Serena Williams has revealed that she has been taking weight-loss medication since early last year.
The retired tennis champ revealed to People on Thursday that she started taking weekly injections of Zepbound in early 2024 after she finished breastfeeding her second daughter Adira.
Williams explained that her struggle with weight began after she gave birth to her eldest daughter, Alexis Olympia, in 2017, and she experienced the same problem after welcoming Adira in August 2023.
"I never was able to get to the weight I needed to be, no matter what I did, no matter how much I trained," she shared. "It was crazy because I'd never been in a place like that in my life where I worked so hard, ate so healthy and could never get down to where I needed to be at."
She added in a separate interview with Vogue, "I would always get to a certain point on the scale, but I could never get below that. That's when I decided that it was time to try something different and got on the GLP-1 with Ro."
Williams has lost 31 pounds (14 kilograms) since she started taking Zepbound, which is typically prescribed for diabetes and now also used for weight management.
The sports star added that she now feels like her "old self", as well as "sexier" and "more confident", but she hasn't let her medication do all the work, and she's still hitting the gym and eating healthy.
Williams went public with her news because she wanted to be honest and transparent about her physical transformation.
"I feel like a lot of people have this stigma on GLP-1s and say things like, 'Oh, lazy people do it,' or 'If you're working hard enough, you don't need that,'" she said to Vogue. "I know for a fact from my experience that it's simply not true. Sometimes you need help."
The 43-year-old is now the celebrity patient ambassador for Ro, the U.S. telehealth company she turned to for help with weight loss.
As part of the partnership, Williams stars in a photo and video campaign in which she injects herself with the medication.
