Tennis champion Serena Williams said Thursday that she is taking weight loss medication after struggling to see results from diet and exercise following the birth of her two daughters, Olympia and Adira.
“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 in an interview on "TODAY."
After Olympia was born in 2017, she said, she would run and walk for hours to try to lose weight.
“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, Williams said: Diabetes runs in her family, and African American adults have a higher risk of being diagnosed with it. She also hoped that losing weight would relieve pressure on her knees.
“I had a lot of issues with my knees, especially after I had my kid,” she said. “That, quite frankly, definitely had an effect on maybe some wins that I could have had in my career.”
On Thursday, she launched a campaign with Ro, a company that prescribes GLP-1 medications through telehealth, to normalize the use of weight loss drugs and combat the narrative that taking them is the “easy way out.” Her husband, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, is an investor in Ro and serves on its board.
Williams joins a growing list of celebrities who have publicly shared their use of weight loss medications, including Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg, singer Meghan Trainor and basketball legend Charles Barkley, who is a Ro ambassador. Comedian Amy Schumer has said she tried Ozempic, but couldn’t tolerate the side effects.
Williams said her weight loss journey became more challenging after Adira was born in 2023. By then, she had announced her exit from professional tennis after a 27-year career marked by 23 Grand Slams and four Olympic gold medals.
Nearly a year ago, she started on a class of weight loss medications called GLP-1 receptor agonists, which includes Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro. The drugs suppress appetite by mimicking a hormone in the gut. Ozempic and Mounjaro are also used to treat diabetes since they can lower blood sugar levels. And Wegovy is approved to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke in adults with heart disease who are overweight or obese.
Williams said she has been consistent about taking the medication since April and has lost 31 pounds to date.
According to a poll last year from KFF, a nonprofit health think tank, around 1 in 8 adults have reported taking a GLP-1 medication at some point.
The medications have garnered both praise and criticism in recent years as their popularity has grown. Critics argue that doctors are too quick to prescribe them for weight loss and that people may be drawn to their fast results over making long-term lifestyle changes. But proponents of the medications have pointed out that some people can’t achieve a healthy weight through diet and exercise alone, perhaps due to factors like genetics or stress.
Williams said she hasn’t had any side effects from the medication, though she recognizes that some people do. Common ones include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and constipation, which often improve with time as people adjust to the medication.
Like many drugs, the effects of GLP-1 medications stop when patients go off them, so some people regain weight. Doctors generally consider the drugs to be lifelong for people with diabetes or obesity.
Williams said she sees the medication as something that would fit into her life long term.
“I just feel normal again,” she said. “It feels really good.”
