Oprah is a bullshit artist. She has always been a bullshit artist and she got rich peddling bullshit. Her efficiency promoting pseudoscience throughout her career makes her a blight on society, forever deserving scorn for the people she helped to hurt. We are collectively dumber because of her efforts, and she gets to live her life lavished by luxury and adulation as a result.
She’s an entertainer. Who cares.
What an incredibly dumb statement to make in the comment section of an article about her literally leaving the board of a major company. “Just an entertainer” holy shit.
Yeah, and Michael Jordan owns restaurants. Who cares about Oprah.
She is responsible for both Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz. She could have literally been responsible for handing the senate over to the Republicans.
Fuck Oprah.
During the pandemic, Dr. Oz’s private cardiac clinic in the US was handing out vaccine exemption notes to anyone who paid the fee. There was no physical examination, just a questionnaire, and you didn’t need to be one of his actual patients. No referral from your family doctor was necessary either and no need to provide your medical records. It was a complete and utter scam. How do I know? Because I literally called his clinic to follow up on a bullshit exemption claim and they told me their process.
She also gave a lot of attention to vaccine skepticism by making Jenny McCarthy seem like a medical expert on Autism.
I mean she literally pushed this with a straight face
Very good article by the wonderful Cathy O’Neil (mathbabe) about Wegovy (she has lost 60 lb by using it): https://mathbabe.org/2024/02/04/why-people-hate-wegovy/
Tldr: it makes it harder to shame fat people.
Harder to shame rich fat people.
Harder to get meds to poor fat people with diabetes, prolly, too.
Yeah, I was going to say… especially when a lot of poor Americans are obese due to food deserts where they can’t eat healthily or even start to develop healthy eating habits.
But I’m sure glad Mathbabe and Oprah have insurance that would cover such a thing. When are they going to start for calling for all the poor people to have that too?
Never been a big fan of Oprah, or anyone who bases their entire career around “Look how generous and righteous I am”, while earning huge profits for doing it. It will never not rub me the wrong way.
These people may inject some good into the world for a few people, but building your fame and fortune around it is a bit morally fucked.
“Look how generous and righteous I am”
Also Drake. Also Shaq.
Both give away heaps of money… but only in front of heaps of planned cameras rolling.
That’s not charity. That’s using the poor for PR and clicks for profit, no different from Bum Fights.
Change my mind.
Oprah built her empire on the backs of all the slow adults and little people she victimized during her first few years.
From the Gospel of Bill Burr.
calling them little people is dumb
He means ‘Little people’
Maybe you should ask them how they feel about it.
She’s a terrible spokesperson for WW anyway due to her trademark weight fluctuations over a period of 3-4 decades. Oprah gets fat, she “goes on WW”, writes a book about her experience which is basically a glorified WW commercial. Rinse and repeat. Capitalist scum.
What was that Oprah said about these younger generations not wanting to work for something ?
She’s a multi-billionaire. I say she can keep the struggle with her body image.
“My frustration with young women + young men is that they think success is supposed to happen like - That!”
Uh, she definitely worked hard. She’s an actual “self made” billionaire. She did it through constantly working in media over decades. Do you think anyone said “let’s just give this young black woman a billion dollars?” She was literally the first black woman to have a billion dollars, so no.
Her weight has always been an issue, so this is only news to her most rabid fans.
The first black woman billionaire was Sheila Johnson.
No, she wasn’t. Unless you are double counting her husband’s money. She was married to the founder of BET. If you think they each did equal work for that, the money would be divided evenly.
When they divorced they had less than a billion each. And their collective wealth only passed $1 billion a few years before Oprah did it on her own. Saying “they were both billionaires” seems wrong.
If you and your spouse have $1000 total, how much money do you have? The answer is: you have $300 and your spouse has $700 because there’s something amazing that you have to get for the house.
There are no self made billionaires lol.
I don’t know why you got downvoted. It’s literally impossible to become a billionaire without exploiting others.
And it’s impossible to steal from them as well. You’re just talking back a fraction of what they stole first
She’s an actual “self made” billionaire.
🤦♂️
Everybody works hard. If hard work is all it takes to deserve billions, why aren’t all the rest of us billionaires?
Because she got help, that’s why.
It’s not self made if she worked her way up. First she had to get a job. Then she had to have someone see something in her to move her up. Then someone had to talk good about her to someone else. Then through the power of networking, she made it to where she is. A lot of success in the entertainment industry is either landing the role that will get you set for life(think Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter), or getting to know people who know people. And for a lot of people, that means other people are helping lift you up.
