Kirstie Alley, before

 
Two years ago, actress Kirstie Alley tipped the scales at more than 200 pounds. Kirstie, who was once a skinny Hollywood starlet, became a target for the paparazzi. Her private battle with weight was suddenly front-page news. "Honestly, I didn't know how fat I was," she said. "Thanks to the tabloids I went, 'Damn, girl, you're fat!'"

In November 2004, Kirstie opened up about her struggle with weight on The Oprah Show. The next day, she says she quit smoking and decided to change her life.

Determined to drop a few dress sizes, Kirstie became a spokesperson for the Jenny Craig weight loss program. After losing 33 pounds, Kirstie burned her "fat pants." Then, in November 2005, she shared her secret weight loss weapon with Oprah.

During her third appearance on The Oprah Show, Kirstie said something Oprah never thought she'd hear. "Maybe before summer I'll do a Jenny Craig bikini commercial," Kirstie said.

Now, after many months of hard work, Kirstie is ready to reveal her new body for the very first time!
Kirstie Alley

 
After losing 75 pounds, Kirstie fulfills her promise and proves she is bikini ready! "You look beautiful," Oprah says.

The prospect of wearing a bikini in front of millions motivated Kirstie to work out even harder with her trainers, she says. When the time came to go on stage, Kirstie says she wasn't worried about her body—just her pantyhose!

Kirstie says she searched far and wide for a pair of pantyhose to wear under her bikini. She finally found a pair without a center seam but didn't realize they were "low rise." Backstage before the show, she says she was worried that her hose would slide down. Thankfully, there are no wardrobe malfunctions to report!
Kirstie Alley, Kathy Najimy and Leah Remini

 
When it came time to pick out the perfect bikini, Kirstie enlisted the help of her two best friends, actresses Kathy Najimy and Leah Remini.

The shoppers headed to Nordstrom for a swimsuit shopping spree. Like most women, Kirstie was not looking forward to bathing suit shopping. "[Women] love to shop for bikinis and go to the gynecologist," she jokes.

After combing the racks for a stunning swimsuit, the ladies settled on Kirstie's sexy cranberry bikini.
Kirstie Alley

 
Kirstie's dramatic weight loss has changed the way she views her body. She says that when she was 30 years old, she never would have worn a bikini in front of millions of people. "I was so introverted about my body," she says. "When I looked back on my movies and things [I thought], 'Wow, you had a really nice body.' But, at the time, I was [feeling] not good enough."

At age 56, Kirstie now feels comfortable in her own skin. "I don't think women ever feel like we're good enough," she says. "We don't feel like we're thin enough or pretty enough or smart enough or work hard enough ... We all are good enough and we look good enough and we are not our bodies, you know?"
Kirk and Jill in 2005

 
In May 2005, Jill Roberts, a 20-year-old woman who was struggling with her weight, came on The Oprah Show to say that she was sick of being the fat one in her family.

From the outside, the Robertses looked like the perfect close-knit family, but Jill, the youngest of four children, said she always felt like an outsider. Jill had three skinny siblings and a father who reminded her every day that her weight wasn't acceptable to him.

"Does it bother me when we're out in public that Jill's overweight? It does. I'll be honest," said Kirk, Jill's father. "I'm ashamed of her weight, but I love my daughter dearly."

Jill said that her father had no idea how deeply his words hurt her, and she often turned to food for comfort. She shared her feelings for the first time on the show.

"I've wanted my dad to accept me my whole life," Jill says. "He treats me differently than he treats every other person in my family. My whole life he's told me that I'm not pretty and that I'm overweight and that I need to lose weight, and he's just never been nice to me. I feel so much hatred towards my father because of the way he treats me."
Jill

 
Back in 2005, Jill weighed more than 300 pounds, but not anymore! After having gastric bypass surgery, Jill has lost 170 pounds!

Jill says the decision to have the surgery changed her life. "I'm a different person. I'm more outgoing, I'm fun," she says. "For the first time, I love to be me."

Jill says she's no longer angry at her dad. "I realized something that was very powerful for me. I have realized that my dad has always loved me," Jill says. "I was so defensive about everything, and now I can look at it as he was concerned for me and he wanted me to be happy. I truly believe that."

Just because Jill lost weight doesn't mean her problems went away. Jill says she cried every day for three months after her surgery because she missed food. "Food was my life," she says. "Food was my best friend and I miss it."

Jill continues to see a therapist twice a month and also attends gastric bypass support group meetings. "It is a daily battle," she says. "I have said to so many people, it is the hardest thing I have ever done and it is the hardest thing I still do."
Oprah and Elie Wiesel

 
In January 2006, Oprah traveled to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland with her personal hero, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.

