{"id":249116,"date":"2026-01-17T06:15:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T06:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/249116\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T06:15:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T06:15:15","slug":"oprah-winfrey-reveals-she-downed-17-shots-to-win-a-drinking-contest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/249116\/","title":{"rendered":"Oprah Winfrey Reveals She Downed 17 Shots to Win a Drinking Contest"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn a mostly earnest, insightful and educational conversation about health, food noise, GLP-1s and the dangers of not recognizing obesity as a disease, Oprah Winfrey<\/a> and Gayle King<\/a> delivered some moments of levity as only best friends can do during a special appearance at 92nd Street Y. <\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tThe two appeared at New York\u2019s cultural and community center Tuesday with King acting as moderator for a conversation that featured Winfrey and Dr. Ania M. Jastreboff discussing their new book, Enough: Your Health, Your Weight and What It\u2019s Like to Be Free. As King noted at the top of the hourlong chat, 2026 marks a milestone 50th anniversary of meeting as friends in Baltimore, Maryland back in 1976. \u201cWe were 21 and 22, now we\u2019re 71 and 71. [Oprah] is turning 72 soon.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tWinfrey, whose birthday is Jan. 29, drew laughs, cheers and gasps when she revealed just how many shots she downed in order to win a drinking contest in Santa Barbara, not far from her estate in Montecito. The topic of conversation came up after King recalled being at a Golden Globes party last weekend when she asked the bartender for a Shirley Temple. \u201cThe person next to me said, \u2018Seriously?\u2019 I go, \u2018Seriously with extra cherries.\u2019 I just don\u2019t drink but you don\u2019t drink now either.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWinfrey confirmed that she\u2019s off the sauce even though she \u201cused to be a tequila girl.\u201d King then prodded her to cite the number of shots she downed in one sitting. \u201cThere\u2019s something in Santa Barbara called the Fiesta<\/a> festival. People are out in the streets, and you\u2019re drinking and having a good time. That\u2019s the whole point. One night we had a drinking contest and I won with 17 shots,\u201d Winfrey confirmed. While she didn\u2019t name names of who she drank under the table, King did have more to say: \u201cDon\u2019t applaud that. That\u2019s terrible.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tKing praised her best friend at other times during the revelatory chat. \u201cThis is the most open and honest conversation I\u2019ve ever heard her have about her weight, which, by the way, is nobody\u2019s business,\u201d King said of Winfrey, who generated countless headlines when she revealed she turned to GLP-1s to help with a nearly lifelong battle with obesity. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe bottom line is this, no amount of fame, wealth, success, attention can substitute for your biology,\u201d Winfrey said. \u201cI\u2019m here now telling you there is a pill. There are medications. You can opt to use them or not use them. If you don\u2019t use them or don\u2019t want to use them, that\u2019s really fine. But just know that the struggle doesn\u2019t have to be the struggle that you\u2019ve had, and if you are going to choose to lose weight by eating healthily and working out and the weight comes back, understand why it always comes back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tKing interviews Winfrey and Jastreboff at New York\u2019s 92nd Street Y on Jan. 13, 2025.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMichael Priest Photography\/Courtesy of 92Y<\/p>\n

\n\tWinfrey\u2019s movie career came up when she recalled the promotional cycle for Jonathan Demme\u2019s 1998 film in which she starred opposite Danny Glover. \u201cI was promoting this movie,\u00a0Beloved, which y\u2019all did not go to see. One person went to see it in this room,\u201d she said jokingly. \u201cAnna Wintour<\/a>\u00a0wanted to do a cover. I remember just as she was walking out, she goes, \u2018You know, you have to lose 20 pounds.\u2019 I said, \u2018OK, I\u2019m gonna do it.\u2019 And I felt really great losing that 20 pounds. I\u2019m telling you, when they brought me the first Polaroid of that\u00a0Vogue<\/a>\u00a0cover, I cried. I cried because I thought the very idea that somebody who had suffered so much from all the weight issues would be on the cover of\u00a0Vogue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKing said she still recalled the cover line: \u201cA Major Movie, An Amazing Makeover.\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tKing with Winfrey and Jastreboff and their new book Enough: Your Health, Your Weight, and What It\u2019s Like To Be Free.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMichael Priest Photography<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a mostly earnest, insightful and educational conversation about health, food noise, GLP-1s and the dangers of not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[7244,321,93,47617,61,60,14043,78099],"class_list":{"0":"post-249116","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-anna-wintour","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-gayle-king","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-oprah-winfrey","15":"tag-vogue"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}