She’s worked hard. Cool.
She’s given platform to charlatans. Not cool.
She’s living in her bubble after getting rich and is unaware of ground realities. Cool.
She’s criticising average people while living in that bubble. Not cool.
My wife is the hardest-working person I know. I have to beg her to come home when she’s sick so she can get some rest. Where’s our billions?
Oh right, my wife chose to work in a public library and actually help people.
If WW actually worked, they would be out of business.
Success happens with nutritional education and constant physical activity.
No one needs an extreme diet, or kooky rules to follow. That is called failure.It’s not hard to learn that a portion is the size of your fist.
Read the ingredients on the Back of the product.
Eat more fiber and tons of vegetables.
You don’t need a portion of protein at every meal throughout the day. All foods except Oil contain protein. You will not die if you don’t eat a steak at all 3 meals.
Go for a walk after dinner, or lunch, or BOTH.
Have more sex with your partner to burn those calories and up your breathing.
You lose weight by breathing.And finally, no one needs to be rail thin to be “healthy” or “beautiful”. Burn the magazines and delete Insta.
Love and Respect yourself.As someone who is loosing weight it’s basically calories in and calories out without eating over your daily calory budget
loseit is a good app and will calculate your calory budget for you and can track the foods you eat and add them up
I feel sorry for you americans though that don’t have the per 100g on your nutritional labels though because serving sizes can be deceptive
I don’t mean this directed at you since you seem to be very helpful. This is more directed at the zero empathy crowd who likes to repeat this equation.
I always hear “calories in - calories out = deficit”. But it overlooks that “calories out” is a big mystery box. You can kind of estimate it sometimes. But it’s different for every person, and different every day. And it’s over estimated for people who work out, leading to a lot of frustration.
I like that you actually have follow ups with things that can help. It’s important to have those conversations instead of just pretending it’s simple.
I just ignore any calories from working out, none of the devices that claim to offer this are accurate, if I’m really starving after a hard workout or long walk I’ll indulge a bit and simply note it down as usual, but otherwise I stick to my calorie planning based on metabolic calorie loss only and ignore the additional ones.
Do you pay for premium?
Not OP but I did. It was crazy good deal, like £1.50 a month when I signed it. It helped me lose 10kgs. I don’t use it anymore but I use the lessons it’s taught me about portion size etc. I’ve lost more weight since, without exercise and I take prednisolone. Well worth the money for me.
You now gave me the idea to maybe give these calorie counters a shot. In my appstore it shows up as “Lose It!”, I asume thats the one? Also question, how privacy safe are these?
serving sizes can be deceptive
The funniest example I’ve seen of this recently is the whipped butter that my parents buy. It has a blurb on the front that says “50% less fat than regular butter per serving”, which is true - because even though the serving sizes are the same (1 tablespoon) the whipped butter is fucking half air.
See also the “light” version of bottled apple juice, on inspection of the ingredients it’s because they just fucking add water to it and still charge the same price.
It’s just not that easy for some folks. Especially people who have developed eating disorders.
It’s not about being easy, it’s about being able to measure. I’ve been completely unable to regulate my food intake for a long time until I took it real seriously (therapeutic fasting. It’s a thing, it’s very extreme, if you can avoid it do it) and kind of reset my eating habits. Now that I’m slowly increasing my caloric intake to what someone on the weight I aim to be should consume (2m calories a day, healthy for someone with 90kg), having the pero 100g indication is extremely helpful for me since I can estimate how much stuff is taxing my daily budget, and I’m discovering some incredible cheat foods (stuff I really enjoy eating that fills me and has low calories).
What I mean to say is that having the per 100g information is very valuable for anyone that cares to control their caloric intake. Sure, you don’t have it in restaurants and stuff but with enough experience you tend to learn to estimate dishes so you can compensate beforehand or afterwards to not exceed your budget.
Its all about caloric intake, some people have it real hard to keep it under control due to eating disorders or family customs, but it really is just that.
I am confused by the instruction “if you can avoid it do it.”
Sorry, I meant that if you can avoid doing it, do avoid it <3
It should be interpreted: “if there’s any way that you can avoid using this technique/ therapy, then you should absolutely go out of your way to avoid having to use this
torture regemintherapy.”