Professor Wiesel's Holocaust memoir Night is still on the best-seller's list as an Oprah's Book Club selection. "It's a must-read for every citizen, especially the young," Oprah says.

Night was also the inspiration for Oprah's National High School Essay Contest. Students across America answered this question: Why is Elie Wiesel's book Night relevant today?

Clemantine Wamariya was one of the winning high school students. For her, Night is a chilling reflection of her own life growing up in Rwanda.
Clemantine and Claire are reunited with their family.

 
Like Elie Wiesel, Clemantine is a genocide survivor. In 1994, 800,000 people were murdered in Rwanda. She was just 6 years old when she says she hid in a banana tree, listening to the screams coming from her grandparents' house as members of her family were murdered.

Clemantine and her 15-year-old sister, Claire, were left to fend for themselves. They say they hid for 100 terrifying days and then spent six years in refugee camps across Africa, always holding out hope that their parents survived and they would one day be reunited.

Clemantine and Claire moved to America in 2000, and the two sisters continued to search for their parents. One day, through a chance meeting at the home of an acquaintance, Clemantine and Claire got the news that their mother and father were both alive!

In a heartwarming surprise, Clemantine and Claire were reunited with their parents and two siblings they had never met on The Oprah Show. The family spent four days together in Chicago getting reacquainted. Clemantine says they sang and danced all night.

"It was everything that I had wished for for so long. I didn't know that I was going to see them, but I knew that we were going to be together one day," Clemantine says. "And that moment was everything."
Clemantine gives her speech

 
In October 2006, Clemantine and Oprah were both guest speakers at a luncheon hosted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Clemantine read from her winning essay and received a standing ovation from 3,000 people.

"People say you can't change the world. But you can change people," Clemantine says. "And they will say that history repeats itself. No. We'll repeat history."

Clemantine also made a promise to Holocaust survivors. "I felt that I have to promise them that they might be lost in this world, but the story's not going to be lost if I'm alive."

"You make me proud," Oprah says. "You are quite a woman."
Oprah, Bernadette and Nate Berkus

 
It was one of Oprah's favorite surprises ever! Two years ago, Oprah took her Wildest Dreams Bus to a Chicago Starbucks to honor a woman named Bernadette who was single-handedly supporting a family of 12.

She generously cared for her elderly mother and her own three children, plus seven nieces and nephews who would otherwise have gone to foster care. The family lived in a dangerous neighborhood, and three people slept in each bed in the tiny apartment.

After treating the kids to a Toys "R" Us shopping spree, Oprah gave Bernadette a life-changing gift—a brand new house! She also promised to pay for all of the children's college educations. After six months of house hunting, Bernadette found the perfect house, and designer Nate Berkus stepped up to make it look and feel like home.
Bernadette at her new home

 
One year later, Bernadette's family is thriving in their new home. Bernadette thinks her dining room is so beautiful, she won't even use it! "I don't want [any]one touching my 'Nate plates,'" Bernadette says. "I wasn't used to having a house, and everything you all gave to me meant so much to me, and I just wanted to leave it the way you gave it to me."

What's been the biggest change in Bernadette's life since getting the house? "[My kids are] much happier. They can go outside and they can play," Bernadette says. "And my mother, she's well-rested and...we all have our own beds. That was a big change."

Now, the kids are all thriving, Bernadette says. Her oldest son is headed to college in January, and she says the rest of the kids are doing well in school. "They're very at peace now," she says.
Bra Boutique

 
A year ago, Oprah was stunned by a shocking statistic: Eight out of 10 women in America were wearing the wrong bra!

She was so surprised by those numbers that she decided to do something "uplifting" for the women in her audience and across the country. Oprah set up her own bra boutique, and dozens of professional fitters helped hundreds of women find the right bras.

After that show, women from all over the country were inspired to find the right fit! "I know that I overflowed in my old bra, and I went from a 38C to a 36D," a viewer named Kristie says. "I'm throwing my bra away!" Now, it's time for you to discover your real cup size!
Bono and Oprah

 
It's something so huge, Oprah and U2 frontman and activist, Bono, had to leave the studio in the middle of a show to go on a shopping spree! Oprah and Bono hit Chicago's Magnificent Mile to shop (RED)™, a program developed by Bobby Shriver and Bono to encourage retailers to donate part of the proceeds from special products to help fight AIDS in Africa.

GAP, Motorola, Apple, Converse and Armani all got their (RED) on so that you can help get medicine to Africa by simply buying a T-shirt or a cell phone. After The Oprah Show featured the GAP's "Inspi(RED)" T-shirts in October 2006, the shirts sold out in a matter of hours!

Your dollars are making a difference. In just three weeks, the (RED) campaign raised enough money for more than 15 million pregnant women in Africa to get treatment to prevent the transmission of HIV to their unborn children.