After spending nearly a decade hyping Weight Watchers, television superstar
Oprah Winfrey has changed her tune and is now taking the CEO of her ex-sponsor to task. During a wide-ranging ABC special about her relationship with her weight, the 70-year-old Winfrey at one point confronted Sima Sistanti, the CEO of the company now known as WW International, about the program she spent nine years pushing. "Why do we need WeightWatchers," the 70-year-old talk show idol asked her former collaborator, per Bloomberg , "if we have Zepbound and Wegovy?" Winfrey was referring, of course, to two of the most popular new weight loss drugs on the market, both belonging to the GLP-1 class of drugs that can reduce appetite and mimic the stomach's feeling of fullness . Sistani, who took over as WW's CEO in March 2022, seemed to address Winfrey's pointed question with an answer both vague and existential. "WeightWatchers is not just about weight loss," the CEO replied. "It’s about community, it’s about education, it’s about care. That’s our new philosophy." As Bloomberg points out, that question posed by the one-time WeightWatchers spokeswoman appears to be on the minds of investors, too, as the company's stock price plummeted in the aftermath of Winfrey's departure from the board — though to be fair, it had for years been struggling to find a foothold in a world where body positivity and the " health at every size " medical philosophies have gradually become mainstream. Though it's unclear which she's taken, the TV mogul revealed ahead of her departure from the WW board that she's used the new generation of medications to help her lose weight. Her discussion of Zepbound and Wegovy, and invitations to executives from Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, the respective makers of the drugs, suggests it may be one of the two. In its reporting, Bloomberg also indicates that Novo and Lilly both participated in the making of the special focusing on their wares, but as the companies told Fierce Pharma , they didn't provide any financial backing for it. All the same, Winfrey has a long history of promoting medical quackery and fad diets . Whether she's onto something this time will come down to still-emerging medical data about GLP-1 patients, but for now it's hard to read her full-throated endorsement of these drugs, and apparent glossing-over of their downsides — which include health problems , pharmacy shortages , and insurer reticence — as anything but an hour-long infomercial for the latest get-thin-quick scheme . More on weight loss drugs: New Weight Loss Pill More Effective Than Ozempic, Tests Find