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How plus size champions have used Ozempic to slim down

It feels like every time there is a big, glitzy event at the moment there is at least one celebrity who shocks the world with their slimmed-down physique while attending.

As Hollywood’s increasingly slender aesthetic has sparked rumours that many of our favourite celebrities on the red carpet are using the weight-loss jab, it has fueled concerns that Ozempic is driving a return to the size zero trend. 

And many of those who have had these dramatic body transformations had actually previously gained some of their notoriety due to the body positivity movement, as well as cashing in on it. 

Serena Williams 

Tennis player Serena has often been widely recognized as a pioneer of the body positivity movement and has been a figurehead for empowering women. 

She has spoken about her struggles growing up and not seeing people with her ‘thick’ body type celebrated in media, which motivated her to be a role model for others. 

She previously said in an interview: ‘I’m not asking you to like my body. I’m just asking you to let me be me. Because I’m going to influence a girl who does look like me, and I want her to feel good about herself’.

However this year she shocked the world when she revealed that she was taking a weight loss jab.

She recently displayed the results of her 31lbs weight loss while posing for the cover of PORTER magazine.

This year Serena Williams shocked the world when she revealed that she was taking a weight loss jab (seen left last month and right in 2022)

She has spoken about her struggles growing up and not seeing people with her ‘thick’ body type celebrated in media, which motivated her to be a role model for others

Serena has had a whirlwind 2025, and in August she revealed that she had lost over 30lbs with the aid of a weight-loss medication.

The tennis star has always been very candid about her feelings towards her body and last year posted on Instagram with the caption: ‘Loving yourself is essential.’

She continued: ‘I find that I have to remind myself of that self-love through all different stages in my life.’

She then talked her figure, which looked in great shape. ‘Right now I love that my body is not picture perfect,’ she said.

The star had given birth to her second daughter Adira a year earlier and added: ‘I love that I smell like milk – that milk sustains @adiraohanian I love getting to know a new version of my body.

‘It is a change, but it’s a change that has been well worth it. So start this week, knowing that you are loved, and that starts with you. OK, now I’m about to go to the gym. Serena.’

After trying to lose her baby weight naturally, Serena then turned to healthcare company Ro, who guided her in choosing a GLP-1 treatment – which includes the likes of Ozempic and Mounjaro – but was hesitant before going ahead.

She told People Magazine at the time: ‘I did a lot of research on it. I was like, ‘is this a shortcut? What are the benefits? What are not the benefits?’ I really wanted to dive into it before I just did it.’

After stopping breastfeeding when Adira was six months old, Serena was able to start the weekly injections and now she feels better than ever.

Rebel Wilson

Rebel was also a firm member of the body positivity movement.

Early in her career, she embraced her unique look and became a role model for larger women in Hollywood with her roles in films like Bridesmaids and Pitch Perfect. 

She shocked the world when she dropped more than 70lbs back in 2021 after exercise and healthy eating. 

She then used Ozempic to help manage her weight, particularly to control cravings and when she wasn’t able to work out as frequently. 

She has stated that she no longer takes it regularly but has used it periodically, including for a period before her wedding and as a method of ‘micro dosing’ to maintain her weight and help with sweet cravings 

In conversation with The Sunday Times last year, the movie star confessed about weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro: ‘Someone like me could have a bottomless appetite for sweets, so I think those drugs can be good.’

Rebel Wilson shocked the world when she dropped more than 70lbs back in 2021 after exercise and healthy eating (pictured right in June 2025 and left in 2015)

Oprah Winfrey  

Oprah looked unrecognisable in a social media post back in September as it marked another milestone in the broadcaster’s years-long weight loss journey. 

The 71-year-old television personality took to Instagram to share a self-portrait for her book club and, in doing so, showed off her slimmed down physique.

Oprah, who weighed 237 pounds at her heaviest, has spoken openly about her food ‘addiction’, feelings of shame associated with body image, and taking weight loss medication in a bid to be healthier

In her latest picture, Oprah looked worlds away from her past self after losing approximately 50 pounds with the help of these aids that she first admitted using in 2023. 

Oprah has been an outspoken opponent of the decades of public shaming and ‘fatphobic’ messaging she and other women have endured.

And yet her public focus on weight loss through programs like WeightWatchers and weight-loss medications like GLP-1 drugs seem to put her at odds with body positivity movement.

After publicly revealing that she uses GLP-1s to manage her weight, Oprah has continued to endorse the medication while also promoting a healthier lifestyle. 

Oprah looked unrecognisable in a social media post back in September as it marked another milestone in the broadcaster’s years-long weight loss journey 

Despite her initial denial about using weight-loss drugs, Oprah declared she was ‘done with the shaming’ in December 2023 when she revealed that she used a GLP-1 to drop 40lbs (seen in January 2024)

In February 2024, Oprah announced she was stepping down from the WW’s board  as stock for the lifestyle firm plunged by 20 per cent in the wake of her announcement. 

The following month, Oprah revealed she quit Weight Watchers to avoid a conflict of interest issue while preparing to release a special about the rise of prescription weight loss drugs at the time.

During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, she explained: ‘I decided that because this special was really important to me and I wanted to be able to talk about whatever I wanted to talk about, and Weight Watchers is now in the business of being a weight health company that also administers drug medications for weight. 

‘I did not want to have the appearance of any conflict of interest,’

In January 2025, Oprah revealed she had reached her goal weight of 160 pounds (72 kilos) and shared her experience of taking a GLP-1 and what it has taught her about ‘thin people’. 

Lizzo

Singer Lizzo is another star who gained some of her prominence on the waves of the body positivity movement – but has now dramatically slimmed down. 

She has also previously admitted to using weight loss jabs.  

