Whoopi Goldberg turned to a controversial drug after she weighed nearly 300 pounds. Now, she’s opening up about that experience.
After a recent Oprah Winfrey town hall that critics blasted as an “infomercial for Ozempic,” the cohosts of The View weighed in on controversial luxury weight-loss medications.
Viewers listened to them discuss stigma around weight and very recent weight loss meds. There are some good points and some missed points and some very bad points.
Whoopi Goldberg shared her experience taking one such medication — not Ozempic — after finding herself weighing more than she wished to.
Whoopi Goldberg took Mounjaro after weighing nearly 300 pounds
On The View on Tuesday, March 19, the acclaimed actress shared her own experience with weight gain and loss.
“I will tell you, I weighed almost 300 pounds when I made Till, and I had taken all those steroids, I was on all this stuff,” Whoopi recalled. “And one of the things that’s helped me drop the weight is the Mounjaro — that’s what I use.”
Mounjaro and Zepbound are two brand names for Tirzepatide. The medication works differently from semaglutide (like Ozempic), but is also a diabetes medication that has very recently become a luxury weight loss drug for the wealthy.
“I just always felt like me, and then I saw me, and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a lot of me,’” Whoopi recalled of noticing her weight gain.
She noted that her size has gone up and down over the years, but that she had ignored external input on her body shape. Smart! It sounds like this weight loss was for her, rather than to meet anyone else’s expectations.
“There’s nothing wrong [with taking weight loss drugs],” Whoopi asserted. “Stuff happens, you hit a certain age and everything falls to the ground, you know you just pick it up put it over the back and keep it moving.”
Using diabetes medications for weight loss turns out to be one of Oprah’s ‘favorite things’
Whoopi’s comments came in the context of Oprah’s ABC special, in which she discussed the decades of stigma and overt cruelty over her weight gains and losses.
Oprah has openly admitted to using luxury weight loss drugs, though she has not specified which one.
She is branding the availability of diabetes medications for non-diabetics to use for weight loss as a “revolution.” It’s clear that a tremendous amount of pain has fueled her feelings on the matter.
Obviously, there are people who errantly shame people for medical weight loss because they believe that they should be able to do it “naturally.”
That’s obviously malarkey, both because no one “has” to lose weight at all, and because genetic and biological realities have more control over long-term weight than any diet or exercise scheme.
However, critics are right when they note that we do not yet know the long-term effects of non-diabetic patients taking these injections. Critics are even more right when they point out that documented shortages have left diabetic patients unable to access their medication.
Sunny Hostin took the same medication as Whoopi Goldberg
During the same Tuesday episode of The View, Sunny Hostin shared that she had also taken Mounjaro following a 40 pound weight gain.
She shared that she had received angry emails, shaming her and accusing her of taking a medication from diabetes patients. (It’s unclear why she mentioned this without explaining why she believes that she wasn’t doing so, or why she thinks that this is okay)
Sunny told Whoopi and the others that she still felt less shame after receiving hate mail than she did before her weight loss. That is a more damning indictment of our fatphobic society than anything else.
Surprisingly, one of the best takes on the matter came from Joy Behar — who often puts her foot in her mouth. This time, however, she pointed out that body size preferences are social preferences.
She even posited that perhaps, if luxury weight loss meds make thinness universally obtainable, perhaps society will become more accepting of more body shapes. After all, then thinness will no longer be a staple of the wealthy (and winners of the genetic lottery).
The discussion did, overall, have a lot of non-scientific brainrot about the “obesity epidemic.” Conflating health with body size is a dangerous mindset, especially in a world where people using Ozempic end up in the hospital.