Oprah Winfrey Shocks Fans With Trim Waist During Casual Gym Outing

Oprah Winfrey was spotted leaving a gym session over the weekend in Santa Barbara, looking toned, refreshed, and committed to her ongoing health transformation. The 71-year-old media icon, who drew widespread attention last month for her noticeably cinched waist, kept things casual as she headed to her car after a workout. Oprah Winfrey’s latest gym appearance comes as she continues to openly discuss her dramatic weight-loss journey, one she has said includes the use of Ozempic as “a tool” to help manage her body and break patterns of yo-yo dieting.

In photos obtained by Daily Mail, Oprah was clad in a crisp white T-shirt, a zip-up gray hoodie, and slimming black leggings. Winfrey paired the look with white sneakers and a sleek black headband that pushed back her chocolate-brown curls. She carried a large blue water bottle and a brown leather pouch, keeping her hands full while clearly focused on maintaining the active lifestyle she’s been leaning into over the past year.

In late 2023, Winfrey revealed she shed pounds through a blend of new habits and mindful living, telling Entertainment Tonight, “It’s not one thing, it’s everything. I intend to keep it that way.” Before that, she insisted she had not used weight-loss medications, speaking at Oprah Daily’s "The Life You Want" panel in New York in September 2023. Reflecting on decades of scrutiny, she said, “I don't know that there is another public person whose weight struggles have been exploited as much as mine.”

She shared that she once believed turning to medication was “the easy way out,” explaining she felt pressure to fix her weight “on my own.”

Shortly after that event, Winfrey opened up about her choice to use GLP-1 drugs, including Ozempic, to support her health goals. She explained that the medication helps her manage cravings and avoid the cycles she’s battled for years.

“I now use it as I feel I need it, as a tool to manage not yo-yoing,” she told PEOPLE in December 2023, also noting, “It quiets the food noise.”

Earlier this year, Oprah Winfrey opened up about a surprising realization she had after finally trying Ozempic, a moment that shifted decades of her own beliefs about weight, discipline, and the myth of “willpower.” For most of her life, Winfrey admitted she looked at “thin people” as individuals who simply possessed stronger self-control.

She believed they were more disciplined, made better food choices, and had the ability to resist cravings through sheer determination. But once she began taking a GLP-1 medication herself, she realized just how wrong that assumption was. "One of the things that I realized the very first time I took a GLP-1 was that all these years, I thought that thin people had more willpower," Winfrey confessed, according to the Daily Mail. "They ate better foods. They were able to stick to it longer. They never had a potato chip."

Her revelation deepened when she recognized the true difference that thin people weren’t constantly battling intrusive urges or food cravings, but they simply weren’t experiencing the mental noise to begin with. "And then I realized the very first time I took the GLP-1 that they're not even thinking about it," she continued. "They're eating when they're hungry, and they're stopping when they're full."

During her candid conversation with Dr. Ania Jastreboff, Oprah revisited some of the most painful chapters of her decades-long struggle with weight, including the relentless public mockery she endured at the height of her fame. For years, she says, the jokes, headlines, and tabloid covers became so normalized that she began to internalize them.

She shared that she now understands her body never made her “less than,” and that she didn’t deserve the cruelty she experienced. But at the time, she didn’t feel worthy of defending herself. "Every week [I was] exploited by the tabloids, anytime any comedian wanted to make fun or make a joke about it, they would make a joke about it. And I accepted it because I thought I deserved it," Winfrey explained.

Oprah’s latest appearance and her willingness to openly discuss her journey with medication, body image, and long-standing misconceptions only reflect a new chapter defined by transparency rather than shame.

After decades of being scrutinized, mocked, and dissected for her weight, she’s reframing the narrative on her own terms, speaking candidly about what’s actually helped her and rejecting the judgment she once quietly endured.