Oprah Winfrey is taking on the subject of prescription weight loss medications and their impact in an upcoming ABC primetime special. An Oprah Special: Shame, Blame and the Weight Loss Revolution will air Monday, March 18 at 8 pm EDT on ABC and next day on Hulu.
As Deadline reports, the special will delve into prevailing questions and concerns surrounding the impact of these medications on our health care, economy, lifestyle and culture.
Before a live studio audience, Winfrey brings together medical experts including Cleveland Clinic’s Dr. W. Scott Butsch, ABC News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton, ABC News medical correspondent Dr. Darien Sutton, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s Dr. Amanda Velazquez and patients from around the country who have a range of personal experiences with prescription weight loss medications. Winfrey also speaks with leaders from the two global pharmaceutical companies behind the drugs “to address what this means for the 100 million Americans and over 1 billion adults worldwide living with a deadly disease.”
As People magazine reports, the turning point for Winfrey’s approach to using pharmaceutical aids herself came in July during a taped panel conversation with weight loss experts and clinicians, called The State of Weight and part of Oprah Daily’s Life You Want series.
“I had the biggest aha along with many people in that audience,” she recalls of the discussion, which posted online in September. “I realized I’d been blaming myself all these years for being overweight, and I have a predisposition that no amount of willpower is going to control.” She adds, “Obesity is a disease. It’s not about willpower — it’s about the brain.”
Once she reconciled the science, Winfrey says she “released my own shame about it” and consulted her doctor, who went on to prescribe a weight-loss medication. “I now use it as I feel I need it, as a tool to manage not yo-yoing,” she says, opting not to name the specific drug she takes. “The fact that there’s a medically approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier, in my lifetime, feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift, and not something to hide behind and once again be ridiculed for. I’m absolutely done with the shaming from other people and particularly myself.”
“It is a very personal topic for me and for the hundreds of millions of people impacted around the globe who have for years struggled with weight and obesity,” said Winfrey. “This special will bring together medical experts, leaders in the space and people in the day-to-day struggle to talk about health equity and obesity with the intention to ultimately release the shame, judgment and stigma surrounding weight.”
Even though she has stated that she still uses the WeightWatchers method of counting points, last month, Oprah announced she was leaving the board of directors of WeightWatchers after a 9-year run and donating her stock in the company in order to avoid any potential conflict of interest over her use of weight-loss medications.
The ABC special is produced by Harpo Productions, executive produced by Oprah Winfrey and Tara Montgomery.
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