Oprah Winfrey Shares Her New Approach to Working Out: ‘I Can’t Even Believe the Woman I Am Now’ (Exclusive)

NEED TO KNOW

• Oprah Winfrey used to view exercise as a punishment before completely transforming her lifestyle

• The media mogul now feels “sluggish” if she doesn’t work out or do some form of movement every day

• In a new PEOPLE cover story, Winfrey admits that she doesn’t recognize the woman she’s become—but she’s happier and healthier

Oprah Winfrey admits she doesn’t even recognize herself lately, but she’s loving the new woman she’s become.

Ahead of her 72nd birthday in January, the media mogul reflected on the transformation she’s made with her approach to health and her relationship with exercise.

Winfrey struggled with her weight for decades before understanding that she suffers from obesity and needed help. She ultimately turned to a GLP-1 weight-loss medication two and a half years ago but recognized that she also had to commit to the necessary lifestyle changes.

For Winfrey, working out used to be seen as a chore or a punishment. Now, it’s an essential part of her routine, spending an hour and a half or two hours every day focused on exercise.

“I do some form of movement at least six days a week. And on the seventh day, I rest,” she says in PEOPLE’s new cover story. “The routine is, I try to do something that involves physical, strenuous movement every other day. And on the days when I’m not doing that, I do resistance training.”

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One form of cardio Winfrey often turns to is hiking, sharing that she’s gotten to a point where she’ll sometimes wear a 10-lb. weighted vest during those long hikes.

“I can’t even believe the woman I am now. I’m actually putting on a damn weighted vest,” she quips.

The former talk show host — who shares her journey in a new book with obesity expert Dr. Ania M. Jastreboff, Enough: Your Health, Your Weight and What It’s Like to Be Free — even makes sure to prioritize working out when she’s traveling.

“For every city that I’ve been in, I’ve gotten a schedule of where we can hike, and then gotten pictures of what the gym is going to look like before I get here,” she says. “The fact that exercise is a part of the plan and not what restaurant we’re going to, I don’t recognize the woman who’s planning the trip based on where we can exercise.”

“I don’t recognize that woman. But she’s a happy woman now,” she adds.

Winfrey says that even those closest to her have been in awe of her transformation in recent years.

“Even [Gayle King], the other day when I was like, ‘Look, got to go work out. Sorry, got to hang up.’  She goes, ‘Who are you?’”

Winfrey’s hairstylist of more than a decade, Nicole Mangrum, tells PEOPLE that she’s also noticed the shift in her mindset.

“When I come in the mornings to start her hair, she’s already on the treadmill,” she says. “We were in Melbourne doing touch-ups backstage and she was tired because we had been doing a lot, and she was just like, ‘I’m going to just do some pushups to wake up.’ I was like, ‘What? You’re doing pushups?’ In the past, I never saw her doing pushups.”

“This is a life commitment to health… She’s looking better than she’s ever looked and more confident,” Mangrum continues. “To see her at 71 be so strong, I’m just really, really inspired by her…It’s magnetic.”

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Winfrey boasts that this is simply her new norm. Even on her rest days, she now has a natural desire to work out. “I don’t recognize the person that feels sluggish when she doesn’t workout,” she says.

“I feel more alive and more vibrant than I’ve ever been,” Winfrey adds.

Enough: Your Health, Your Weight, and What It’s Like To Be Free will hit shelves on Jan. 13 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.

Read the original article on People