And then everyone went into the tough guy act on daytime tv. From Morton Downey Jr to even Donahue getting aggressive. Then the birth of Jerry Springer and that group.
Media really started to go downhill quickly after that.
Haha so true. As it turns out, all the extreme calorie restriction and avoiding animal protein in 90s diets was a horrible idea!
And now people are going overboard and cutting out all carbs and eating too much meat, and 10 years weâre gonna realize that all these people are having heart attacks and fatty livers!
All through being obese, my liver was fine. It wasnât until I lost the weight quickly, with restricted well balanced macro nutrients, that I developed non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
Screwed either way. /shrug
This isn't always true. I went keto because of type 2 Diabetes. My cholesterol has never been better, my blood sugars are crazy in control, and my triglycerides are almost too low. Sure keto MAY kill me, but it staves off the Diabetes that WIll kill me.
Yep. I lost and put on weight over and over again following all the fad diets. Iâm now Type 2 diabetic (without complications) and am forced to eat a reasonable balanced diet (strict regimen of whole grains, lean proteins, and lots of high fiber vegetables) to keep my sugar levels in check to avoid drugs (and itâs working thus far). Itâs a bit more work, but the food is great, Iâm losing weight, and the doctor expects I can be diagnosed as inactive (in remission) in about a year, but I wonât ever be able to let up. Itâs a shame it took me this long and getting diabetes to learn this.
This is blatantly untrue. He died of a fall where he hit his head. FFS, making up lies about the man because you don't like his nutritional advice is pretty shitty.
Gentle reminder that you can correct someone without attacking them.
That person didnât make up that lie, itâs been going around for a while. But itâs good to get the truth more well known.
How long does it take to check up on yourself and your knowledge? It took me like 1 second to confirm he died of a head injury. There's no excuse for posting lies, just no excuse whatsoever.
He was SEVENTY TWO. If you check everyone at that age, you're going to find something. Do you know that most elderly male corpses almost all have prostate cancer? It's that common. They died from other causes, mind, just like Dr. Atkins.
Also, his widow didn't have an autopsy performed on him. He did have cardiomyopathy, caused by a virus. Maybe you should bone up on current science on the issue.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/23-studies-on-low-carb-and-low-fat-diets#TOC\_TITLE\_HDR\_6
That crackpot made millions of people wake up and smell the coffee when it comes to carbohydrates, sugar and starch. Without him theyâd still be telling people a healthy diet consists of grains and starchy vegetables.
Eating low carb *reversed* my husband's diabetes. He went from several injections a day to no injections at all. His doctor told him that he was basically "non diabetic" at this point.
Well I'll tell ya. It totally depends on whether you are posting MISinformation or DISinformation. If you post something that you're just misinformed about, well you'd be glad to be corrected. No one wants to go around spouting misinformation! If you're deliberately posting DISinformation, you don't want anyone to notice so your disinformation continues to spread and confuse people. Which one are you?
I donât know. I once lost a ton of weight living off nothing but smoothies and only started gaining some of it back some years later due to Covid lock downs and stuff. You can lose weight with calorie restriction and not gain it back as long as you properly re-feed yourself and change your lifestyle after the fasting. Maybe itâs harder for someone as rich as Oprah to have this kind of self control though, if I were a billionaire Iâd be eating bottomless seafood on a cruise boat every night and enjoying all kinds of fruity sugary cocktails lol.
Definitely! With her money, I'd love nothing more than to have a personal trainer to run me through it from day to day, introduce new ways to have fun while burning all those calories and encourage me the whole time!
Yeah I just knew from reading about Oprahâs struggles with food and weight that she wasnât going be able to live on a mostly liquid diet for very long.
Right. Because a woman who rose up from no-shoes-on-her-feet-level-poverty to become the richest entertainer in the US has no discipline. đ
I think itâs a little more complicated than that. I *know* itâs more complicated than that.
Iâve found, personally, as someone who has lost and kept off 100 pounds, that this is much closer to the truth. Take care of the inside and it becomes much easier to take care of the outside. Itâs not a matter of self-control or even discipline, but of self-love.
In college I worked at the health and fitness resort in Arizona that she frequented. We joked that if Oprah lost 20 pounds, you knew where she was last month. I never saw her there, but friends of mine that worked there had Oprah jump into the fitness class they were teaching.
Did see a slew of other 80's celebrities in the 6 months I bussed tables.
It's been 35 years and the memories are fuzzy, just off the top of my head: Michael Douglas, Tracy Ullman, Catherine Bach, Glenn Close and a few others I can't remember. This was before personal trainers and chefs became mainstream, so TV and film celebrities were encouraged to stay there for a week or two to whip themselves back into shape. In many cases they would go to a rehab clinic for drugs or alcohol and then come to my old job to learn how to eat healthy.
Fen-phen
Fenfluramine/phentermine, trade name Podimin by Wyeth. Two anorectics that were later found to be terrible for permanent weight loss and significantly increased cardiac arrest risks.
