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.”