Please tell me about your cheat foods
Sure! As always, food being filling depends a lot on the person same with tastyness. Anyway, one dish I really like is guacamole, it’s usually eaten with bread, and that bad. Recently I’ve taken a liking to eatich raw spinach with some oil (a cheap refillable spray will let you throw just what you need, usually 60kcal are enough to dress it well) and about 125g guacamole which is somewhat around 250kcal from the brand I buy. The guacamole and oil give a lot of flavour to the spinach, which has a strong texture and takes awhile to eat everything. It’s less than 400kcal in total, and quite healthy.
Instead of buying fruit juices, which even natural ones have quite a lot of sugar and thus calories, I’ve taken a liking to drinking vegetable soups, which basically cost the same in the store and have a fraction of the caloric cost while having quite a lot of vatamins. Again, I personally enjoy it a lot.
Besides that it’s all about eating stuff I would not usually eat. Lentils, chickpeas and other legumes are pretty good in nutrients and fill you a lot.
Everything considered, it’s more about not eating an exaggerated amount of food, and the fasting really helped me reset my habits. Before I wouldn’t have considered eating fruit instead some bag fries, but now that it’s been a while that I haven’t eaten fries, I’m slowly getting used to eating healthy stuff since going from zero to vegetables+fruits is incredible.
To summarize, lightly dressed spinach & guacamole salad and vegetable soups are my “cheat foods”. Food I really enjoy that fills me up with a low caloric intake.
Edit: forgot about the pear cherry tomatoes, it’s a variety of cherry tomatoes that has more “meat” and is sweeter, but still has fuckall calories so buying a bunch instead of potatoes and eating them all is totally fine.
Not quite awake yet. At first I read: “people who have developed eating dinosaurs.”
I know this might not sound positive but people with eating disorders should try to speak to a therapist about it because eating disorders can end up being horrible for your health
Although it is true what you say and I do agree, I also read between your lines that maybe you don’t know how difficult and (life)long that process is.
An eating disorder is a disease/issue that honestly isn’t solvable, you carry that weak point for the rest of your life and will have to battle it. Which with eating is extra difficult, since you have to eat. You can’t stay sober from food.
(But maybe I misunderstood your words (being written text without further context). )
This is why I’m not against drugs like Ozempic for those who need it.
I used a new medication to make me not want opiates. Used it for about two years until I had enough healthy habits in place to actually not want opiates. Been clean for 6 years and off the medication for over a year without issue.
Never would have gotten clean without it so it makes sense to me how people end up obese.
Agreed. But we should still acknowledge that losing fat is difficult for multiple reasons. Sure, ultimately it’s basic physics. If you operate on a caloric deficit over a longer period of time you will lose weight. That is true for everybody. But on a personal level it can be quite a challenge to lose fat and not gain it again. There are often life-long habits to overcome, sometimes (mental) health issues to deal with. You must find the time and energy and money to change your eating habits to something healthy. A simple drastic reduction of your caloric intake is unsustainable and unhealthy, you need to come up with a good plan. You need to find time to work out, because that’s also healthy and muscle mass is vital to losing fat. And I sad fat, not weight, because if you gain muscles you will also gain weight, as muscles are heavier than fat. But that’s healthy weight. Anyway, I’m rambling.
I’m not saying this to discourage anyone, living healthier will benefit you in so many ways. But I feel it’s worth acknowledging that there’s usually more to it than just counting calories.
I’m just pleasantly shocked you used the word ‘lose’ so many times without spelling it ‘loose’
Weight loss is letting the fat loose.
I’ve been reading so much about how simple it is to lose weight, it’s all about caloric deficit. I’ve also been in Hashimoto’s and hypothyroidism communities long enough to know that’s not always true. It’s probably true for healthy individuals, but with Hashi’s and hypothyroidism, metabolism doesn’t work as well, so you can be in caloric deficit and work out, yet still unable to shed the extra weight.
Wait… They don’t have that level of detail on the labels?? That’s ridiculous? Serving size is arbitrary nonsense.
I’m sure some slimy corps here have lobbied(bribed) to keep it this way.
They do, just not in the units you’re familiar with. They do calories per serving, and very commonly servings per package (in cases where people may be likely to eat the entire thing.) When listing serving sizes, where appropriate the serving sizes is described (how many pieces) and a weight in grams is listed.
Here’s an example (haven’t gotten around to posting images - sorry for the link.)
https://images.app.goo.gl/PLEKrxadMf6uTaqh7 ours show both
They do that in Australia too if you are talking about both the servings and 100g because your image link is broken
Oprah is the Joe Rogan of her generation.
Thanks for succinctly and precisely explaining why I really dislike her.