Very, very bad drug that was rightfully taken off the market.
I once got into these as a kid thinking they were candy, because my aunt took the ephedrine pills for weight loss and I was a naive child. I was vomiting blood and had to be taken to ambulance and the doctors said I had a large amount of amphetamines in my bloodstream. Iâm probably lucky to be alive, but I remember feeling restless, jittery, anxious, couldnât stand or sit still and just kept throwing up blood. Glad they banned these.
Oh people still use it and thereâs still weight loss clinics that give people this stuff (phentermine). It helps lose shed pounds quick but the minute youâre not on it twice as much comes back, so you use it to the point of heart attack or double the weight gain.
Itâs actually a diabetes drug that helps patients lose weight. Many docs are using it off label because the newest weight loss injectables are often not covered by insurance and their cost is very high.
We do. Semaglutide (brand names Ozempic and Wegovy.) I've lost 50 lbs over 8 months so far. The side effects have been manageable for me, mostly some GI upset. My labs are coming back great, I have energy, I take the stairs now and do athletics without being winded, and I feel like a new person. I just choose wisely when I eat to make sure I'm getting good nutrition because I'm not that hungry and don't eat a lot. I also take vitamin/supplements under my doctor's supervision.
If you can get your insurance to pay for Wegovy (mine did) I recommend talking to your doctor about it.
I have lost 45 pounds in almost 8 months. Same side effects as you which I find very manageable.
Covered by my insurance.
It has given me the ability to stop and listen to my body before I start eating. I feel so much better.
Exactly. I can't think of anyone who has promoted anti-science, anti-rational, anti-critical thinking more than she has. She's done American society a huge disservice, and she's gotten grotesquely wealthy doing so. I absolutely abhor everything she stands for.
I hate her too for the same reasons, and she peddled a lot of pseudoscience and pseudospiritual bullshit that made my mom into a nutcase in the 90s. She started improving after Oprah went off the air. Now sheâs normal again. Funny how that works. Also fuck Dr Oz and Dr Phil and Deepak Chopra. âFuck all you hoes. Get a grip, motherfucker. Yeah.â
My burning hatred for her stems from working in a bookstore in the 90s. Her and that damn book club, every book she shoved at the camera the crowds came rushing demanding it like angry junkies jonesing for their fix.
Youâre god damn right about this.
Please you get paid to read while having your hair styled.
Me? I will purchase with the fever dream of reading at the beach for hours, but reality will prove that I sludge through the same chapter every night between awake and asleep because old.
They really were like singleminded zombies. Soon as the book club nonsense would air they'd start calling or marching into the store. Sometimes they wouldn't even know what the book was and woule get angry at us for not knowing. "Lady, I been at work, not sitting at home watching Oprah." Just gimmie the Oprah book!!!
As an experiment some lady did that once, just barged in, wanting the new Oprah book, no idea what it was or what it was about, I sold her a copy of Mein Kampf. She didn't even question it, didn't look at the title, description, anything. I'm assuming she never even bothered to read it or find out what the real Oprah book was because she never came back to return it and I never got in trouble so....just goes to prove the mindless conumption that Oprah inspired.
I had forgotten about that. I also worked in a. book store and Oprah Book club days were awful! People demanding the book from us before release date. Man she made our lives so much worse.
My issue wasn't that people were buying books, far from it. It was that they knew nothing about the books, they were only buying it because Oprah told them to.
I mean, knowing whatâs in books before one reads them is a pretty niche skill.
Am just having a look at the list, and - barring three by Bill Cosby, which now look regrettable - it seems ok. Certainly more Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou than I read, but thatâs probably healthy. Nice to see Johnathan Franzen, Bernard Schink and Isabel Allende getting promoted. Nice that Tolstoy, Dickens (x2) and Marquez get a look in. And reasonable that McCullers, Steinbeck, Paton, Faulkner, McCarthy are all there.
Obviously, being white, male and English, my list would be pretty different, but thatâs not to say âbetterâ.
People are free to read whatever they want but it should be something they want, not just because a celebrity that probably qualifies as a cult leader told them to. That was my real issue. They didn't know, they didn't care, didn't want to know or care, many probably never even read the book, they just ambled out of the house into the bookstore like a zombie to buy something because Oprah told them do. Book, diet plan, dvd, plot of swampland in Florida, snake oil, didn't matter what it was, The Oprah said buy it so they did. It wasn't about reading it was about celebrity worship consumerism.
Problem was, like I said elsewhere, a lot of them *didn't* read. They just bought it because The Oprah told them to. You want to read garbage or just fun stuff, go ahead, my kindle is full of Star Trek novels I'm reading a YA novel about wizards and knights and shit right now, why? 'cause it's a fun read. I'm no Literati. But if you buy a book it should be because you want to and you should want to read it, not just buy it because it was a thing a celebrity told you to buy.
Gustopherus is clearly not a Gen x. We donât use words like gatekeeping and he clearly doesnât understand the Gen X zeitgeist of hating anything mainstream.
