t return immediately, she gained 20 pounds over the following year without the shots. She reflected, “It’s going to be a lifetime thing. I’m on high blood pressure medication, and if I go off the high blood pressure medication, my blood pressure is going to go up. The same thing is true now, I realize, with these medications. I’ve proven to myself I need it.”
In her new book, co-written with Dr. Ania M. Jastreboff, director of the Yale Obesity Research Center, Winfrey shares her understanding of the GLP-1 medication’s role in her life. Titled Enough: Your Health, Your Weight and What It’s Like to Be Free, the book details how her body naturally strives to reach what Dr. Jastreboff refers to as its “Enough Point,” a weight governed by genetics and environment. For Winfrey, that weight was 211 pounds, at which point she faced health issues including pre-diabetes and high cholesterol.
The GLP-1 medication, which she typically injects weekly, has made such a significant impact on her life that she has begun covering the costs for acquaintances unable to afford it themselves.
Oprah Winfrey photographed for PEOPLE in December.
Winfrey emphasizes that regardless of individual choices regarding treatment, her core message remains clear. “If you have obesity in your gene pool, I want people to know it’s not your fault,” she stated. “People need to stop blaming others. Don’t say, ‘Why don’t you just work out more and eat less?’ That is not the answer. I want people to have the information, whatever you choose to do with it, whether you get the medications or prefer to keep dieting. That’s the lesson I learned: I stopped blaming myself.”
Moreover, she expresses pride in seeking assistance in her journey against obesity. “No more shame,” she insists. “Let the people say what they will.”
The book Enough: Your Health, Your Weight, and What It’s Like To Be Free is set to be released on January 13, 2024, and is now available for pre-order.
