Serena Williams is opening up about the key to her success in her weight-loss journey
The tennis champion, 43, revealed exclusively to PEOPLE that she has been using a GLP-1 medication to help with weight loss and has since lost over 31 lbs.
“I feel great,” she tells PEOPLE. “I feel really good and healthy. I feel light physically and light mentally.”
Williams says her struggle with weight began after she gave birth to her first daughter, Alexis Olympia, in 2017, and her body started to change postpartum.
“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 explains. “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.”
“I had never taken shortcuts in my career and always worked really hard. I know what it takes to be the best,” the 23-time Grand Slam champion says. “So it was very frustrating to do all the same things and never be able to change that number on the scale or the way my body looked.”
Williams dealt with similar struggles after her second daughter, Adira River, was born in August 2023. She was able to lose a lot of weight in two weeks, but then remained stagnant afterwards. “I never lost another pound,” she quips.
“I just thought, gosh, I don’t know if I would ever be able to get back to where I needed to get to,” the tennis star recalls.
Knowing that she was great at maintaining a healthy lifestyle as a former professional athlete, Williams decided that it was time to try something different. She decided to turn to Ro, a direct-to-patient healthcare company, for additional support with a GLP-1 treatment. GLP-1 is short for glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists, which work in the brain to impact satiety. Popular brands include Ozempic and Mounjaro.
Williams recognized that there’s a lot of controversy surrounding the use of GLP-1 medications and admitted that she was very nervous about deciding to use one herself.
“I did a lot of research on it. I was like, ‘is this a shortcut? What are the benefits? What are not the benefits?’ I really wanted to dive into it before I just did it,” she says.
The Olympic gold medalist says that since her weight loss she feels better than ever.
“I just can do more. I’m more active. My joints don’t hurt as much. I just feel like something as simple as just getting down is a lot easier for me. And I do it a lot faster,” she explains. “I feel like I have a lot of energy and it’s great. I just feel pretty good about it.”
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