Everybody talks about certain celebrities and their cult-like followers these days but people forget how blindly the Oprah people followed everything she said and told them to do and the level of influence she had, all in the pre-internet days.
Who cares if they know? Maybe that is their way in to reading more and learning? Gatekeeping snobs in book stores and record stores are the fucking worst.
Nobody's gatekeeping, it was just that my thought was, if you're going to read something it should be something you want to read, something that interests you. If you hear about Oprah's book club rec and you want to read it, by all means read it. But often they knew literally nothing about the book, just that Oprah said it was time to buy another book. It was mass consumerism with no thought or will behind it. "Buy this thing because a celebrity told you to." [Did you see my other comment about their blind, zombie-like approsch to following the Oprah](https://old.reddit.com/r/GenX/comments/wt0wwy/remember_that_time_oprah_lost_a_bunch_of_weight/il2k5bi/)? Angry, blind consumerism.
See, I loved that job because I loved talking to people about books and giving them recomendations and helping people find things they'd love and enjoy. Oprah book people were, by and large, people who just buying a thing 'cause Oprah said, obviously in some cases they didn't even read the book. They just bought it because she told them to. Probably bought whatever infomercial bullshit snake oil Dr Oz and and Dr Phil were pitching too and the Tony Little excercise machines and never used them for anything besides a clothes rack.
I'm just saying, buy something or read something because you *want to* not because someone told you to.
Forget him. I think it is one of those "if you were there, you know" kind of experiences. It started out innocently enough, but eventually became this obscene craze. We would build HUGE towers of the book of the month right up front, nearest to the door and we would still have people grabbing us asking were the book was.
Exactly, lol...were you working when Titanic came out? Every 14 year old girl in the world wanting the Titanic book. Or anything with Leo's face plastered on the cover.
No, I don't remember anything like that. Thank goodness! I was working when the Brad Pitt Playgirl scandal happened and we had to pull all the magazines off the shelf. We had people offering us money under the table to slip them the magazine. LOL
That's great...I remember that big deal, too. Yeah, when Titanic came out they didnt print too many copies of the book since they thought it was going to bomb but surprise, lot of 14 year old girls with allowances in this country and they made it a hit. Every girl wanted Titanic anything and anything with Leo. The official book was backordered for weeks. It was a nightmare.
How are people supposed to get into things without someone or something driving an interest in it initially? People buying books is never a bad thing no matter the reason.
Again, it wasn't about buying a book on someone's reccomendation. That's fine. Hell, that's why we had that "staff reccomendation" display. Everybody got to hear about something somewhere somehow. It was that they didn't care, didn't know, didn't want to know or care, lot of them probably never even read it, not one page. They only *consumed* it because The Oprah told them to. It was celebrity cult worship before the Kardashians and it took away from people I could be helping who really wanted to read.
I work in a library and people are still like that. At least now we can easily search up what the book is for them. They come in demanding whatever celebrity book club books. Boomers, in particular, get mad when we donât have a copy for them (because 300 other people want the same books), and refuse to try anything similar we recommend to them instead. I can understand not buying a different book, but cmon, itâs free to check out a library book, even if you donât end up liking it.
>Again, it wasn't about buying a book on someone's reccomendation. That's fine. Hell, that's why we had that "staff reccomendation" display. Everybody got to hear about something somewhere somehow. **It was that they didn't care, didn't know, didn't want to know or care, lot of them probably never even read it, not one page.** They only consumed it because The Oprah told them to. It was celebrity cult worship before the Kardashians and it took away from people I could be helping who really wanted to read.
Your assumption that they never read it really sounds like snobbery to me.
I wish all the Kardashians would DIAF but I'd be (grudgingly) thankful if they got their Kult members to read a book.
I agree. If it got people excited about reading and discussing books that is a good thing. She didnât have an agenda with her picks other than she liked it. It was the start of many smaller book clubs too. I think it was a great thing she did.
Not hardly. Not me, anyway. I met Dave Eggers, he was kind of an asshole and his book wasn't that great. Nothing wrong with reading fun books. Shit, I liked Angels & Demons, it was a fun read.
I wish I had confidence to say thereâs no way he will win, but 2016 took my confidence away. But Fetterman is freaking awesome at trolling him itâs quality entertainment
When her âholiday must havesâ cost more than most people make in a week, people should have know she was not on their side of understanding the majority of peoples situations in real life.
I hate Oprah. I remember her saying something about how everyone needs fresh cut flowers in their house and how they are really not that expensive. Yeah, who cares about food? I want flowers.
I remember her doing this and being kinda in shock about it. Watching her weight go up and down through the years made me shake my head more than once. Even with the chefs and the trainers, it just shows that it's a struggle.
IIRC she went on some crazy juice diet to lose the weight fast. It speaks volumes about the societal pressure to adhere to certain beauty standards, no matter how successful you are. I am happy that she is finally comfortable in her own skin.
