Oprah Winfrey has finally woken up to the fact that diets simply don’t work.
Or if they do appear to work – as in the case when she famously lost a wheelbarrow load of fat on a stupid liquid protein diet – they are not sustainable.
After years of well-documented fluctuations in size, Oprah’s latest setback on the scales came last year when she found out she had a debilitating thyroid problem.
She still continued on the deprivation treadmill though, earlier this year embarking on a “21-day cleansing diet” – documented for all her viewers and readers worldwide, naturally – that banished meat, fish, poultry, eggs, dairy, gluten, you name it, from the menu. Instead, she loaded up on soy products, for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Call me crazy, but how did she think that this was the answer? She was undoubtedly desperate and if my every move was watched by millions perhaps I’d be willing to embrace any diet that came my way, too.
“I’m mad at myself. I’m embarrassed,” she writes in the January issue of O magazine. “I can’t believe that after all these years, all the things I know how to do, I’m still talking about my weight. I look at my thinner self and think, ‘How did I let this happen again?’”
But given the powerful influence she wields over others, let’s hope it’s a message that resonates long and hard with millions of her followers.
