Phyllis, I have watched Oprah from the beginning of her in Chicago. Having been involved in five shows, the last one was this last holiday show she had the day before Thanksgiving. In my perception, she was very unhappy at taping and the three friends I took with me saw the same thing. In the past she has been able to share wonderful ideas to get to the true spirit of life. When she featured the spirit segments I was one of those segments - the show was about 100 years in photography. Now she seems to have lost the sharing of ideas and does more lecturing on what she knows. I loved the interaction of minds. Recently she did an add that talks about the brown elephant in the room. She said how can she tell people how to live if she cannot do it herself. Okay, that was a light bulb moment. No one can give all of us the answers but the pressure on her (self induced?) to help many people who put her on a pedestal is strong. I disagree with some of the things said here in that it is a subject that should be talked about. Not just her weight but our nation of growing citizens. Our children will have more health issues than kids did in the past. So using Oprah as a springboard to help people understand why we are gaining weight is important. I appreciate that she is stepping up and talking about it even though it is again. It is a struggle for many and I hope she learns ways to help. It might be difficult for me to explain to you since you do not watch her show, but it reminds me of the old adage “if mama ain’ t happy ain’t nobody happy”. She was unhappy at the “Favorite Things” taping and it showed. I just hope she gets happy again and brings back some inspirational shows.

Gianna , I’ve often thought the same thing and that was maybe she has never forgotten where she came from and the thing’s she went through as a child. Many people have eating disorders as a result of childhood trauma and it is their way of taking complete control over some vein of themselves as they have had no other control over the remaining aspects of their life’s. Another concept would be that she is wildly successful and the underlying issues that cause her to battle her weight, cause her at the same time misery, because she may feel that as she has arrived and achieved so much and come so far, she perhaps feels that she should have moved forward and conquered this as well. I really think that there is yet something, that she has not let go of and when she finds it she will balance out not only her emotions in relation to that issue, she will then find a happy medium with her weight as well.