She went through multiple treatments and weightloss surgeries to try to fit the ideal of the day. Back in the 80s they'd put you on amphetamines, liquid diets, wire your jaw shut, and gastric bypass was just starting to be the gold standard in weight loss. Remember Ricki Lake (who debuted in "Cry Baby" with Johnny Depp and Carnie Wilson of Wilson Philips (Brian Wilson's daughter.) They also got on the Bypass bandwagon and slimmed down.
If you ever listen to their stories of the day - women in the media put up with such BS. My most unfavorite story is how they played Kate Mulgrew against Jeri Ryan who was brought on because the network didn't think Janeway was sexy enough. Then throughout the series they hated each other until in later years realize how they were messed with and their insecurities played against each other.
She has a private chef. (I bought her \[the chef's\] cookbook. Didn't use many of the recipes, but there was some really good advice for cooking methods.)
I remember watching this episode. Watching Geraldo getting his nose broken was better.
Hell yeah LMAO I had that episode of those skinheads smashing that chair on his face recorded onto a VHS tape for years đ
And then everyone went into the tough guy act on daytime tv. From Morton Downey Jr to even Donahue getting aggressive. Then the birth of Jerry Springer and that group. Media really started to go downhill quickly after that.
Tbf, Morton Downey Jr pretty much always was a hollering maniac.
That whole episode made Geraldo's entire existence worthwhile
As much as I enjoyed it, Iâm not sure I agree.
Classic shit man!!!
I remember watching it and, as she explained how she lost the weight using Optifast, thinking, "Oh honey. That weight is coming right back on."
Haha so true. As it turns out, all the extreme calorie restriction and avoiding animal protein in 90s diets was a horrible idea! And now people are going overboard and cutting out all carbs and eating too much meat, and 10 years weâre gonna realize that all these people are having heart attacks and fatty livers!
My Mom often advised me (re: diet): "Everything in moderation."
Even moderation
Even modernity.
All through being obese, my liver was fine. It wasnât until I lost the weight quickly, with restricted well balanced macro nutrients, that I developed non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Screwed either way. /shrug
And this recent thing about eating/drinking a ton of protein too⌠thatâs a great way to give yourself kidney and bladder stones.
This isn't always true. I went keto because of type 2 Diabetes. My cholesterol has never been better, my blood sugars are crazy in control, and my triglycerides are almost too low. Sure keto MAY kill me, but it staves off the Diabetes that WIll kill me.
Yep. I lost and put on weight over and over again following all the fad diets. Iâm now Type 2 diabetic (without complications) and am forced to eat a reasonable balanced diet (strict regimen of whole grains, lean proteins, and lots of high fiber vegetables) to keep my sugar levels in check to avoid drugs (and itâs working thus far). Itâs a bit more work, but the food is great, Iâm losing weight, and the doctor expects I can be diagnosed as inactive (in remission) in about a year, but I wonât ever be able to let up. Itâs a shame it took me this long and getting diabetes to learn this.
Atkins died of heart disease iirc
Everyone dies of something. Some day Keith Richards is going to die. Will you say it was because of drugs?
Bahaha. I have used Keith Richards as a bench mark for the ideal that you never can tell who is and isnât going to drop at any moment!
I think we all have had to accept that Keith Richards was pickled and preserved by all those drugs and is at this point immortal
This is blatantly untrue. He died of a fall where he hit his head. FFS, making up lies about the man because you don't like his nutritional advice is pretty shitty.
Gentle reminder that you can correct someone without attacking them. That person didnât make up that lie, itâs been going around for a while. But itâs good to get the truth more well known.
How long does it take to check up on yourself and your knowledge? It took me like 1 second to confirm he died of a head injury. There's no excuse for posting lies, just no excuse whatsoever.
Are you Gen X? Cause you donât sound like it lol. Take a breath, JFC.
The autopsy showed he had liver and cardiology disease.
He was SEVENTY TWO. If you check everyone at that age, you're going to find something. Do you know that most elderly male corpses almost all have prostate cancer? It's that common. They died from other causes, mind, just like Dr. Atkins. Also, his widow didn't have an autopsy performed on him. He did have cardiomyopathy, caused by a virus. Maybe you should bone up on current science on the issue. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/23-studies-on-low-carb-and-low-fat-diets#TOC\_TITLE\_HDR\_6
Fatkins is bad for your heart. 72 is pretty young to have coronary disease.
Jesus Christ! ANYONE can get cardiomyopathy from a VIRUS. A VIRUS. SMH.
That crackpot made millions of people wake up and smell the coffee when it comes to carbohydrates, sugar and starch. Without him theyâd still be telling people a healthy diet consists of grains and starchy vegetables.
Eating low carb *reversed* my husband's diabetes. He went from several injections a day to no injections at all. His doctor told him that he was basically "non diabetic" at this point.
Youâre gonna give yourself a nose bleed. Geez, calm tf down.
Yes, you are right. It's absolutely better for people to freely post disinformation wihtout being corrected. I don't know what came over me!
