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.
After deciding it was the right choice for her, she consulted with a doctor through Ro (which recently made PEOPLE’s 100 Companies That Care list) and was able to start the weekly injections about six months after Adira was born, when she stopped breastfeeding in early 2024.
“They were super supportive and it was easy to get the medication,” says Williams, who is now a celebrity patient ambassador for Ro. “I lost over 31 pounds using my GLP-1 and I was really excited about that weight loss.”
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.”
As someone who’s been transparent throughout her entire athletic career, Williams tells PEOPLE that it was important for her to share her journey publicly. Constantly posting her workout videos on social media and knowing how to stay in shape, she says it’s okay to recognize that you still need help and it’s not a shortcut.
“GLP-1 helped me enhance everything that I was already doing — eating healthy and working out, whether it was as a professional athlete at the top level of tennis or just going to the gym every day,” she stresses. “So I think that it’s important for everyone to hear my story. And I feel like there’s a lot of people that can relate.”
Despite her recent weight loss, Williams boasts that the one thing that’s remained the same is her confidence and self-love.
“Weight loss should never really change your self image,” she says. “Women often experience judgment about their bodies at any size, and I’m no stranger to that. So I feel like you should love yourself at any size and any look.”
“I’ve never felt that pressure to maintain a certain appearance,” she admits. “I always felt comfortable at any size, whether I was a lot heavier or not. I do feel like my body didn’t like me at that weight. I had pain in my joints and pain in different areas just because of the extra weight that I’m not used to carrying since I had children.”
“But the size I was before, there was nothing wrong with it. It’s just not what I wanted to have,” she continues. “I just knew that I wanted to be where I personally felt comfortable.”
That’s why Williams has made it a point to have conversations about body image and body positivity with her young daughters, who she shares with husband Alexis Ohanian.
“With me going through what I’ve went through growing up in public and just having millions of people commenting on my body, it’s really important to teach them to be confident at any size, just like I try to be,” she tells PEOPLE. “I was looking back at pictures, whether I was smaller or thicker, and at that moment I felt so confident. And I looked great, too. So I just think it’s so important to love who you are. You’ll never get that moment back. You don’t want to judge yourself when you’re just always showing up as your best.”
Now, with the success of her GLP-1 medication, Williams says she’ll keep taking the weekly injections as she needs it. She’s also training for a half marathon and vowing to continue posting her selfies at the gym, which she calls her “favorite place to be.”
