When Serena Williams revealed she has been taking GLP-1 medication to assist with weight loss, social media was in a frenzy with a slew of mixed opinions. During a recent appearance on “The Oprah Podcast,” Williams admitted to having once shared some of the same ideas as her social media critics.
When Oprah Winfrey asked the retired tennis star why she was initially skeptical of GLP-1s, Williams explained that it’s “because it’s like the skinny shot…like a shortcut. And so for years, I didn’t, well, not for years, but for a long time, I didn’t do it, and I didn’t want to do it.”
“I thought like, ‘I’m not going to take the shortcut… I’m going to work harder.’ But then, eventually, I was like, ‘I’ve tried everything,’” she continued. “I’ve tried every diet. I’ve tried every workout. I’ve tried walking for hours. I would go to Europe and Paris, and I would just walk for hours, and the 20,000 steps a day, like every single thing, you know, and nothing was working.”
In August 2025, Williams revealed that she’s on the GLP-1 drug Zepbound, a medication typically prescribed to treat diabetes, and is now also used for weight loss and management. Partnering with telehealth platform Ro, Williams used her platform to address the stigma surrounding GLP-1s.
“I feel like a lot of people have this stigma on GLP-1s and say things like, ‘Oh, lazy people do it,’ or ‘If you’re working hard enough, you don’t need that,’ I know for a fact from my experience that it’s simply not true,” she said as previously reported by theGrio. “I was putting in the work. I actually think it’s a problem a lot of other women can relate to, that you are in the gym and eating healthy, but just can’t get to the level you want or need to.”
During the conversation with Winfrey, Dr. Ania Jastreboff discussed an “enough point,” which, for many people struggling to lose weight, reflects the body thinking it doesn’t have “enough” to survive, so it’s always striving for more, for more fuel, for more fat, for more energy to store.
“The medicines recalibrate, they lower the enough point so that your body knows it has enough, enough food, doesn’t need anymore. You just are, you’ve had enough,” Dr. Jastreboff added.
That’s a phenomenon Williams fully related to: “I would lose the weight, but my body liked to be at a certain weight. That was so eye-opening for me. I was like, and it’s so weird, because it’s like whenever I lose weight, it’s like all of a sudden, I’ll get even hungrier.”
Emphasizing that everyone’s body is unique and responds to these medications differently, Williams explained how the weight loss medication helped with her confidence and energy.
“I feel happier. I feel like I have more energy for my kids. I just feel like I can do more. Don’t laugh, but I love to dance. I can drop it. I got knees like Megan [thee Stallion] now,” she joked. “No, but seriously, it affects my joints, and my joints are so much lighter and so much better, and I’m like, ‘oh my goodness, I just wish I had done this while I was still playing.’ It would have made such a big difference for me in my career.”
“I feel more alert. And it’s just to be able to do things that I could never do. Like, even when I was playing, I could never do that at my highest because I realized it was extra weight that my joints were carrying,” she concluded.