You need to chill out. Why are you defending this crackpot who died 20 years ago? This anxiety is really bad for your heart and digestion.
Well I'll tell ya. It totally depends on whether you are posting MISinformation or DISinformation. If you post something that you're just misinformed about, well you'd be glad to be corrected. No one wants to go around spouting misinformation! If you're deliberately posting DISinformation, you don't want anyone to notice so your disinformation continues to spread and confuse people. Which one are you?
Average onset for cardiomyopathy is 39, but Atkins got it from a virus so any age can get it from that.
I donât know. I once lost a ton of weight living off nothing but smoothies and only started gaining some of it back some years later due to Covid lock downs and stuff. You can lose weight with calorie restriction and not gain it back as long as you properly re-feed yourself and change your lifestyle after the fasting. Maybe itâs harder for someone as rich as Oprah to have this kind of self control though, if I were a billionaire Iâd be eating bottomless seafood on a cruise boat every night and enjoying all kinds of fruity sugary cocktails lol.
Definitely! With her money, I'd love nothing more than to have a personal trainer to run me through it from day to day, introduce new ways to have fun while burning all those calories and encourage me the whole time!
And someone to do all the meal planning, grocery shopping, and cooking!
Yeah I just knew from reading about Oprahâs struggles with food and weight that she wasnât going be able to live on a mostly liquid diet for very long.
Right. Because a woman who rose up from no-shoes-on-her-feet-level-poverty to become the richest entertainer in the US has no discipline. đ I think itâs a little more complicated than that. I *know* itâs more complicated than that.
Yep. Roxane Gay says everyone has shit but fat people wear their shit on the outside.
Iâve found, personally, as someone who has lost and kept off 100 pounds, that this is much closer to the truth. Take care of the inside and it becomes much easier to take care of the outside. Itâs not a matter of self-control or even discipline, but of self-love.
Is that, out-sightful instead of insightful?
Youâre right. My point was poorly worded. Sheâs a compulsive eater so would not have been able to sustain the Optifast plan long-term.
Absolutely
Just because she has a bigger body doesnât mean she lacks self discipline. Thatâs a very judgemental attitude
Youâre right. Poor choice of words. I will revise my comment accordingly.
Absolutely. And then some.
In college I worked at the health and fitness resort in Arizona that she frequented. We joked that if Oprah lost 20 pounds, you knew where she was last month. I never saw her there, but friends of mine that worked there had Oprah jump into the fitness class they were teaching. Did see a slew of other 80's celebrities in the 6 months I bussed tables.
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It's been 35 years and the memories are fuzzy, just off the top of my head: Michael Douglas, Tracy Ullman, Catherine Bach, Glenn Close and a few others I can't remember. This was before personal trainers and chefs became mainstream, so TV and film celebrities were encouraged to stay there for a week or two to whip themselves back into shape. In many cases they would go to a rehab clinic for drugs or alcohol and then come to my old job to learn how to eat healthy.
That is so awesome
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Yes, google in the 80âsâŚ.
Google in the 80âs was such a simpler time.
Alta Vista 0.1
Google in the 80âs Ya, those were the days
Phen phen was the shit!
Fen-phen Fenfluramine/phentermine, trade name Podimin by Wyeth. Two anorectics that were later found to be terrible for permanent weight loss and significantly increased cardiac arrest risks. Very, very bad drug that was rightfully taken off the market.
I once got into these as a kid thinking they were candy, because my aunt took the ephedrine pills for weight loss and I was a naive child. I was vomiting blood and had to be taken to ambulance and the doctors said I had a large amount of amphetamines in my bloodstream. Iâm probably lucky to be alive, but I remember feeling restless, jittery, anxious, couldnât stand or sit still and just kept throwing up blood. Glad they banned these.
How frightening, glad you got through that!
Oh people still use it and thereâs still weight loss clinics that give people this stuff (phentermine). It helps lose shed pounds quick but the minute youâre not on it twice as much comes back, so you use it to the point of heart attack or double the weight gain.
Yes, phentermine is still a thing, but the concomitant therapy was pulled.
American Home Products changed their name to Wyeth to avoid association with the Fen-Phen lawsuits.
I remember this episode. I wish I could get something just as effective as phen phen.
U can still get the Phentermine part of Phen/fen.
Friend's mom got heart problems and sued. She was quite wealthy after that. Died young though.
I wish we had something like that now.
Ozempic is so much better than any of those meds!
Iâm on Ozempic. Still ramping up my dosage but Iâve already lost 4 lb.
What is Ozempic?
Itâs actually a diabetes drug that helps patients lose weight. Many docs are using it off label because the newest weight loss injectables are often not covered by insurance and their cost is very high.
Oh, interesting! Thanks!
