Oprah Winfrey’s struggles with her weight have been a story just about as long as Oprah Winfrey has been in the public eye, and that’s largely because she has made it a topic of conversation.
Whether she was wheeling out a wagon full of 67-pounds of fat to ‘celebrate’ her weight loss, hawking fad diets on her hugely popular daytime talk show, or becoming an investor in and spokesperson for Weight Watchers, Winfrey has never been shy about using her health to make headlines – and her latest project is no exception.
In her new book, Winfrey and her endocrinologist co-author attempt to reframe the narrative surrounding obesity and weight loss, as the former talk show host touts the wonders of GLP-1 medications. But Megyn and The Nerve host Maureen Callahan aren’t buying what she’s selling, and, on Friday’s show, they discussed what Winfrey has failed to mention in her media tour.
The Book
Winfrey has been making the media rounds to promote Enough, a new book that is being billed as collaboration between Winfrey and Ania M. Jastreboff, MD, an endocrinologist and professor at Yale School of Medicine, who has been studying obesity for some two decades.
According to the synopsis on Amazon, Winfrey has “struggled with her weight… for her entire adult life” and never thought she would see the day that “medicines” (read: GLP-1 meds) would “provide hope, health, and healing for people like her.” The book is said to be based on her “conversations” with Dr. Jastreboff, which apparently reveal that “having obesity is not a choice.”
Instead, the book characterizes obesity as a treatable disease and “the new medications can lower our body fat set point (our brain’s ‘Enough Point’), so that we lose weight without battling biology with willpower.”
The New Narrative
With her latest slim down the result of GLP-1s, Winfrey is using the book and promotional tour for it to reframe the narrative (again) about her weight loss journey. USA Today recounted how she blames Joan Rivers for “one of the most humiliating moments of her life.” The comedian apparently asked her about gaining weight on The Tonight Show in 1985 and, from there, Winfrey claimed she became “a running joke.”
She admits in the book that the 1988 fat in the wagon stunt is one of her “biggest regrets,” though it wasn’t her only transgression. “I want to acknowledge that I have been a steadfast participant in the diet culture that contributed to some of this shame,” Winfrey wrote in Enough. “Through the magazine, through the talk show for 25 years, through online channels – I’ve been a major contributor to it.”
And now she wants everyone to know that the diet, exercise, and discipline she once used to get to a healthy weight is no longer necessary. Winfrey said started taking weight loss medication when she realized obesity wasn’t about discipline or willpower, but rather was a medical condition that needed treatment.
During an appearance on The View, she spoke about how the drugs changed her relationship with food. “So this is what I wanted everybody to know, that all these years, I thought I was overeating. I was standing there with all the ‘food noise’ – what I ate, what I should eat, how many calories was that, how long is it going to take,” she explained. “I thought that that was because of me and my fault.”
“Now, I understand that if you carry the obesity gene, if that is what you have, that is what makes you overeat,” Winfrey added. “You don’t overeat and become obese. Obesity causes you to overeat. Obesity causes you to have all of that ‘food noise.’ And what the GLP-1s have done for me – and I know a number of other people – is to quiet that noise.”
Insincere Motives?
Callahan called B.S. on Winfrey’s latest origin story. “Oprah, again, is shilling a bunch of bullshit. You can’t also position yourself as… America’s foremost influencer, the person who moves the needle culturally, and be like, ‘Joan Rivers victimized me,” she said. “If you can’t take Joan Rivers, you have no business being in the spotlight.”
Having bought the book herself, Callahan also wondered just how involved the former Queen of Daytime really was in writing it. “She didn’t ‘collaborate’ on it,” she theorized. “She wrote the forward. It is like three and a half pages long, and the doc who is kind of in her shadow in all of these media appearances wrote the actual book.”
Either way, Callahan said the new narrative is “flattening the conversation [about obesity and weight loss] in a way that is highly irresponsible” because GLP-1 medications, which were originally developed to treat diabetes, are not without well-documented and, in some cases, severe side effects.
Megyn agreed and believes Winfrey’s motives are pretty transparent at this point. “She saw yet another way to get herself into the news and get her face back on camera,” Megyn concluded, “which is the only thing that makes her happy, and she used it.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Callahan by tuning in to episode 1,232 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.