Enough is co-authored by talk show host and business mogul Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey was born and raised in Mississippi and later moved to Wisconsin. As a teen, she got her first job working for the local radio and soon became a news anchor on a local television station. Winfrey later established her own production company, Harpo Productions, which produced her syndicated television show, The Oprah Show, for its 25 seasons. Her show, which also spawned O Magazine and Oprah’s Book Club, centered around social issues, celebrity, self-improvement, and lifestyle, including health and weight loss. Her channel, The Oprah Winfrey Network, continues to broadcast shows for American audiences. 

Winfrey’s work has also generated controversy. For instance, she helped launch the television careers of Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz, both of whom have since come under scrutiny by other professionals for the advice they share on their shows. Winfrey has also attracted considerable attention and criticism over her links to the diet industry. For many years, Winfrey owned a 10% share in WeightWatchers and was a spokeswoman for the company despite various medical criticisms of their weight-loss program (Dall’Asen, Nicola. “Don’t Be Fooled by Oprah’s Newfound Approach to Diet Culture.” Allure, 16 May 2024). Prior to Enough, Winfrey co-authored several books on the topic of weight and diets with her trainer, Bob Greene, including Make the Connection, The Best Life Diet, and Get With the Program! In Enough, she supports Dr. Jastreboff’s claim that obesity is a chronic disease, and she shares her positive experience of using glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) medications to lose weight. It should be noted that Winfrey has no medical qualifications, so her endorsements are based solely on her anecdotal personal experience.

More recently, Winfrey’s embrace and open promotion of GLP-1 medications have also received mixed reactions in light of her longstanding ties to the diet industry. Some commentators argue that Winfrey is promoting the same rigid beauty standards and fatphobic biases of her earlier years under a new guise. As one critic states, “Winfrey’s discussions about […] weight loss drugs still come with the underlying message that losing weight would be beneficial for anyone who classifies as ‘overweight’ or ‘obese.’ They still imply that losing weight is equivalent to becoming healthier. They still imply that weight loss is a key to happiness” (Dall’Asen). Thus, in continuing to suggest that being thinner is an ideal to which everyone should aspire, the rhetoric around weight-loss drugs can reinforce perceptions that larger bodies are inherently problematic and are an issue to be “solved.” Such rhetoric is contested by experts who argue that people can be healthy at high weights (Matheson, Eric M., et al. “Healthy Lifestyle Habits and Mortality in Overweight and Obese Individuals.” Journal of American Board of Family Medicine, vol. 25, no. 1, 2012, pp. 9-15).