Oprah reveals words from her dad over her weight

OprahWinfrey has revealed the one comment her dad made that left her embarrassed about her weight for years. During an appearance on Today with Jenna & Sheinelle, the talk show host, 71, shared that her late father Vernon Winfrey made the haunting remark about her size as she stepped on a scale. At the time, Winfrey's dad told her that she would 'always be big' – and those words stuck with her. Recalling the moment, Winfrey said: 'I was in the hallway and I had gotten on a scale. 'My dad came by as I was standing on the scale and said, "there is no need to weigh yourself because you always will be big." I was like, "what?"'

Winfrey's father, who died in 2022 aged 88, continued: 'Your mama is big, aunts are big. I had them in the back of my Buick and they were weighing it down.' The broadcasting legend admitted she was 'embarrassed' in that moment and that her dad's remark haunted her for a long time. Every time she has tried another diet, she said that she would always hear his words echoing in her ears. Winfrey revealed in 2023 that she started taking a GLP-1 agonist, a class of drugs that includes Ozempic, Mounjaro and Wegovy, as a 'maintenance tool' for her weight, along with diet and exercise changes.

While she never said which GLP-1 she used, she has credited the drug for helping her lose weight and calming her 'food noise.' Nowadays, Winfrey doesn't hear her dad's haunting words. 'I know now that he was right,' she said. 'I would always be big because I had the biology that would allow myself to become obese.' Speaking to Bush Hager and Jones, Winfrey said that she sees weight loss drugs as a 'tool to help me manage my entire health.'

Alongside taking the drug, she has shaken up her diet and improved her exercise routine, so much so that she now regularly hikes seven miles. However, Winfrey said that her journey with weight loss medication hasn't always been smooth-sailing and that she once gained 20 pounds after giving it up for a while. 'I got off of it and then I gained three pounds, then five pounds, then ten pounds,' she said, adding that the food noise also returned.

'I was trying to eat more healthily and put the weight back on still,' she continued. 'If you are on blood pressure medication and you stop your blood pressure medication, your blood pressure is going to go up,' Winfrey added. 'The same thing is true with this medication.'