Opinion: What Oprah gets right about diet culture

American Studies

By | Adrienne Rose Bitar , CNN

Some Americans felt betrayed when Oprah Winfrey recently revealed that she had taken weight-loss medication, writes Adrienne Bitar, lecturer in the American Studies Program, in a CNN op-ed.

“How could she, the queen of WeightWatchers and doyenne of dieting, be abandoning the equation of diet + exercise = slim?” Bitar writes in the piece. “Maybe because Oprah is conceding an uncomfortable truth: Diets rarely work. It doesn’t matter how much grit or willpower you have or how hard you’re willing to work, the weight comes back; it nearly always does.”

Read the story on CNN.

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