Side-By-Side Pics Of Oprah Prove She's Fallen Victim To 'Ozempic Face'

Oprah Winfrey's rollercoaster health journey has unfolded over literal decades, but the most noticeable change occurred when the legendary talk show host jumped on the GLP-1 bandwagon, quickly joining the roster of celebrities who look nearly unrecognizable after taking Ozempic. The FDA-approved drug mainly helps diabetes patients, but it has also proven to be quite effective for weight loss. Too effective, perhaps, as evidenced by the jarring transformations that many A-listers have undergone, giving rise to the "Ozempic face" phenomenon — referring to the gaunt, sunken, wrinkly, and hollow facial features that appear because your natural skin doesn't get enough time to retract properly and catch up with the speed at which you're shedding the pounds.

Take Oprah Winfrey as Exhibit A. The media mogul lost over 50 pounds by using GLP-1 medications, shrinking from 237 pounds to 160 and leaving her 71-year-old body to deal with the consequences. Winfrey practically worships these weight loss drugs, proudly informing People in a 2023 interview that having these tools on hand "feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift, and not something to hide behind and once again be ridiculed for. I'm absolutely done with the shaming from other people and particularly myself." The TV icon predominantly utilizes Ozempic to "quiet the food noise," and side-by-side photos reveal just how much that quietude has affected her look.

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Winfrey's face looks noticeably slimmer compared to just a few years prior, in 2019. Her jawline is more defined and her cheeks have that gaunt, stretched-out look. In 2026, when the photo on the right was taken, the beloved star still looks absolutely phenomenal, but the medications, not to mention any number of other possible cosmetic procedures, have clearly changed her facial structure.

If you've ever considered using GLP-1 medications to lose weight, here's the asterisk that those glossy ads conveniently forget: Rapidly losing weight means your face sheds fat faster than your skin can keep up with, which is how you get so many high-profile figures with sagging features. Sure, a lot of celebs speak out about using these weight-loss drugs and their benefits, but the trade-off might not be worth it in the long run. In fact, according to medical research published in several peer-reviewed journals, these drugs might mess with adipose-derived stem cells and protective cytokines which, in layman's terms, translates to aging your skin beyond simple volume loss. 

As such, you're not buying time with Ozempic; you're just stealing from your future reserves and using it now. Oprah Winfrey is obviously not an extreme case (yet), at least as far as we can tell when comparing before-and-after photos of the iconic talk show host. But another thing that sets her apart is her characteristic vulnerability. For Winfrey, Ozempic isn't just a magical weight loss drug that gives her a shortcut to looking great. As she explained to Dr. Ania Jastreboff on her podcast (per HOLA! magazine), it's not actually all about willpower.

"One of the things that I realized the very first time I took a GLP-1 was that all these years I thought that thin people had more willpower. They ate better foods. They were able to stick to it longer. [...] They're eating when they're hungry and they're stopping when they're full [...] They're not even thinking about it," Winfrey said. The beloved star wanted to quiet the food noise and she did. Whether her face will forgive her in the future is anyone's guess.