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Greatest-athlete-of-all-time Serena Williams and I have just started talking over Zoom when everything comes to an abrupt halt. “Are you in a car right now and don’t have a seatbelt on?” Williams asks with a tone only a mother would use. Okay, yes, I don’t have a seatbelt on while my Uber speeds up the West Side Highway. My cheeks flush as I click in, ashamed. “I couldn’t help myself,” the mother of two says. Now that I’m strapped in, she’s ready to talk.
The recent public discourse around Williams’s body—online commenters noticing a change in her physique and demanding to know how, exactly, it came about—isn’t anything new. “I’ve heard negative comments, along with a tremendous amount of positive comments, about my body my entire life,” says the 23-time Grand Slam winner, who announced her retirement on the cover of Vogue in September 2022. “For lack of a better way to say it, I don’t really care what people are saying about my body anymore. But what is important to me is transparency.”
That calling has led her to this very moment: Williams is ready to share that she’s on the GLP-1 drug Zepbound, a type of medication typically prescribed for diabetes and now also used for weight management. She accessed the drug through Ro and is now partnering with the telehealth company to talk about her experience. Williams husband, Alexis Ohanian, is an investor in the company and serves on its board. The athlete isn’t the only person who has revealed they are on one of the many versions of semaglutide—Oprah, Kelly Clarkson, Charles Barkley, and more have also gone on the record about using the drug.
“There’s a scene in my HBO documentary where you see my coach telling me, ‘You have to lose weight,’” she shares. “But it was so hard after I had [my first daughter] Olympia. I was literally on the court every day, doing nothing else. I had been the ultimate super-athlete, always in competition and being super-healthy my entire life, but I just could never get back to where I needed to be, no matter what I did.”
After the birth of her second daughter in 2023, the feeling compounded—and that’s when she learned about GLP-1 medications. “My whole life is being in the gym, working out, running, training, HIIT training, dancing, every single thing you can think of. 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 continues our conversation with a disclaimer: “I’m not saying any of this lightly, which is why it’s so important to have an honest conversation about this topic. I’m the mom of two girls, and I wanted to be very honest about what I’m doing so they can always be the same with me and we can have an open relationship.”
But Williams feels better, both in and out of the gym. More “like my old self,” she says. “I was putting in the work. I actually think it’s a problem a lot of other women can relate to, that you are in the gym and eating healthy, but just can’t get to the level you want or need to. I feel lighter mentally, I feel sexier, I feel more confident.”
That doesn’t mean she’s leaning on the GLP-1 to do all of the work, though. Anybody on Instagram will know that she’s still working hard in the gym (unfortunately, there isn’t a medication out there that will give you washboard abs like she has), as well as continuing to eat healthy.
“I’m a carb girl,” she says with a laugh. “Meat isn’t really for me, I’ve been vegan before, I’ve been vegetarian, and now I’m somewhere in the middle.” So how exactly is she hitting her protein goals for the day? Beans. “A lot of black beans and pinto beans.”
Overall, Williams says this moment of honesty is about removing shame around the use of GLP-1s for other mothers out there. “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 shares. “I know for a fact from my experience that it’s simply not true. Sometimes you need help. Your story is your story, and it’s okay to make that choice to do it if you want to. I did, and I’m really happy with it.”
