Media mogul Oprah Winfrey has opened up about her difficult health journey, revealing how years of knee pain and subsequent surgery changed the way she approached exercise, weight loss and her overall wellbeing.
Winfrey, who underwent surgery on both knees in 2021, recalled living with significant pain for years before deciding to have the procedures. She said the experience ultimately became a turning point in her commitment to taking better care of her body.
“I made a vow that if God let me walk again, I promise I will get myself in shape, I promise I will use my body to the highest possible good for myself and my health,” she said.
According to Winfrey, she had spent about four years experiencing pain whenever she walked downhill and relied on steroid injections to manage the discomfort before eventually deciding to undergo surgery.
“For four years I was in pain every time I walked down a hill and I was getting those steroid injections in the knees… as you know, if you continue to get them it actually gets worse. So I decided to have my knees done, and let me tell you, life changed after that,” she recalled.
Her recovery, however, was not immediate. Winfrey described having to gradually rebuild her ability to walk, beginning with a walker before progressing to crutches and eventually a cane.
“You start out with a walker, which is very limiting, then move from walker to crutches to cane. Every day I would just try to do a couple more feet until I had gotten up to a mile,” she said.
She also acknowledged that her determination to handle the process independently sometimes made the recovery more difficult.
“I felt like I had to do it my way and had to prove that I could do it on my own… I felt like ‘I’ve got to do it’,” she said.
Winfrey has also spoken about how her understanding of obesity changed over time. She said learning that obesity is recognised as a disease helped her reconsider some of the assumptions she had previously held about weight and weight loss.
“For the first time I got when they said obesity is a disease… It is a disease if you carry the gene or propensity for the adipose gene, which is the fat gene,” she said.
She compared genetic susceptibility to obesity with the way genetic predisposition can influence other conditions, explaining that not everyone exposed to a particular behaviour necessarily develops an addiction, but genetic vulnerability can affect an individual’s risk.
“Not everybody who overdrinks is an alcoholic, but if you have the gene for it, you develop alcoholism. It is the same thing with people who have obesity,” she added.
Medical research supports the broader point that obesity has genetic contributors, although it is considered a complex condition involving many genes as well as environmental, behavioural and metabolic factors. Researchers have identified numerous genetic variants associated with obesity risk rather than a single “fat gene.”
For Winfrey, her experience with knee pain and rehabilitation appears to have reshaped her relationship with movement and health, turning her recovery into a personal commitment to becoming more active and caring for her body.
