Oprah Through the Years, Part 9

The previous post explored the idea that perhaps willpower is a neutral quality that can be either helpfully used, or dreadfully exploited. It has a dual nature, like so many things in life, as portrayed by the ancient yin-yang symbol.

The piece also proposed that no matter what ailed our subject in the years when her weight bounced up and down, or soared as high as 237 pounds, her accomplishments in several fields are undeniable. Whatever else might be thought, or said, about her, one thing is for certain: Oprah Gail Winfrey has never experienced a shortage of the energy we know as willpower.

Some might point out that many people have struggled with weight issues, so why choose her as a case study? But… is there anyone more suitable? Data is the basis of research, and who else on the planet do we have more information about, and more pictures of? And just as an extra bonus, Oprah happens to be a very sharing (some might say over-sharing) individual when it comes to revealing facts about herself. How else would we know how much she weighed in 1992?

Speaking of oversharing, that 1988 fat-wagon show-and-tell session that she later regretted was actually brilliant. (Third photo down on this website: TV is a visual medium; movement is an essential part of it, and what else could seize the attention like a ginormous 67-pound blob of fat in a little red wagon?

A mortifying fiasco

But in the history of show business, many a brilliant publicity stunt has turned out to be an embarrassing mistake, which is what happened here. Before long, Oprah had to admit that the benefits of four months on a liquid diet had gone into reverse the moment she started eating normally again. A recent article by Clare Stephens, Executive Editor at Mamamia, articulates the two distinct reasons why the incident was so regrettable. Years later (2011), as a guest on Entertainment Tonight, the star described it as “One of the biggest ego trips of my life” because:

The ego was my belief that being in those Calvin Klein jeans made me worthy as a human being, or more valuable, or made me better.

But disproportionate self-regard, however pathological it might be, is an individual problem, and a matter for discussion with one’s spiritual advisor or psychologist. The second reason why Oprah called it a mistake is much more far-reaching, especially for one whose sphere of influence is the entire planet, as Stephens explains. It was tantamount to an accusation, a stunt that stigmatized fat to an audience of millions of humans, mainly women, with the implication that they too could shed their extra poundage if only they cared enough and were smart enough to make the required effort.

Messing with their self-esteem

As Oprah later acknowledged, the wagon demonstration basically “set a standard for people watching that I nor anybody else could uphold.” But rather than reining in an unhealthy tendency and cutting short a harmful trend of thought, the wagon episode was only the start of further years of maintaining and upholding a diet culture that “has far more to do with aesthetics than health.”

Oprah’s famous quotation about how “all the success doesn’t mean anything if you can’t fit into your clothes” was a scathing indictment of women (and men) everywhere. It belittled wonderful parents who happen to be fat, regardless of how beloved and beautifully raised their children might be. It denigrated overweight workers who have no time or money to join a gym. It dismissed overweight artists, no matter how outstanding their creations might be. It criticized people who struggle with the genetic misfortune of being born with large frames and bodily systems that do not process food optimally.

“It means the fat won,” Oprah declared, which amounted to labeling a vast number of her devoted fans as losers. But, as Stephens points out, Oprah was not an “aberration,” not just some weirdo who hated fat people and didn’t mind letting them know — but a particularly noticeable individual articulating the mindset of a fat-hating culture.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “In 1985 Joan Rivers asked Oprah a Question,” Mamamia.com, 05/13/24
Image by Vic/Attribution 2.0 Generic

Oprah Through the Years, Part 8

Remember Oprah’s 1986 quotation? “All the fame and the success doesn’t mean anything if you can’t fit into the clothes. If you can’t fit into your clothes, it means the fat won. It means you didn’t win.”

Of course, a billionaire can hire the best dress designers to make beautiful and flattering clothes of any size, and the best hair designer to create a wide hairstyle that fools the eye into making the figure appear slimmer. But you still didn’t win. The fat still won.

This is one of the tragic realities of financial success. You will still be you, even if you can afford some workarounds. “Being you” can mean a lot of different things, but perhaps one of the things it does not mean is a lack of willpower. The idea is worth exploring.

At that point, Oprah Winfrey had not yet begun to work with trainer Bob Greene. Skip ahead 10 years to 1996, when he published a book called Make the Connection: Ten Steps to a Better Body and a Better Life, in which he wrote,

The tough part is finding the discipline, inner strength and willpower to carry out the ten steps.

But wait! If this Greene fellow was correct about the necessity for willpower, and if Oprah truly had none, then how on earth did he become famous as the guru who finally helped set her feet on the right path? Here is another puzzling question. Isn’t this exactly what we here at Childhood Obesity News are trying to get away from: the idea that, in order to lose weight, a person must have a huge supply of willpower — which some people simply don’t possess?