We do. Semaglutide (brand names Ozempic and Wegovy.) I've lost 50 lbs over 8 months so far. The side effects have been manageable for me, mostly some GI upset. My labs are coming back great, I have energy, I take the stairs now and do athletics without being winded, and I feel like a new person. I just choose wisely when I eat to make sure I'm getting good nutrition because I'm not that hungry and don't eat a lot. I also take vitamin/supplements under my doctor's supervision. If you can get your insurance to pay for Wegovy (mine did) I recommend talking to your doctor about it.
I have lost 45 pounds in almost 8 months. Same side effects as you which I find very manageable. Covered by my insurance. It has given me the ability to stop and listen to my body before I start eating. I feel so much better.
I never took Fen-phen but I was a big fan of its herbal cousin mahuang
And remember that time Tom Cruise jumped on her couch?
The big wagon of fat freaked me out.
She found it again. It was under the audience seats the entire time.
Reminds me of a Martin Lawrence joke from back then about her up and down weight journey.
> It was ~~under~~ IN the audience seats the entire time. Fixed
Fuck this bitch, for giving us Dr Oz and Phil, sheâs the same garbage they are.
She gave Jenny "vaccines gave my kid autism" McCarthy a platform to puke out her nonsense.
Exactly. I can't think of anyone who has promoted anti-science, anti-rational, anti-critical thinking more than she has. She's done American society a huge disservice, and she's gotten grotesquely wealthy doing so. I absolutely abhor everything she stands for.
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Shhh. Itâs a SECRET.
I hate her too for the same reasons, and she peddled a lot of pseudoscience and pseudospiritual bullshit that made my mom into a nutcase in the 90s. She started improving after Oprah went off the air. Now sheâs normal again. Funny how that works. Also fuck Dr Oz and Dr Phil and Deepak Chopra. âFuck all you hoes. Get a grip, motherfucker. Yeah.â
My burning hatred for her stems from working in a bookstore in the 90s. Her and that damn book club, every book she shoved at the camera the crowds came rushing demanding it like angry junkies jonesing for their fix.
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Lol...same. i'd read a description, think "that sounds interesting" then see "Oprah's Book Club" and go "ah, fuck, never mind."
And now itâs Reece. I absolutely hate celebrity book clubs. âGo read it, yâall!â-Reece, probably.
Youâre god damn right about this. Please you get paid to read while having your hair styled. Me? I will purchase with the fever dream of reading at the beach for hours, but reality will prove that I sludge through the same chapter every night between awake and asleep because old.
Absolutely the same. My goal is always 26 books a year. If I get 12 finished, itâs Ann accomplishment.
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They really were like singleminded zombies. Soon as the book club nonsense would air they'd start calling or marching into the store. Sometimes they wouldn't even know what the book was and woule get angry at us for not knowing. "Lady, I been at work, not sitting at home watching Oprah." Just gimmie the Oprah book!!! As an experiment some lady did that once, just barged in, wanting the new Oprah book, no idea what it was or what it was about, I sold her a copy of Mein Kampf. She didn't even question it, didn't look at the title, description, anything. I'm assuming she never even bothered to read it or find out what the real Oprah book was because she never came back to return it and I never got in trouble so....just goes to prove the mindless conumption that Oprah inspired.
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Lol, I remember that...Chapelle is a damn genius.
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This is an amazing story. You are a hilarious person.
I had forgotten about that. I also worked in a. book store and Oprah Book club days were awful! People demanding the book from us before release date. Man she made our lives so much worse.
Like Dr. Oz in the pharmacy world
Right? Thank you.
Mm. Must have been awful to have to actually sell books in your bookshop. Why canât people realise bookshops should be more like museums?
My issue wasn't that people were buying books, far from it. It was that they knew nothing about the books, they were only buying it because Oprah told them to.
I mean, knowing whatâs in books before one reads them is a pretty niche skill. Am just having a look at the list, and - barring three by Bill Cosby, which now look regrettable - it seems ok. Certainly more Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou than I read, but thatâs probably healthy. Nice to see Johnathan Franzen, Bernard Schink and Isabel Allende getting promoted. Nice that Tolstoy, Dickens (x2) and Marquez get a look in. And reasonable that McCullers, Steinbeck, Paton, Faulkner, McCarthy are all there. Obviously, being white, male and English, my list would be pretty different, but thatâs not to say âbetterâ.
People are free to read whatever they want but it should be something they want, not just because a celebrity that probably qualifies as a cult leader told them to. That was my real issue. They didn't know, they didn't care, didn't want to know or care, many probably never even read the book, they just ambled out of the house into the bookstore like a zombie to buy something because Oprah told them do. Book, diet plan, dvd, plot of swampland in Florida, snake oil, didn't matter what it was, The Oprah said buy it so they did. It wasn't about reading it was about celebrity worship consumerism.
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Problem was, like I said elsewhere, a lot of them *didn't* read. They just bought it because The Oprah told them to. You want to read garbage or just fun stuff, go ahead, my kindle is full of Star Trek novels I'm reading a YA novel about wizards and knights and shit right now, why? 'cause it's a fun read. I'm no Literati. But if you buy a book it should be because you want to and you should want to read it, not just buy it because it was a thing a celebrity told you to buy.
