Oprah Winfrey, who's spent decades taking fans through her health journey, has called it quits on being a part of "diet culture."
Winfrey hosted a WeightWatchers event called "Making The Shift: A New Way to Think About Weight" on Thursday, where she expressed a new outlook when it comes to her size and body image. Around the 11-minute mark of the video below, Winfrey even referenced the "wagon of fat" moment on her former talk show as being one of her "biggest regrets."
"So many of us have internalized about diet culture and the body standards that have caused us so much shame," Winfrey said at the event, per People.
Winfrey was adamant about changing her views on health moving forward. while acknowledging her participation in the perpetuation of diet culture in America.
“I also want to acknowledge that I have been a steadfast participant in this diet culture through my platforms, through the magazine, through the talk show for 25 years, through online,” she said. “I've been a major contributor to it. I cannot tell you how many weight loss shows and makeovers I have done, and they have been a staple since I've been working in television.”
Winfrey continued, “We've been criticized. We've been scrutinized. We've been shamed, and we've been told that unless we meet a certain standard of size that we didn't deserve to be accepted or even to be loved. And what I know for sure is that I am done with it.”
Also in her introduction, Winfrey took a note from late poet, Maya Angelou, saying, "When you know better, you do better."
"So these conversations for me are an effort to do better," Winfrey added.
Winfrey's new direction comes after years of a battle with her weight and health, along with leaving the WeightWatchers board in Feburary, shortly after announcing to People that she had used a weight-loss drug. Although the 70-year-old didn't specify if the medication was Ozempic, the revelation seemed to be just enough for her to make a WeightWatchers agreement to "not engage in any other weight loss or weight management business, program, products or services."
"It was a public sport to make fun of me for 25 years," Winfrey told People last December. “The things that were said about me, said to me, around me, the jokes that were made. You could not get away with it in the slightest sense today.”