Say what?

Putting those questions aside for a moment, let’s get back to Oprah, who by the mid-80s had piled up gigantic accomplishments in many areas of both creative and material achievement. The idea that she lacked discipline, inner strength, or willpower is ludicrous. Nobody could do all that without heaps of those qualities. So, what is going on here?

Maybe, just maybe, a semantic problem is involved. People might talk about a concept using the same word, but actually hold radically different ideas about what it means. For instance, a patient with a severe eating disorder like anorexia is — even while institutionalized under strict conditions — capable of taking many actions to elude or sabotage treatment that is intended to help them get well. This definitely requires willpower, and lots of very sick people have a ton of it. So, obviously, willpower cannot be an unalloyed good.

But here is a spark of comic relief, thanks to Senior Specialist in Technical Training, Brian Lallatin, who collected an impressive number of lightbulb jokes for the University of Maryland’s website.

During a certain era, the lightbulb joke was all the rage, with the punchline based on an unflattering stereotype of some group. For instance, “How many stoners does it take to change a light bulb? Three: One to hold up the lightbulb, and two to turn the ladder.” The one that really applies here is,

How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the bulb has got to really WANT to change.

This is a self-evident problem with the whole addiction field. No program can help someone who really does not feel any need for change, and that includes addicts. Nobody is going to change unless and until they want to. But, difficult as this may be to believe, a professional expert might agree to the proposition that someone must sincerely want to change — and yet still insist that there must be a cure in which “willpower” is not a necessary component. However, those two beliefs cannot both be true, making this a case of cognitive dissonance that needs to be resolved somehow.

Will means want; willpower means wantpower.

But what is “will,” except another way of saying “want”? And just like wantpower, willpower can be applied to any project. It can be exercised on others, or on the self. Like fire, it can save a life or take a life. It can be applied consciously or unconsciously. Everyone is applying and exercising their will, all the time. Even the most profound apathy is basically caused by a want: The will to do nothing.

Allowing Nature or Fate to take its course is seen from some perspectives as the worst possible choice, and seen by other philosophies as the height of enlightenment. To abandon oneself, and refuse to exert want or will, is an attitude that can destroy the self or others. It can also be seen as the epitome of realization.

A person bent on self-destruction obviously wants to destroy the self, even if by doing nothing. This is all very confusing. What, for instance, is a hunger strike? It is the refusal to eat, and an intention to do nothing instead. Literally, suicide. But surely, for a political prisoner to discipline herself or himself to refuse food, in order to protest conditions or support a cause that one believes in with all one’s heart… Doesn’t that require a considerable exertion of will?

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Lightbulb Jokes,” cs.umd.edu, undated
Image by Jay Gooby/Attribution 2.0 Generic

Oprah Through the Years, Part 7

“You can have it all, you can’t have it all at once.” A lot of people other than Oprah Winfrey have said this, sometimes in slightly different words. A variation is, “You can have it all, but you can’t do it all.” The meaning is the same, because among the things a person wants to have are the freedom and capacity to do the things a person wants to do. Anyway, most of the people who say these things are women — but that is a whole different essay.

Among others, writer Katie Fox has expanded on the concept:

The pressure to seize the day and make the most of every moment can rob us of our joy in the present. But it can also destroy the measured, patient hope we have for our future, looking ahead at other seasons to come and trusting that the dreams we’ve had to put up on the shelf will still be there waiting for us when we’re ready to dust them off again.

Of course, if an idea has any validity at all, surely more than one person will have thought of it. And another person has probably already said it out loud, only the time wasn’t right, or some other circumstance prevented the world from noticing the glaring importance of the concept. It would be interesting to trace back through the archives of history and learn who is credited with the very earliest known use of the thought, “You can have it all, just not all at once,” whichever way it is expressed.

But the important point here is that everyone who ever expressed this thought has been a link in a chain of humans who carry forward the message: You cannot eat a lot, or the wrong things, or a lot of the wrong things, and also possess a slim figure.

Way back in 1977, the co-anchor of a news show at WJZ TV in Baltimore made her first visit to a diet doctor. The 23-year-old Oprah weighed 148 pounds when a doctor placed her on a 1,200 calories-per-day program, and in two weeks she had lost 10 pounds. And in two months, she had regained 12. This started a revolving-door existence through all the popular diets of the time.

But, as she later learned, “I was starving my muscles, slowing down my metabolism, and setting myself up to gain even more weight in the end.” By 1984, she was up to 200 pounds, and in 1986 told the public that she hated herself for it.

In an interview the same year, she said,

All the fame and the success doesn’t mean anything if you can’t fit into the clothes. If you can’t fit into your clothes, it means the fat won. It means you didn’t win.

