Oprah Winfrey continues to reflect on her relationship with weight and how society influenced so much of how she used to feel about herself.
During the inaugural episode of “The Jamie Kern Lima” podcast, the former TV show host, who turned 70 in January, said she’s “not carrying” the negativity into her next decade. However, she noted how challenging it’s been to reach this point.
“I was judgmental because I have been so judged,” she told host Lima, a bestselling author and founder of IT Cosmetics. “I actually don’t know anybody who’s been more publicly judged about their weight than myself, and I have carried and borne the shame of other people.”
Among several difficult moments from her past, the media mogul revisited the moment when, after a drastic diet and massive weight loss, she famously wheeled out a wagon full of fat during a November 1988 segment on her eponymous talk show. The wagon was supposed to represent how much fat she’d lost at the time.
“I didn’t have a morsel of food for five solid months in losing that weight on [the all-liquid diet] Optifast,” she continued. “Three days later, I was 5 lbs. heavier, and a week later, I was 10 lbs. heavier.”
In another instance, Winfrey sat out of a Hollywood holiday party because of shame around her body.
“The week before Christmas, I remember Don Johnson — the Don Johnson of ‘Miami Vice’ — was having a party and had invited me and some members of my show to come, and I wouldn’t go because I thought I was too fat to go,” she recalled.
Winfrey added that making fun of her weight became “a national sport for 25 years.” One of the “most hurtful things” she experienced was a skit on the sketch comedy show “In Loving Color.”
“’In Living Color’ had done a skit where the woman was doing something, and she just kept eating and getting fatter and fatter and fatter, and the comedy bit was that eventually she just exploded,” she explained of a skit where actress Kim Wayans portrayed Winfrey on the set of her former talk show.
This interview arrived a month after Winfrey hosted “Making the Shift: A New Way to Think About Weight,” a virtual panel in partnership with WeightWatchers. As previously reported by theGrio, during the panel, Winfrey expressed her regret for perpetuating diet culture and unhealthy narratives about weight. She, who has been open about Ozempic‘s impact on her health and weight, also urged those watching to employ more empathy moving forward.
She said, “I think the way to get past the shame is to start looking at everyone and say, ‘This person is doing the best they know how in any given moment for themselves.’ Everybody is just doing the best they can. And if they are happy with the choices that they’re making, you ought to be happy with it too.”