CHICAGO - When it comes to her weight, Oprah Winfrey has always been straightforward.
The talk show queen continues the honesty in the upcoming January issue of "O'' in which she confesses that she has "fallen off the wagon" when it comes to healthy living and now weighs 200 pounds.
"I'm mad at myself," Winfrey writes. "I'm embarrassed.”
In the piece, Winfrey, 54, details her recent struggles and says she's added 40 pounds to her frame since she weighed 160 pounds in 2006.
“I can't believe that after all these years, all the things I know how to do, I'm still talking about my weight. I look at my thinner self and think, 'How did I let this happen again?'"
Winfrey also writes that her goal is no longer to be thin; instead, she wants to be strong, healthy and fit.
In 1988 Winfrey famously wheeled a wagon loaded with fat onto the set of her talk show to represent a 67-pound weight loss while wearing a pair of size 10 Calvin Klein jeans. She had lost the pounds with a liquid protein diet.
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"I had literally starved myself for four months — not a morsel of food," Winfrey recalled in 2005. "Two hours after that show, I started eating to celebrate — of course, within two days those jeans no longer fit!"
Winfrey's weight has yo-yoed to the delight of the tabloid press ever since. She weighed as many as 237 pounds and by late 1990 acknowledged she had regained most of the 67 pounds, saying "I'll never diet again." But now, 20 years since the Calvin Klein jeans episode, Winfrey finds herself tipping the scales again.
Winfrey's weight and height put her body mass index at 31.8, which is obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC says people who are obese are "at higher risk for chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol."
It seems Winfrey is aware of the health risks.
She hopes to get changing with her upcoming "Best Life Week," starting Jan. 5. She has invited a litany of experts, including her personal trainer Bob Greene and show staple Dr. Mehmet Oz.
In her “O” article, Winfrey, an admitted food addict, sounds almost apologetic.
"I definitely wasn't setting an example," she writes. "I was talking the talk, but I wasn't walking the walk. And that was very disappointing to me."
