'The View' hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Sunny Hostin say they used Mounjaro to lose weight

On the March 19, 2024, episode of ABC's "The View," co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Sunny Hostin each said they had used Mounjaro, a tirzepatide injection, to lose weight ^[1][4]. The Hot Topics discussion came the morning after Oprah Winfrey's ABC special about weight-loss medicines aired ^[4].

Goldberg said she weighed almost 300 pounds while filming the 2022 movie "Till" ^[4]. She said the gain followed treatment with steroids in 2021 for severe back pain ^[1][4]. Mounjaro was one of the things that helped her lose the weight, she said ^[1][4]. She also said she had not noticed the change at the time, recalling that she felt like herself and was struck when she saw how much weight she had gained ^[4].

Hostin put her own gain at about 40 pounds during the COVID-19 pandemic ^[1][4]. She said she cooked and ate a great deal, and that she dreaded the prospect of appearing on air, so she took Mounjaro ^[1][4]. Deadlinereported that she lost the 40 pounds after being prescribed the drug ^[4].

Hostin also described how her weight loss was received. She said she got hostile emails calling her too skinny and asking why she had done it, including messages accusing her of taking medicine away from people with diabetes ^[1][4]. She said she felt a kind of shame she had not known before gaining weight, and praised Winfrey's statement that obesity is a disease ^[1][4].

That drew a challenge from co-host Joy Behar, who asked how obesity could be a disease if Hostin had simply been eating a lot ^[4]. Hostin answered that she did not have the disease and was not clinically obese; Goldberg said she was ^[4].

Winfrey's program, "An Oprah Special: Shame, Blame and the Weight Loss Revolution," premiered on ABC on March 18 and streamed on Hulu the next day ^[4]. In February, Winfrey said she would leave the WeightWatchers board after nine years and donate her stock, a step she described as avoiding a conflict of interest over her own use of weight-loss drugs ^[4].

Neither Goldberg nor Hostin said what dose they took, how long they took it, who prescribed it or whether they still use it ^[1][4]. No comment from the maker of Mounjaro has been reported, and whether either co-host has type 2 diabetes was not addressed in the segment ^[1][4].

Why it matters for patients

Mounjaro is tirzepatide. Ozempic and Wegovy are semaglutide. They are different molecules, though coverage of the segment described Mounjaro as similar to Ozempic, an injectable semaglutide ^[1]. A patient who hears one product named may be hearing about a different drug than the one they were prescribed or are weighing.

The email complaint Hostin quoted, that she was taking medicine away from people with diabetes, echoes a supply-and-priority argument that predates the segment ^[1]. Reader comments under Deadline's coverage included people saying they had waited a month or more to fill their own prescriptions ^[4]. Those are individual accounts, not verified supply data, and the segment itself gave no figures on shortages, insurance coverage or which patients qualify for these medicines ^[1][4].

The exchange over whether obesity is a disease is also unresolved among the people having it on air: one host said she was not clinically obese, another said she was ^[4]. How obesity is defined for insurance and treatment purposes is not something the segment addressed, and those rules have not been reported here ^[1][4].

What happens next

No further on-air statements from Goldberg or Hostin about their treatment have been reported since the March 19 episode, and no date has been given for either to discuss it again ^[1][4]. Winfrey's special began streaming on Hulu on March 19 ^[4].