Last week she described the frustration she felt being ‘overshadowed’ by her ‘fatness’ in a candid new post reflecting on her transformation journey. 

The Good As Hell songstress, 37, has dramatically slimmed down in recent years, and recently announced she had achieved her goal weight.

Yet after years of embracing her role as the face of the body positivity movement, Lizzo struggled to break free of being seen as more than just her weight. 

In her very first Substack post, entitled ‘Why is everybody losing weight and what do we do? Sincerely, a person who’s lost weight’, Lizzo admitted she became irritated being synonymous with the size of her body. 

‘I was sick and tired of my identity being overshadowed by my fatness. People could not see my talent as a musician because they were too busy accusing me of making ‘being fat’ my whole personality,’ she said. 

Yet it was a role Lizzo had long embraced, as she earlier described in her essay defiantly hitting back at ‘obnoxious memes’.

‘The way I’ve been treated as a public figure since I was introduced to the world as a confident, body positive figure has been borderline emotional abuse. And it’s simply because of my weight. 

‘Nevertheless, I made it work for me. I trolled the hell out of those obnoxious memes. I was self-aware that I was the butt of every fat joke on the Internet. 

‘And yet I continued to be who I am, because it’s the only thing I know how to be. And even in being myself, no one really believed it. I discovered that people thought that I was being ‘performative’. Performing being body positive when I was the first body positive musician to become mainstream doesn’t even make sense.’ 

At first, Lizzo did not intend to lose weight.

Her mental health deteriorated as she found herself hit with lawsuits by former team members. Three back-up dancers accused her of sexual harassment, fat shaming and a hostile work environment while a former stylist alleged a ‘sexualized, racially charged, and illegal work environment’ while working for Lizzo’s Big Grrrl Big Tour company. Lizzo has denied all the claims. 

‘I started losing weight in the fall of 2023,’ she wrote. ‘I was severely depressed. I had been the subject of vicious scandal, and it felt like the whole world turned its back on me. I became deeply suicidal. I cut off all my loved ones.’

‘So, in my self-loathing and self-neglect I began to rot,’ she later said. ‘As someone who has talked and sang about self-love their entire career, it was hard to watch that happen to myself. And so I decided to turn my extreme inaction to action.’ 

Her health kick began with Pilates, an exercise she turned to to ‘process my pain through my body.’ 

Lizzo has also previously credited her dramatic slim down to hard work and discipline, but she has also admitted to trying Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs to help her on her journey.

‘I’ve tried everything,’ she admitted on the Just Trish podcast in June.

‘It’s just the science, for me, calories in vs. calories out. Ozempic works because you eat less food.’

‘It makes you feel full. So, if you can just do that on your own and get mind-over-matter, it’s the same,’ she explained.

Lizzo abandoned her junk food vegan lifestyle, during which she said she was eating between 3,000 and 5,000 calories a day for a more regimented routine.

‘So for me, when I actually started eating whole foods and eating like beef and chicken and fish, I was actually full and not expanding my stomach by putting a lot of like fake things in there that wasn’t actually filling me up.’

uring an appearance on The Jason Lee Show, the singer refused to reveal the exact number of pounds she lost, but did claim that she was bullied for her curves due to her confidence as a plus-sized woman.

‘I think it was crazy to people because I was fat,’ she stated.

‘The shocking factor was that people couldn’t believe that someone that looked like me was confident,’ she said.

Host Jason Lee responded, ‘you were cute when you were bigger’, before Lizzo fired back, ‘I was fine as f**k!’

When pressed to reveal exactly how much weight loss she’s lost on her journey, the singer cagily responded, ‘If I say the number, I don’t think people could do the math.’

Singer Lizzo is another star who gained some of her prominence on the waves of the body positivity movement – but has now dramatically slimmed down (seen last month) 

Meghan Trainor 

Last week Meghan admitted her ‘heart was broken’ by vicious online trolls after her dramatic weight loss prompted a barrage of negative comments.

The singer and actress has lost more than 60Ibs through a combination of regular exercise, dietary tweaks and low doses of the injectable weight loss drug Mounjaro. 

But her radical body transformation has sparked inevitable backlash from a faction of online followers, with many opposed to the use of quick-fix treatments as a shortcut to extreme variations in body weight. 

Appearing on The Jennifer Hudson Show, All About That Bass singer Trainor, 31, admitted she was deeply affected by some of the barbed comments she received on social media. 

‘It felt like a flame lit off, and I was just getting attacked by so many mean comments,’ she said. 

‘Usually, I don’t get a lot of mean comments, or I don’t look at them and they don’t faze me. But these ones were so aggressive. They’re like, ‘You were the bass girl, why’re you thin now?”

Last week Meghan admitted her ‘heart was broken’ by vicious online trolls after her dramatic weight loss prompted a barrage of negative comments (seen right in 2019)

Trainor set off a flurry of speculation about her weight loss earlier this year as the Ozempic craze swept across Hollywood. In April, she put the rumours to rest by revealing her use of Mounjaro. 

She later admitted to contracting gestational diabetes while pregnant with son Barry, her second child with husband Daryl Sabara, prompting an ‘obsession’ with her health.

She went public with her Mounjaro use on April Fool’s Day, addressing the rumors that had swirled online after a recent red carpet appearance of hers.

‘No, I don’t look like I did 10 years ago. I’ve been on a journey to be the healthiest, strongest version of myself for my kids and for me,’ she said.

‘I’ve worked with a dietician, made huge lifestyle changes, started exercising with a trainer, and yes, I used science and support (shoutout to Mounjaro!) to help me after my 2nd pregnancy. And I’m so glad I did because I feel great. 

‘Here’s to celebrating talent, growth, and the power of putting yourself first. Let’s keep shifting the convo to what REALLY matters.’ 

STORY BY DAILY MAIL