Then came the infamous “wagon of fat” episode when Oprah thought she was cured, but immediately, relentlessly, the weight came back. As she later said, “You have to find a way to live in the world with food,” and it was in 1992, at her 237-pound heaviest, that the star met the exercise physiologist and personal trainer who helped her find that way and turn her life around.

As we have seen, Bob Greene has been a marvelously helpful influence on Oprah Winfrey through the years, and thanks to the power of her endorsement, has also been immeasurably helpful to thousands of other people too. One feature of his method is to stop someone in their tracks and insist on examining basic questions, the ones that must be addressed whether you are a butcher, baker, or candle-stick maker; a stay-at-home mom, or one of the wealthiest women in the world:

1. Why are you overweight?
2. Why do you want to lose weight?
3. Why haven’t you been successful?

It took Oprah a couple of years to have an important epiphany:

I finally realized that being grateful to my body, whatever shape it was in, was key to giving more love to myself. Although I’d made the connection intellectually, living it was a different story.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “You Can Have It All (But Not All at Once),” TheArtOfSimple.net, 06/11/14
Source: “The Highs and Lows of Oprah Winfrey’s 50-Year Weight Loss Journey,” MSN.com, 2024
Image: internet meme

Oprah Through the Years, Part 6

Oprah Winfrey’s drug of choice is reportedly the humble potato chip, or rather, plenty of potato chips — an obsession that is all too easily, understandably, and regretfully shared. At one point, she confessed to having been “controlled by potatoes for 40 years.”

Now, we have just finished up a year during which the star appeared in headlines because of admitting that she used a popular weight-loss drug. Many of her fans felt somehow betrayed, while others experienced relief, as if their mentor had personally given them permission to do the same. Oprah had previously spoken to the press about a realization she came to when moderating a panel about weight.

Calling it an “aha moment,” she said,

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. Obesity is a disease. It’s not about willpower — it’s about the brain.

For NPR, Vanessa Romo reported that Ms. Winfrey intended to elevate the conversation, advocate for health equity, and work to reduce stigma. In particular, her intention was to be finished with shame, whether flung by others or self-inflicted. She was done with five oppressive decades of “feeling like, ‘Why can’t I just conquer this thing?’, believing willpower was my failing.”

She also said,

All these years, I thought all of the people who never had to diet were just using their willpower, and they were for some reason stronger than me. And now I realize: y’all weren’t even thinking about the food! It’s not that you had the willpower; you weren’t obsessing about it!… I’m not constantly thinking about what the next meal is going to be.

Oprah was referring to the well-known effect achieved by the GLP-1 drugs, of silencing the “food noise” that constantly besieges the brain of a person who tries to cut calories. Of course, it should have been bountifully obvious already that no one who didn’t have a ton of willpower could have chalked up so many First, Best, Most and Only citations.

You heard it here

This blog has mentioned the 2003 TV broadcast during which Oprah gave a Porsche to a man who had lost more than 300 pounds. In a later interview, she explained why that was, for her, such a power moment — because “I know what it takes to lose that much weight… What he did was incredible.”

Years later, her life coach Bob Greene talked to a journalist about Oprah’s accomplishment in being on the cover of Shape magazine, despite her naturally slow metabolism. “She can look at food and put on weight… I know how hard she needs to work. It’s harder than (it is for) 99 percent of the people.”

Regarding the ability to feel this much empathy and share the same quality of awareness, it might lead to a question like, “Who learned what from whom?” To have an alert and untiring pupil is a boon for the specialist in any field. The student’s questions are the opportunity to spell out things that perhaps the expert takes for granted, but which are nowhere near obvious to the novice. It presents an opportunity for the expert to refine the thought and discover exactly how a precept can best be articulated. The teacher also learns.

For a large part of their time together, Greene spent 10 months of each year with Oprah, considering himself to be “on call” pretty much always. To be available for psychological support can be very useful to the counselor as well as the subject. With every out-of-hours request for a listening ear, the helper gets to hear what is going on, from the patient’s perspective, in real time, before there is a chance to edit, embroider, or re-consider. Really, what more could an ever-curious professional ask?

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “After nearly a decade, Oprah Winfrey is set to depart the board of WeightWatchers,” NPR, 3/1/24
Source: “Oprah Winfrey reveals she starved herself ‘for nearly five months’ in ABC weight loss special,” USA TODAY, 3/18/24
Source: “Oprah Winfrey says she has released the shame of being ‘ridiculed’ for her weight for 25 years,” ABC News, 3/19/24
Source: “It’s Not Who You Know… It’s Who You Train,” Chicago Tribune, 8/19/21
Image by Edgar Zuniga Jr./Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic