Winfrey’s weight has been the subject of public curiosity—and tabloid fodder—for than four decades, ever since she starred in 1985’sThe Color Purpleand took her eponymous talk show into national syndication the following year.

Some of the cruelest headlines are still fresh in her mind: “Oprah—Fatter Than Ever”; “Oprah Warned: ‘Diet or Die.’” Her ups and downs were a regular punch line on late-night talk shows, starting with her first appearance onTheTonight Showin 1985, when she was goaded into agreeing to lose 15 lbs. by host Joan Rivers.

As she built a media empire and rose to one-name star status, Winfrey remained painfully aware there was one aspect of her life that seemed out of her control. “I’ve always been confident in whatever I was doing, but I was at the same time disappointed in my overweight body,” she says. “Was I embarrassed by it? Yes. Was I disappointed in myself for continuing to fail? Yes, every single time. I felt it was my fault.” And failure, she writes, “felt doubly shameful because I have access to so much: chefs and trainers and the healthiest of foods.”

At the same time she was navigating the public humiliation, she was also contributing to the culture of weight shaming, she now admits. She spent four months in 1988 eating no solid food and ingesting shakes before appearing on her show pulling a wagon filled with 67 lbs. of fat to demonstrate how much she lost—“all to prove I could get back into a pair of size 10 Calvin Klein jeans,” she writes. And she dutifully dropped 20 lbs. whenVogueeditor Anna Wintour suggested doing so before posing for the cover in 1998. “I was just doing what the rest of the world was doing,” she says. “I thought I had proven that I had willpower.”

No matter what diet or exercise routine Winfrey took on, her body seemed to want to fight back, and her weight would stubbornly return to 211 lbs. (a concept her coauthor dr. Jastreboff calls your body’s “Enough Point,” a set weight your body maintains based on environment and genetics). Knee surgery in 2021 allowed her to get back on her feet without pain, and she began hiking daily and eating a single midday meal. But even after taking on 10-mile hikes, she discovered she’d gained 8 lbs. “I couldn’t believe it. My body said, ‘We trying to get back to that 211, girl. We’re trying to get you.’ ”

Over the years Winfrey tried to embrace her bigger body. “I wanted to be one of those people who could be at peace with myself being overweight,” she says. “But everything in my life, in the culture, in society, in my brain, was telling me the opposite: ‘You have failed because you have not conquered this thing.’ ” And, she says, “I was not healthy at 211 lbs. A lot of people tell me they can be overweight and healthy. I was not. I was pre-diabetic, and my cholesterol numbers were high.”

When Winfrey hosted a special on obesity in 2023 with experts in the field, she had “an epiphany.” For years, “I avoided the word ‘obesity.’ It connoted ‘out of control,’ ” she says. “But 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’d heard about GLP-1 medications a few years earlier but dismissed them, still believing that her weight was “my responsibility to fix.” But the revelation that obesity is a disease changed her mind. Having a medical solution felt “like a relief . . . a gift,” Winfrey toldPeoplein 2023 when she first announced she was taking the drugs.

Despite that, only months after she started the injections, she decided to stop for a time in early 2024. She continued to eat healthy and work out, but put on weight. Now she knows the drugs will be “a lifetime thing.”

Winfrey calls the medication “a tool to help you manage the messages that are being sent to your brain about overeating.” Typically she takes her shots weekly, but “sometimes I can go 10 or 12 days because I still feel the effects of the week before,” she says. Side effects have been minimal. “I had some digestion issues, so I have to drink enough water, and I have to take magnesium,” she says. “You need to start slow and gradual. If you start by taking too much at one time, you have of a chance of messing yourself up.”

The drugs have helped her keep weight off, but she says it’s now about than the number. (In years past she has said her goal was 160 lbs., but she declines to share her current weight.)

The absence of food noise “has given me a quiet strength that comes with everything I do. Everything is just calmer and stronger.” It’s been such an important life change for her that she’s paid out of her own pocket for GLP-1 medication for several acquaintances who couldn’t otherwise afford it.

“If you have obesity in your gene pool, I want people to know it’s not your fault,” Winfrey says. “I want people to stop blaming yourself for genes and an environment you can’t control. I want people to have the information, whatever you choose to do with it, whether you get the medications, or whether you want to keep dieting.”

Her own relationships—including with her longtime partner Stedman Graham74 (who’s been “nothing but supportive,” no matter what her weight)—have improved as well: “I feel like I have to give to everybody. I’m just open to all.” Another unexpected effect of the medication: an indifference to alcohol. “I was a big fan of tequila. I literally had 17 shots one night,” she says. “I haven’t had a drink in years. The fact that I no longer even have a desire for it is pretty amazing.”

She’s also had a change of heart about exercise. She works out six days a week for about two hours, hiking or doing cardio or resistance training. “I don’t recognize the person who feels sluggish when she doesn’t work out,” she says. Her hairstylist of than a decade, Nicole Mangrum, agrees. “When I come in the mornings to start her hair, she’s already on the treadmill,” Mangrum says. “She’s looking better than she’s ever looked and confident. It’s magnetic.”

That’s especially evident in her newfound comfort in “having fun with fashion,” Mangrum says. “When she goes shopping, she’ll come back and do a little fashion show.” On her recent trip to Australia in December, her stylist suggested she wear only Australian designers. “The thought of that would have sent me into a shame spiral 10 years ago,” Winfrey says. “Nothing could fit, and I would have to get myself measured. I would not be able to pull clothes off the rack and wear them.” For this trip, dressing was “a delight.”