Oprah Winfrey recalls ‘painful’ moments when she felt ‘too fat’ and ‘so judged’

Oprah Winfrey continues to reflect on her relationship together with her weight and the influence society has had on how she sees herself.

During the inaugural episode “Jamie Kern Lima” podcast, the previous TV host, who turned 70 in January, said she is “not carrying” the negativity into the following decade. However, she noted how difficult it was to get up to now.

“I was judgmental because I was judged,” best-selling creator and founding father of IT Cosmetics told host Lima. “I actually don’t know anyone who has been more publicly judged for their weight than me, and I’ve carried and endured other people’s shame.”

Among several difficult moments from the past, the media mogul revisited the moment when, after a crash food regimen and massive weight reduction, she famously rolled out a wagon stuffed with fat during a November 1988 segment on her eponymous talk show. The cart was meant to represent how much fat she had lost during that point.

“I went five solid months without eating a single piece of food, losing that weight on the (liquid-only diet) Optifast,” she continued. “Three days later I weighed 5 kilos. heavier, and per week later I weighed 10 kilos. heavier.”

In one other instance, Winfrey skipped a Hollywood Christmas party as a consequence of body shame.

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“I remember the week before Christmas, Don Johnson – Don Johnson from Miami Vice – had a party and he invited me and a few members of my show, but I didn’t want to go because I thought I was too fat to go,” he recalled.

Winfrey added that making fun of her weight had turn into a “national sport for 25 years.” One of the “most painful things” she experienced was a sketch within the comedy sketch show “In Loving Color.”

“There was a sketch on In Living Color where a woman was doing something and she was just eating and gaining weight and getting fatter and fatter and fatter and the comic moment was that she finally just exploded,” she explained of the sketch, by which actress Kim Wayans impersonated Winfrey on the set of her former talk show.

She said: “I feel the technique to do away with shame is to take a look at everyone and say, ‘This person is doing one of the best they’ll for themselves at this moment.’ Everyone is just doing one of the best they’ll. And in the event that they are pleased with the alternatives they make, try to be pleased with it too.”