Oprah Winfrey Reveals 17 Shots Of Tequila In One Night Made Her Focus On Her Weight Loss Journey

Publicly struggling with her weight throughout her career, Winfrey has been a spokesperson for Weight Watchers but has journeyed with GLP-1 weight loss medication for the past two years.

It turns out billionaire and legendary television host Oprah Winfrey isn’t so different from everyone else after revealing in her new book her love for tequila made her quit alcohol for good and focus on her continuous weight loss journey, Fox News reports.

In the book “Enough: Your Health, Your Weight, and What It’s Like To Be Free,” available Jan. 13, Winfrey highlights one night in particular when she put down the bottle, realizing her health was more important. “I was a big fan of tequila. I literally had 17 shots one night… I haven’t had a drink in years,” the soon-to-be 72-year-old said.

“The fact that I no longer even have a desire for it is pretty amazing.”

Publicly struggling with her weight throughout her career, Winfrey has been a spokesperson for Weight Watchers but has journeyed with GLP-1 weight loss medication for the past two years. She admits “everything is just calmer and stronger” with GLP-1, which has helped her “manage the messages that are being sent to your brain about overeating.” Besides quitting tequila, she said she realized her weight was all about obesity, a word she admits she “avoided.”

But a special Winfrey hosted helped her to see the light because “overeating doesn’t cause obesity. Obesity causes overeating.” She described the epiphany as “the most mind-blowing, freeing thing I’ve experienced as an adult.” “If you have obesity in your gene pool, I want people to know it’s not your fault,” Winfrey said.

“I want people to stop blaming yourself for genes and an environment you can’t control. I want people to have the information, whatever you choose to do with it, whether you get the medications, or whether you want to keep dieting.”

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Throughout her career spanning close to 50 years, the world watched Winfrey shine on television, becoming a global superstar and building a media empire with OWN. However, in an exclusive with People, Winfrey tells how, behind closed doors, she was fighting with her weight.

She said that, while always confident, she was disappointed that her body was constantly fighting her. In the book, co-written with obesity expert Dr. Ania M. Jastreboff, Winfrey writes how failure “felt doubly shameful because I have access to so much: chefs and trainers and the healthiest of foods.”

“The Color Purple” star isn’t the only Black woman of high stature to openly admit that weight loss is a struggle. Tennis superstar Serena Williams recently opened up about using the GLP-1 drug and said people shouldn’t feel shame.

While others see it as a shortcut, that’s not the case. “I feel like, after having my kids, my body was missing something. I don’t know if it’s something that the GLP-1 has, but I just feel normal again,” she said.

Black women are often scrutinized about their weight, which forces them to lean on assistance plans. However, research shows that many of them miss the mark for sisters, as the demographic is often left out of lifestyle-based weight-loss research. Interventions that focus on a healthy diet and advanced physical activity have proven to help a majority of people, resulting in 5-10% weight reduction and reduced chronic disease risk.

But for Black women, the plans generally only result in two to 3% weight loss.