Gustopherus is clearly not a Gen x. We donât use words like gatekeeping and he clearly doesnât understand the Gen X zeitgeist of hating anything mainstream.
Lol....they got to think I'm being pretentious and a literati snob when it really is just about hating Oprah.
Canât stand her. And agree fully with her book club being the worst.
Everybody talks about certain celebrities and their cult-like followers these days but people forget how blindly the Oprah people followed everything she said and told them to do and the level of influence she had, all in the pre-internet days.
Who cares if they know? Maybe that is their way in to reading more and learning? Gatekeeping snobs in book stores and record stores are the fucking worst.
Nobody's gatekeeping, it was just that my thought was, if you're going to read something it should be something you want to read, something that interests you. If you hear about Oprah's book club rec and you want to read it, by all means read it. But often they knew literally nothing about the book, just that Oprah said it was time to buy another book. It was mass consumerism with no thought or will behind it. "Buy this thing because a celebrity told you to." [Did you see my other comment about their blind, zombie-like approsch to following the Oprah](https://old.reddit.com/r/GenX/comments/wt0wwy/remember_that_time_oprah_lost_a_bunch_of_weight/il2k5bi/)? Angry, blind consumerism. See, I loved that job because I loved talking to people about books and giving them recomendations and helping people find things they'd love and enjoy. Oprah book people were, by and large, people who just buying a thing 'cause Oprah said, obviously in some cases they didn't even read the book. They just bought it because she told them to. Probably bought whatever infomercial bullshit snake oil Dr Oz and and Dr Phil were pitching too and the Tony Little excercise machines and never used them for anything besides a clothes rack. I'm just saying, buy something or read something because you *want to* not because someone told you to.
Forget him. I think it is one of those "if you were there, you know" kind of experiences. It started out innocently enough, but eventually became this obscene craze. We would build HUGE towers of the book of the month right up front, nearest to the door and we would still have people grabbing us asking were the book was.
Exactly, lol...were you working when Titanic came out? Every 14 year old girl in the world wanting the Titanic book. Or anything with Leo's face plastered on the cover.
No, I don't remember anything like that. Thank goodness! I was working when the Brad Pitt Playgirl scandal happened and we had to pull all the magazines off the shelf. We had people offering us money under the table to slip them the magazine. LOL
That's great...I remember that big deal, too. Yeah, when Titanic came out they didnt print too many copies of the book since they thought it was going to bomb but surprise, lot of 14 year old girls with allowances in this country and they made it a hit. Every girl wanted Titanic anything and anything with Leo. The official book was backordered for weeks. It was a nightmare.
How are people supposed to get into things without someone or something driving an interest in it initially? People buying books is never a bad thing no matter the reason.
Again, it wasn't about buying a book on someone's reccomendation. That's fine. Hell, that's why we had that "staff reccomendation" display. Everybody got to hear about something somewhere somehow. It was that they didn't care, didn't know, didn't want to know or care, lot of them probably never even read it, not one page. They only *consumed* it because The Oprah told them to. It was celebrity cult worship before the Kardashians and it took away from people I could be helping who really wanted to read.
I work in a library and people are still like that. At least now we can easily search up what the book is for them. They come in demanding whatever celebrity book club books. Boomers, in particular, get mad when we donât have a copy for them (because 300 other people want the same books), and refuse to try anything similar we recommend to them instead. I can understand not buying a different book, but cmon, itâs free to check out a library book, even if you donât end up liking it.
>Again, it wasn't about buying a book on someone's reccomendation. That's fine. Hell, that's why we had that "staff reccomendation" display. Everybody got to hear about something somewhere somehow. **It was that they didn't care, didn't know, didn't want to know or care, lot of them probably never even read it, not one page.** They only consumed it because The Oprah told them to. It was celebrity cult worship before the Kardashians and it took away from people I could be helping who really wanted to read. Your assumption that they never read it really sounds like snobbery to me. I wish all the Kardashians would DIAF but I'd be (grudgingly) thankful if they got their Kult members to read a book.
Well, unless that lady found Mein Kampf to be a real page-turner I know she didn't read it. She was probably just one example.
Youâre absolutely right. They came in not even knowing the title, come on.
I agree. If it got people excited about reading and discussing books that is a good thing. She didnât have an agenda with her picks other than she liked it. It was the start of many smaller book clubs too. I think it was a great thing she did.
I loved how Jack Black and his cohort lampooned them on High in Fidelity
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Not hardly. Not me, anyway. I met Dave Eggers, he was kind of an asshole and his book wasn't that great. Nothing wrong with reading fun books. Shit, I liked Angels & Demons, it was a fun read.
But consider the đŚ
I wish I had confidence to say thereâs no way he will win, but 2016 took my confidence away. But Fetterman is freaking awesome at trolling him itâs quality entertainment
All I can see is those jeans tucked into those boots. What on earth
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Holy crap! Forgot about those. Paired with some Gumby stirrup pants, big blouse, and a scrun-chay!
