Serena Williams Opens Up About How She Lost 31 Pounds: “It Actually Worked”

Serena Williams is opening up about her health journey and hopes to do her part in alleviating the stigma around using weight loss medications. The GOAT tennis player spoke about her 31-pound transformation and detailed how embracing GLP-1’s is exactly the solution she needed, especially after having children and exhausting her other options.

“I felt it was important for me to come out and say it,” she began during her TODAY Show interview, emphasizing the shame that may come from people who opt for GLP-1’s. “Is it a lazy way? Is it a shortcut?” The Grand Slam champ shared that after having her two daughters, she wasn’t able to “be at a healthy” weight due to her joints, blood sugar levels, age, and other factors no matter what she did. She felt her body was missing something and learned many other women related.

“As an athlete and as someone that has done everything, I just couldn’t get my weight to where I needed to be at a healthy place, and believe me I don’t take shortcuts. I do everything but shortcuts,” Williams said.

Despite playing professional tennis and “literally training five hours a day,” she considered GLP-1’s but was extremely skeptical, initially even saying “don’t sign me up.”

“I literally was playing a professional sport, and I could never go back to where I needed to be for my health, for my healthy weight, no matter what I did,” she said. “I would always lose a lot of weight, and then I would stay. No matter what I did, I couldn’t go lower than that one number.”

There were other health considerations too besides just weight loss; diabetes runs in her family and she also was struggling with pressure on her knees post-partum.

Finally, she changed her mindset and “looked at it as a sport.” She started viewing weight loss as her “opponent.” “I can’t beat this opponent no matter what I do, I have to try something different… I tried it, and it actually worked,” she said.

Williams is the latest celebrity to open up about their use of weight loss medications. Fat Joe, Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg, Charles Barkley, and plenty more have publicly co-signed GLP-1’s and how they have changed their lives, with Fat Joe even gushing that it’s the “greatest invention ever.”

Earlier this week, the mother of two launched a campaign with Ro, a company that prescribes GLP-1 medications through telehealth.