Oprah's Weight Loss Confession
By Bob Greene
Oprah says turning 50 felt fantastic, as did 51 and 52. After celebrating her 53rd birthday, she began having health problems.
"I couldn't sleep at night. I started to have heart palpitations and some leg swelling," she says. "My doctor said, 'You need to get off of salt.' And I instinctively knew that it wasn't salt, and so I went from that doctor to another doctor to another doctor. By the time I'd been to the fourth doctor, I was on heart medication, I was on blood pressure medication and [medication] for heart palpitations."
Doctors didn't recognize that Oprah had a thyroid problem...but the viewers did. "Nobody showed me the e-mails until I started talking about this, but I had e-mails from viewers saying, 'Tell Oprah to check her thyroid because I think she has a thyroid problem,'" she says.
When she was finally diagnosed with hypothyroidism, Oprah says she fell off the weight loss wagon. "It was a fat sentence because I thought, 'Well, now it doesn't matter. I've got a thyroid problem. If I don't embrace hunger, everything I eat is going to make me fat anyway, and my metabolism isn't working, so I might as well just eat whatever I want. Okay. Fat wins,'" she says. "I felt completely defeated."
"I couldn't sleep at night. I started to have heart palpitations and some leg swelling," she says. "My doctor said, 'You need to get off of salt.' And I instinctively knew that it wasn't salt, and so I went from that doctor to another doctor to another doctor. By the time I'd been to the fourth doctor, I was on heart medication, I was on blood pressure medication and [medication] for heart palpitations."
Doctors didn't recognize that Oprah had a thyroid problem...but the viewers did. "Nobody showed me the e-mails until I started talking about this, but I had e-mails from viewers saying, 'Tell Oprah to check her thyroid because I think she has a thyroid problem,'" she says.
When she was finally diagnosed with hypothyroidism, Oprah says she fell off the weight loss wagon. "It was a fat sentence because I thought, 'Well, now it doesn't matter. I've got a thyroid problem. If I don't embrace hunger, everything I eat is going to make me fat anyway, and my metabolism isn't working, so I might as well just eat whatever I want. Okay. Fat wins,'" she says. "I felt completely defeated."
Published 01/05/2009