The Oprah dilemma
Winfrey’s exercise guru says her latest battle with weight has more to do with health issues than a lack of self-control
Bob Greene described it as a “light-bulb moment,” when he asked close friend Oprah Winfrey one day last year if depression was playing a role in her 40- pound weight gain. The two had been
out walking, and the question stopped Winfrey in her tracks.
“Her answers were slow and she looked lethargic. I got a deadened feeling from her, and I brought it up,” Greene said earlier this week during a phone interview from his Los Angeles home. “She felt like she had a veil over her for a year. I’m talking to someone who had lost her excitement for life. There was no spark.”
Winfrey’s weight woes have been well documented. And now that it’s prime New Year’s resolution time, Winfrey is again climbing on the public scale. (Catch her show at 4 p. m. Monday on Channel 4.)
This time with Winfrey, though, there is more going on with her body, including the fluttering heart she felt after walking up a graded hill. At one point during the past year, Winfrey was treated for heart palpitations, hypertension and thyroid problems.
“It had been going on for eight months, and I had brought it up before and had gotten a nonresponse,” said Greene, an exercise physiologist who weighs in with his revised and updated book “The Best Life Diet” (Simon & Schuster/$ 25). Greene started working with Winfrey in 1992, when she weighed 237 pounds.
“People think Oprah is the quintessential yo-yo dieter, and she really is not,” said Greene. She has lost 90 pounds, which everyone seems to forget. She’s gained 40 of that back, but she has been fairly consistent other than two or three times in the last 15 years.
Dieting is never easy, whether your goal is five pounds or 50, but perhaps no one has faced the weight loss tug-of-war as publicly as Winfrey, who was afraid to make eye contact with people when she was at her peak weight in 1992.
In January 2005, a midriff-baring Winfrey made eye contact with millions of readers from the cover of her magazine O. Her weight was a smiling 160 pounds.
“I thought I was finished with the weight battle,” Winfrey writes in this month’s issue of
O. “I was done. I’d conquered it. I was so sure, I was even cocky. I had the nerve to say to friends who were struggling: “All you have to do is work out harder and eat less! Get your 10,000 steps in! None of that starchy stuff!’ ”
In February 2007, at the age of 53, Winfrey began to experience health concerns. Her legs were swelling while her weight and blood pressure were creeping up. She was diagnosed with a thyroid condition — hyperthyroidism that morphed into hypothyroidism — and she stopped exercising.
“She’d ride up six pounds in the winter, like everyone else does, but that’s very normal,” Greene added. “This time it was a little different because it was a health scare. She was on significant medication that did some odd things and really kind of slowed her down.
“Here is a woman who uses food for emotional comfort and who doesn’t like exercise. When you don’t like to exercise to start with, and you’re given a medical excuse not to exercise you usually take it,” said Greene. “That was the start of it.”
Winfrey consulted doctor after doctor, and no one had an answer until that one day when she took a walk with her good friend Greene.
“She’d share certain theories going on with her heart, and I always thought it was the change of life,” Greene said. “Every symptom she had could easily be explained through menopause. Hello. She’s in her mid-50s. Not everyone just has the classic hot flashes and you’re done with it. She had a bona fide thyroid condition most likely tied to the change of life.”
Gradually Winfrey was weaned from her medication. Her heart palpitations have gone away, and she returned to the gym.
“It’s pretty amazing,” said Greene. “She put herself out there in a bold way. Her weight has not only stabilized, it’s dropping nicely. She first needed the comfort that something was not wrong with her heart. If she does X, Y and Z, she will be successful. But if she gets caught up in the rest of her life or the imbalance of running a magazine and a show and being the talent as well as running the business, she’ll suffer for that.”
There is no timetable with Winfrey’s weight loss, but with the presidential inauguration around the corner, Greene sees his friend in a healthy emotional state.
“She’s not panicked like the old days when at all costs she would starve herself,” he said. “She’s very realistic about her work life, and maybe not biting off too much.”
