Oprah's recent comments on "obesity" and her admission of using weight loss drugs show how misleading or even damaging the multi-hyphenate's remarks on weight can be.
Let's start with what Oprah said back on a panel in September, which she said was the turning point for her changing her attitude on weight loss medication. "Even when I first started hearing about the weight loss drugs ... I felt, I've got to do this on my own. Because if I take the drug, that's the easy way out," she told the audience.
To be clear: Weight loss drugs are not the "easy way out." They can have gnarly side effects and straight-up don't work for plenty of people.
Just over a week ago, Oprah said of her weight loss, "It's not one thing, it's everything."
I understand why people think of drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic as some miracle medication that can make everyone thin, given the breathless way the press has covered them, but that's not true. One study found that half the people who use semaglutide, which both drugs contain, lost 15% of their body weight, and a third lost 10%. If you weigh, say, 300 pounds, you'll still be classified as "obese" after taking them.
While we're at it, I would also push back on the idea that weight loss should be punishing for people, especially when we already know that dieting generally doesn't work long-term. I highly recommend listening to the Maintenance Phase podcast on Ozempic for further information.
Still, Oprah said that the discussion led to some positives for her. "I had the biggest aha along with many people in that audience," she told People magazine in a new interview. "I realized I’d been blaming myself all these years for being overweight, and I have a predisposition that no amount of willpower is going to control."
However, Oprah then said, "Obesity is a disease. It’s not about willpower — it's about the brain." Let's take a moment to consider the latter part of the statement. The causes of obesity are often way oversimplified — just as anyone who's heard the phrase "calories in, calories out" before knows. In fact, there are almost 60 different types of what we call obesity. For example, the majority of people with polycystic ovary syndrome, which affects around 1 in 10 women, are likely to be either overweight or obese.
As for "Obesity is a disease," the extent to which it should be called a disease has been debated. Moreover, being classified as "obese" comes from the BMI, which has long been called out for being racist, sexist, and profoundly unhelpful for determining someone's health.
"At present day, [BMI] has been widely adopted by the medical world as a shorthand for healthy or unhealthy,” Jennifer Gaudiani, an internal medicine physician and certified eating disorder specialist, previously told HuffPost. “That fact is unscientific and harmful.”
Oprah then said that she now takes weight loss medication and has "released [her] own shame about it." She explained, "I now use it as I feel I need it, as a tool to manage not yo-yoing [...] 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."
To be clear, I am not about to shame anyone who opts to use weight loss drugs — especially given, as Oprah notes in the same interview, the rampant body-shaming she's experienced over the years. But it would be foolish not to point out that she uncritically praises weight loss drugs "for managing weight and staying healthier."
Also, regarding her use of the word "redemption" — what have you been redeemed from, Oprah? Being fat? We've already established that the problem was with an anti-fat society, not with you!
We know that weight is a pretty poor indicator of health. We also know that weight loss drugs aren't necessarily going to make you healthier and can have serious side effects.
None of this is even going into the fact that people likely need to take drugs like Wegovy for life if they want to keep off the weight, or that we're currently in a shortage of the drug, or that the demand for weight loss drugs has led to shortages of diabetes medication, or that the cost of these drugs makes them inaccessible to many people, or that fat people have voiced concerns that the drugs will actually increase anti-fat bias.
It's also worth noting that Oprah is a board member and shareholder of WeightWatchers. What did WeightWatchers announce earlier this year? That it's moving into selling weight loss drugs. In fact, WeightWatchers stock fell as much as 15% after Oprah's initial "easy way out" comments. It doesn't feel inappropriate to point out that Oprah has an interest in promoting such drugs.
