The Highs and Lows of Oprah Winfrey’s 50-Year Weight Loss Journey

By then, however, the internet had another take on her journey. Namely, what’s with Winfrey and dieting? Instead of making cruel cracks (on her recent special, Winfrey called the jokes about her weight gain “a national sport” for 25 years), this time there was frustration with what was judged as her obsession with being thin.

But Winfrey maintained that staying healthy was her primary goal.

“This whole P.C. about accepting yourself as you are—you should, 100 percent,” she told the Times in 2017. But in that “particular moment in time that I got the call [from WW] I was desperate: What’s going to work? I’ve tried all of the green juices and protein shakes, and let’s do a cleanse, and all that stuff. That doesn’t work. It doesn’t last. What is going to be consistent, keep me conscious and mindful?”

And, Winfrey said, to “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.”