I’ve tried to explain why to my wife, but I feel like I’ve always missed the mark and she has implied it’s probably a mixture of misogyny and/or racism. Which still may be true I don’t really know. However, next time it comes up, I’ll point out that I dislike her for the same reason I dislike rogan.
Unfortunately, sexism and racism is so rampant from men (conservatism is ingrained into many men as a form of masculinity) that well-intentioned men who criticize toxic and exploitative capitalist women (esp women of color) are immediately lumped into that group of degenerate men. The reality of it is, Oprah is a toxic influence on women and gets off on creating FOMO among her impressionable fanbase. She created Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil, the former of which has had disastrous effects on women’s health esp nutrition because he’s a quack and pretends to be an expert on all things medical, and the latter of which oversimplifies most psych concepts to the point where laypeople think they’re qualified psychologists now.
You really didn’t need to admit that you probably don’t like her because she’s a black woman. If you don’t say this to your wife when adding the joe rogan bit, then you’re being dishonest.
I am so looking forward to a Lemmy user who is black and a woman to tell you that Oprah sucks. Whoever you are, please do us that favor. And if there aren’t any black women on Lemmy… well, there should be anyway.
Which is fine. I probably gave it more emphasis on the side point that the main point. But OP did admit that his wife pointed out that his comments have a misogyny and racist tone, and OP said that maybe that’s true. That’s it.
“Oprah sucks because she’s like Joe Rogan”
Ok.
“And if someone thinks it’s racist and sexist, it maaaaaay be true.”
Not ok.
Two things.
wife pointed out that his comments have a misogyny and racist tone
First you’re putting words in my mouth. She never said anything about my tone making her believe that, but that my dislike might be misogynistic and/or racist. I believe this is because I wasn’t explaining my position well, so without a good reason, it opened the door for that possibility.
Second,
“And if someone thinks it’s racist and sexist, it maaaaaay be true.”
Not ok.
It’s a good thing that I’m open to the possibility that I’m biased. This is not something to shit on. I don’t get why this is such a bad thing. Bring open to being wrong is how you grow.
Understood, and you clarified in another comment.
Your original comment was not clear enough, at least not to me, but now that I have the full context, I see that you’re not some racist/sexist asshole. But of course, it was wrong of me to accuse you of that in the first place without asking you to clarify. I’ll do that from now on.
My man. Good on you. We can all learn from this admission.
They didn’t?
You really didn’t need to admit that you probably don’t like her because she’s a black woman.
What do you mean? I don’t believe this to be the case, I believe I don’t like her for the same reason I don’t like rogan, and the last I checked he isn’t a black woman. Recognizing that I may have internalized biases that fall in a blind spot of mine is not an admission of anything nor is it something anyone should be shitting on.
But you did say “my wife thinks my comments have a mix of racism and misogyny, which is still maybe true.” How does that paint a good picture in any way?
But I stand corrected and I admit I had a knee-jerk reaction.
How does that paint a good picture in any way?
I wasn’t trying to paint a good picture, I was being honest.
Then be honest with yourself for once.
You say:
I don’t believe this to be the case,
How do you reconcile that with “maybe I’m being racist and misogynistic”?
I am being honest with myself: I may have internalized biases that I’m not consciously aware of. There’s nothing to reconcile here as these two statements are not mutually exclusive or even contradictory in any way.
One of the best ways to come to the conclusion that you need to better yourself in some areas is to be open to the idea you might have a bias.
But acknowledging you might have a bias does not mean it’s there and you’re OK with it
And not liking someone who is part of a marginalized group does not always mean a bias either.
A decade ago I lost weight on weight watchers. All it took was self control. The less calories I ate, the less I weighed. I’m still within 5 pounds of that weight.
My mom has had fantastic success with weight watchers. As has my wife, but with her we’re talking 5 to 10 lbs she has wanted to lose. But it still has been a great system for her which has benefitted me too.
Oprah being a fraud that pushes pseudoscience to benefit herself shouldn’t detract from this.
I wonder if she sold any stock or took short positions before she tanked the stock.
First read this as “Oprah Exists”.
And I’m like yeah no shit.
BREAKING NEWS
In my 25 year career, this is possibly the worst thing I will report…
Oprah still exists.
We’ll be back when more information comes out about this horrible situation.
School children in Florida believe Jesus walked in the same footsteps as Oprah.
Why is this surprising or even controversial? Weight Watchers bought Sequence whose whole purpose was to fast track access to Wegovy. Seems a little ridiculous to point towards that as the reason for the stock falling. Most likely it was simply because she left the board.
