Serena Williams opens up about losing 31 lbs while using weight loss medication.
During a recent interview with PEOPLE, Williams expresses, “I feel great,” she tells PEOPLE. “I feel really good and healthy. I feel light physically and light mentally.”
Williams says she began to struggle with her weight after she gave birth to her daughter, Alexis Olympia, in 2017.
“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 star athlete 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.”
After she gave birth her second daughter, Adira River, in August 2023 she battled with similar weight related issues. She was able to lose a lot of weight in two weeks, but then remained stagnant afterwards. “I never lost another pound,” she explained.
“I just thought, gosh, I don’t know if I would ever be able to get back to where I needed to get to,” she recalled recalls.
While trying to lose and maintain weight, Williams says she tried a GLP-1 medication.
“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.