Oprah Winfrey has come a long way on her fitness journey after turning to a GLP-1 to aid in her weight loss after struggling for years.
The 72-year-old proudly revealed that she has reached a fitness goal in a video she shared on social media this week.
Oprah documented her fitness evolution in the before-and-after clip, which showed that in 2024, she could barely hold a plank for 10 seconds.
Fast forward to now, and the billionaire can not only hold a plank position for more than a minute, but she can do it while lifting weights, too.
“As we age — and you want to age well — one of the things I’ve learned is that flexibility and strength is the most important, particularly for women and our bones,” she said in a video of herself in the gym that she shared on Instagram. “And so I started strength training.”
In the clip, Oprah included a throwback to her first plank attempt on August 10, 2024, which showed her struggling to hold the position before dropping to the ground at the 10-second mark.
The video then shows Oprah declaring that she “can go 20 more seconds” after hitting her original 10-second target, before it cuts to her planking while lifting weights. “That was the goal,” she said while shaking her fist at the camera in victory.
“Planks are the most challenging exercise for me. My first one in 2024 lasted 10 seconds. Now I can do them for over a minute, with weights, and whatever creativity Trainer Peter throws my way,” she wrote in the caption of the video.
© Getty ImagesOprah has lost a significant amount of weight since 2023
Expert opinion
Speaking to HELLO!, Darren Sealy, fitness coach and founder of Flow State Fit Club, explained why planks, an exercise that involves holding your body in a straight, rigid position while resting its weight on your forearms and toes for an extended period, are a “challenging” exercise.
“A proper, well-executed plank is a full body isometric contraction, which means that your core muscles are bracing hard,” he told us. “Your glute muscles are squeezed/contracted. Your quadricep muscles are engaged. Your shoulders and upper back are stabilizing, and your central nervous system is coordinating everything at once.
© WireImageOprah said she had always been a ‘yo-yo’ dieter
“Unlike crunches or sit-ups, you cannot hide behind momentum or “jerking” as there is no movement to cheat with – it’s pure tension!”
He added: “The plank position also challenges your core endurance, not just strength, along with spinal stability, which is actually much harder than spinal movement. Whilst performing a plank, your mental resilience from holding the isolation without moving is also put to the test.”
© Getty ImagesOprah called taking a GLP-1 a ‘gift’
Darren added that Oprah performing a plank for over a minute says a lot about her level of fitness and “indicates good core endurance and body control.”
He added that other benefits include “solid anterior core endurance, good neuromuscular control, and likely a good/balanced body composition (muscle-to-fat ratio).”
Weight loss
© Getty ImagesOprah turned to a GLP-1 to help her lose weight
Oprah turned to a GLP-1 medication in 2023 after revealing she was always “losing the weight [and] gaining it back.”
“The fact that there’s a medically approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier, in my lifetime, feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift, and not something to hide behind and once again be ridiculed for,” she previously told People.
“I now use it as I feel I need it, as a tool to manage not yo-yoing,” she added. “I’m absolutely done with the shaming from other people and particularly myself.”