It can be due to both, no need to expect the market is reacting in a appropriate and not overblown way.
Am I missing something? When WW itself has added medications to its offerings, why would this result in Oprah leaving the board? Or are those two things unrelated?
For a long time, Weight Watchers has said that if you just follow their points system, the weight will melt off and you won’t need supplements or anything else. When most people think of Weight Watchers, they’re probably not thinking about the weight loss drugs they now support; they’re thinking of the years of points gimmick that make you feel like you can’t lose weight unless you pay $10+/month to see if you can eat that food or not (rather than teaching anyone about calorie intake vs. output).
Weight Watchers relies on a subscription based model to “save” people from their fatness, and Oprah was the biggest WW pusher. She had tons of money and resources, was even on the board of WW, and still needed medications to manage her weight. I don’t give a fuck, but people who bought into her ads and promos probably feel a little pissed off.
I didn’t even know they sold drugs until coming into this thread.
Wegovy is fairly new as a weight-loss drug (it’s a rebranded diabetes treatment), but it’s taking the weight-loss world by storm because it actually works.
In its clinical trial for weight-loss treatment in 2021, they tested it against a placebo and told both groups to combine the meds with lifestyle changes, and over the 68-week trial those on placebos lost an average of under 3% body weight while those on Wegovy lost almost 15%.
it actually works.
Yes and no. It actually causes weight loss, sometimes a large amount of weight loss. But it’s being sold as ‘this will make you thin’ and, in general, that isn’t true. You are not going to go from obese to thin if you just take Wegovy and wait for the pounds to drop off.
Also, it does nothing to help people develop a healthy lifestyle.
Huh - a billionaire that lies?
Whoda thunk?
Weird framing in the headline. Like taking weight loss drugs is some kind of scandal?
‘I’ve got to do this on my own,’" she said last September. “Because if I take the drug, that’s the easy way out.”
Apparently there’s a perception that it matters… You’ll see it with smoking cessation too. Gotta do shit the absolute hardest way possible or you’re somehow “cheating”…
Wouldn’t want people to have taken the easy way to not fucking dying :/
Taking weight loss drugs is not a scandal, taking weight loss drugs while being on the board of a commercial diet program is.
https://www.weightwatchers.com/us/clinic/weight-loss-medication
A commercial diet program that sells drugs tho?
Only after they themselves admitted that nobody in this country has the self-control to eat a balanced diet, which used to be their main product, as odd as that sounds.
Diet programs that you pay for are designed to cause you to fail on your own.
It’s not that no one can eat a balanced diet, it’s that there’s a huge financial incentive to them to keep you from learning to fend for yourself.
Weight loss isn’t easy. You can shoot off the mechanics of just eating less and sure, anyone who eats less than they normally do will lose weight. If it were actually that simple no one would ever struggle. There are underlying emotional issues, motivation issues, cravings, fear, habits, social pressures, and any number of unnamed complications that keep people fat. A super restrictive prescribed diet is probably what’s in order but you can’t just pull the trigger on that and expect it to stick. Whatever program that happens to be. All of this leads to cycles of trying and failing to lose weight. Sometimes you take a few pounds of, sometimes you take a lot of pounds off, then you stop and gain it all back.
Weight watchers, and programs like it, prey on that cycle of failure. The weight loss drugs are only another symptom of that
Weight Watchers really wasn’t. It was an all in and group related program that existed since, like, the 50s. It was an invested program that was really honestly designed for you to succeed.
Things had probably changed since the late 90s and early odds, however. But the entire program was really designed to get people on a program of eating low calorie meals and to get people into the habit of eating low calorie meals on the long-term. It was probably the one, stand out program, that honestly worked Well for the people who actually stuck to the program.
That was the point of Weight Watchers. It was designed to train people to do the one thing that actually worked to lose weight: counter calories, and eat, reasonably sized and reasonably portioned meals. Even after you stopped buying the Weight Watchers branded meals, you would know to counter calories, and only eat as much as you should eat for each meal. As many calories, and as reasonably sized portions. It trained people to eat as much as they should eat. That’s why it was so successful for over half a century.
It’s too bad that, nowadays, it’s a bunch of bullshit like anything else. But, for over 60 years, it actually was a real thing that worked for a great many people.
Dictated by Siri, but not Redd
But why?
As someone else pointed out — Weight Watchers shifted its focus to weight loss drugs. Not sure what the scandal is here. Oprah is a weight watchers spokesperson, weight watchers hooks you up with weight loss drugs, Oprah loses weight on said drugs proving it works. ???
