Oprah examined the power of ego and how it hurt her struggle with weight on the debut of her new show, "Lifeclass."
Monday night marked the Oprah Winfrey Network's (OWN) re-re-launch (it has been struggling to maintain a devoted audience). Following a rather energetic premiere of Rosie O'Donnell's new show "The Rosie Show," "Lifeclass" possessed a far more serious energy. Oprah simply sat in a chair and spoke straight into the camera for one hour, looking back at clips from "The Oprah Winfrey Show," and checking in with highlighted guests in taped, present day interviews.
She recalled her famous "fat wagon" episode, where she wheeled over 60 pounds of fat onto her daytime talk show stage, as the textbook display of operating from one's "ego self." After losing a ton of weight, Oprah was finally able to fit into her size 10 Calvin Klein jeans. But she admitted during "Lifeclass" that she had basically starved herself on a liquid diet for four months and avoided situations with food, like giving her friends her summer vacation to France, so she would not be tempted to indulge in food.
"I actually thought at the time that being thin made me better," she said. She was so obsessed with weight that she turned down an invitation to a party because she had gained five pounds. "Sounds kind of sick now," she said.
Oprah also revealed that she was so hell-bent on weight loss because of her insecurities about her public appearances with partner Stedman Graham. "I knew that when people would see us together that the first thing they were thinking was...'what's he doing with that fat girl?'" she said.
Ultimately, Oprah told the audience, "you are not the shape of your body, you're not your status, you're not your position in life, you're not the car you drive no matter how fancy it is, you're not your house or your square footage."
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