For years, Oprah says she struggled with her weight. She's gained weight, gone on diets, lost weight, gained it back, worked out, given into food temptations and watched her shape change in various ways over the course of her life. As a result, Oprah experienced a rollercoaster ride of highs and lows in terms of her body image.
During her weight loss ups and downs, Oprah says that her size was closely tied to her ego. "I actually thought at the time that being thin made me better," Oprah confesses.
She reveals how gaining even five pounds changed her view of herself as a person, telling a story that followed one of her weight loss successes in the late 1980s. "I [had] gained five pounds and I was invited to a party... by Don Johnson," Oprah recalls. "I did not go to that party because I thought the five pounds made me too fat -- not good enough -- to be at Don Johnson's party."
Oprah realizes now that this reasoning sounds warped, but that's what the ego does, she says. "[Ego] is sick. It's wily, it's cunning, it's deceptive. It's an imposter imposing on the real you," Oprah states. "You're 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."
To help discover who you are, Oprah urges people to try a simple mental exercise in the video -- it's an exercise she learned from Eckhart Tolle and she says it taught her something very important. "When I got that, I understood the difference between my true self and my ego self," Oprah says.
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