Oprah reveals major side effect from quitting weight-loss drugs
Rhianna Benson
Featured Image Credit: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images
TV star Oprah Winfrey has opened up on her turbulent experience with weight loss drugs, revealing in a bombshell interview this week why she finally decided to bid them goodbye.
For those out of the loop, the 71-year-old previously confessed to first becoming tempted by a a GLP-1 medication - which were initially developed to battle the symptoms of Type-2 diabetes - back in 2023.
These drugs work by mimicking the body's natural hormones, sending a signal to the brain that the person is full, and as such, cutting down how much food they're consuming.
By her own admission, the presenter's 'default weight' at that time was a concerning 211 pounds.
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Doctors had also told her she was pre-diabetic, and was battling high cholesterol.
Of the impact her weight was suddenly having on her wellbeing, Winfrey recently confessed: "Every time any comedian wanted to make fun or make a joke about it - they could make a joke about it.
"And I accepted it because I thought I deserved it. I accepted it. I was shamed by it and I received it, because I thought, 'Well, they’re right'.
Just six months later, she turned her back on the weekly injectables to suss if she could lose the same amount of weight without them.
Alongside a number of other unsettling side effects, Winfrey claims she immediately stared piling on the pounds she'd initially lost, telling PEOPLE last year that she gained back 20.
She'd previously had no idea of the impact that sudden quitting the popular medication would have on her physique.
"It's going to be a lifetime thing," she told the celebrity news outlet.
"I'm on high blood pressure medication, and if I go off the high blood pressure medication, my blood pressure is going to go up.
"The same thing is true now, I realise, with these medications. I’ve proven to myself [that] I need it."
A study previously carried out by Eli Lilly, the manufacturers of popular weight loss drug Mounjaro, found that of the 308 adults assessed - all of whom had health issues - who were switched onto a placebo nine months after taking the drug, 82 percent gained at least a quarter of the weight within the year.
An even more staggering 24 percent remained three-quarters of the weight they'd lost in this time.
That said, however, this week, Winfrey told CBS News she was now down to 155 pounds, which she hopes to maintain relying predominantly on the drug, whilst also focussing on exercise.
"The combination of the medication and hiking every day and resistance training has given me the body that I had when I was running a marathon," the Oprah Winfrey Show front-woman explained.
"So, I was 40 and feeling really good, but to be able to be 71 and feel that I am in the best shape of my life feels better than it did when I was 40."