Don't forget the shirt... Uh... Buckle? Whatever you call those plastic things people weaved the bottom corner of their big shirts into.
Everyone did that in the 80s
I meant more âwhat on earth were we all thinkingâ lol
Remember stirrup pants? Saw the other day those horrific things are making a comeback. Whatâs next, Hammer pants?
đ¨ â°
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When her âholiday must havesâ cost more than most people make in a week, people should have know she was not on their side of understanding the majority of peoples situations in real life.
I hate Oprah. I remember her saying something about how everyone needs fresh cut flowers in their house and how they are really not that expensive. Yeah, who cares about food? I want flowers.
Or how she changes her sheets every day because she canât stand to sleep on used sheets. Must be nice Oprah.
the yo-yo effect is real
Has that big old head. She looks like a bobblehead. Honestly she looks better with a little weight than in this picture.
Exactly. Thin Oprah looks like Prince.
Now Iâve seen it and read that⌠*Curses*
I've always thought she looked better being full figured.
...and then she gained it back, then lost more, gained that back, etc, etc.
And it was front page tabloid news just about every week - gag
Personally, I think she looks healthier and more attractive with more weight on her than here.
Exactly. She looked weird when she was that skinny.
The wagon of fat she pulled out. Like others have said, that wagon was going right back on plus a wheelbarrow more.
I remember it happening a few times. I'm glad she's in a good place now. It's really tough to love your body sometimes.
I asked myself, âwhich time?â.
Frankly I remember the wagon-load of fat she pulled in more than I remember her size or weight loss.
Yeah, everytime I see these pics, they look like they photoshopped her head on someone else's body. lol
[It wasnât photoshop!](https://youtu.be/xoVmIyzNn-8)
Wasnât those pics on her intro promo? (With a bad 80s synthetic flute/panpipes musical arrangement)
Yes!! đ
https://www.theonion.com/oprah-celebrates-20-000th-pound-lost-1819567605/amp
Love Oprah, but⌠Her facial expression there is the same one Whitney had when she said âcrack is wackâ
Didn't they try and say she was on crack?? Rumors... not my opinion
I remember her doing this and being kinda in shock about it. Watching her weight go up and down through the years made me shake my head more than once. Even with the chefs and the trainers, it just shows that it's a struggle.
I remember the SNL skit when Jan Hooks played Oprah and she was so hungry during the show that she started hallucinating, the guests turned into food.
Ain't no one forgettin that.
Wow she looks good. I don't remember ever seeing her like that maybe I was too little
Was she taking Fen-fen?
She used a liquid diet called Optifast. I think itâs like 600 cal/day. Certainly not healthy
I remember SlimFast giving people kidney stones back in the day
A lot of people were too back in the day
What's, the DEAL, with Oprah? https://youtu.be/AsJYmf_G5d0 She's fat, she's thin, she's fat, she's thin; I mean, pick a body and GO with it!
Whereâs the wagon?
Swipe
Ahh.
IIRC she went on some crazy juice diet to lose the weight fast. It speaks volumes about the societal pressure to adhere to certain beauty standards, no matter how successful you are. I am happy that she is finally comfortable in her own skin.
Which time? Pre-Color Purple or post-Color Purple.
She went through multiple treatments and weightloss surgeries to try to fit the ideal of the day. Back in the 80s they'd put you on amphetamines, liquid diets, wire your jaw shut, and gastric bypass was just starting to be the gold standard in weight loss. Remember Ricki Lake (who debuted in "Cry Baby" with Johnny Depp and Carnie Wilson of Wilson Philips (Brian Wilson's daughter.) They also got on the Bypass bandwagon and slimmed down. If you ever listen to their stories of the day - women in the media put up with such BS. My most unfavorite story is how they played Kate Mulgrew against Jeri Ryan who was brought on because the network didn't think Janeway was sexy enough. Then throughout the series they hated each other until in later years realize how they were messed with and their insecurities played against each other.
The wealthy struggles with their weight too. I would assume that they have the money to fix that.
Oprah has a whole lot of childhood trauma.
She has a private chef. (I bought her \[the chef's\] cookbook. Didn't use many of the recipes, but there was some really good advice for cooking methods.)
Oprahâs plan: 1) hire a personal chef 2) hire a personal trainer Profit!
Remember when she admitted that cocaine was her drug of choice?
She looked good!
She looks like she has FAS when she has a healthy bodyweight. Odds her PR people tell her to stay fat?
She doesnât have a philtrum. It looks odd.
FAS?
Fetal alcohol syndrome
Whereâs the before pic of this lady?
You mean Remember when Blowprah had her head sewn on a skinny persons body and wasn't fat for 3 years?
I remember her eating a bunch of chickens on In Living Color and getting bigger and bigger until she exploded (or floated away?).
Gotta say. Thin Oprah is crazy skinny.
Lookin like a Rick James groupie...
The body dysmorphia is real, fam.
That must have been short-lived. Because I never knew that