Ania Jastreboff first met Oprah Winfrey in May 2024 while working together on a live virtual event called "Making the Shift," in which Jastreboff explained the science behind obesity and answered questions from the audience.
Months later, Winfrey invited Jastreboff to her home in California to talk more about the topic for "The Oprah Podcast." The plan was to record a 90-minute conversation for two podcast episodes about the evolving science of obesity medicine, including obesity medications.
Their conversation went long. In fact, they recorded for about four hours total. So, while sharing a meal afterward, Winfrey proposed an idea to Jastreboff.
"She turned to me, and said, 'You should write a book. I will help you,'" said Jastreboff, the Harvey and Kate Cushing Professor of Medicine and professor of pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine. "In that moment, I thought, 'This could help millions of people,' and so the answer was clear."
Last month, their book, "Enough: Your Health, Your Weight, and What It's Like to Be Free" (Simon & Schuster), hit the shelves of bookstores across the country and became a New York Times best seller. It examines the biology of obesity - and offers a new way forward for obesity treatment and overall health.
Jastreboff is also the director of the Yale Obesity Research Center (Y-Weight), co-director of the Yale Center for Weight Management, and medical director of the Yale Stress Center.
In an interview, she discusses her new book with Oprah and her research on obesity medications; the interview has been edited for length and clarity.
When it comes to weight, how do our bodies work with us but also against us?
Ania Jastreboff: Our bodies are super smart. They figured out ages ago that in order to survive, we needed to store fuel, and we store that fuel efficiently when we store it as fat. Fat is a very good thing because it enables us to survive as a species. So how does our body determine how much fat to store? This is controlled by our brains and has been referred to as the body fat set point. In the book, we call this the Enough Point. Your brain determines your Enough Point. But how does the brain know what that Enough Point should be? It gets inputs from our body via various signals. These signals include hormones, specifically nutrient-stimulated hormones, or NuSHs for short, such as GLP-1 and GIP. These NuSHs communicate: "I'm hungry," "I'm full", "I'm craving this," "I need to eat more." They communicate to the brain, and then our brain gets the information it needs to regulate and maintain an Enough Point.
