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Oprah: Depression Made Me Eat 30 Pounds of Mac 'n' Cheese

Related: Oprah Winfrey

USMagazine, Thursday, January 13, 2011, 4:57am (PST)

Oprah Winfrey has never hidden the fact that she's an emotional eater.

In an outtake from her interview airing on next Monday's debut episode of "Piers Morgan Tonight," the talk show tycoon recalls a time when her dangerous eating habit spiraled out of control.

After her 1998 film "Beloved" bombed at the box office, Winfrey says she went into a "massive, depressive macaroni and cheese-eating tailspin -- literally!"

"I'm not in the movie business. I did this movie because I was passionate about it," Winfrey, 56, explains. "I didn't know that you had that weekend and that is it. So I am thinking that if people don't go this weekend, that people will go see it next weekend."

"It premiered on a Friday and I remember hearing on Saturday morning that we got beat by something called 'Chucky,'" she tells CNN. "I didn't even know what 'Chucky' was. I asked my chef at the time, Art Smith, to make some macaroni and cheese."

How much did Winfrey -- who launched the OWN Network on Jan. 1 -- actually consume?

"I ate about 30 pounds worth," she reveals. "I'm not kidding! It's the only time in my life I was ever depressed. I recognized I was depressed because I've done enough shows [to know], 'Oh, this is what those people must feel like.'"

Determined to overcome the devastating blow, Winfrey says she turned to prayer and gave herself a limited amount of time to feel sorry for herself. In retrospect, the talk show host says she walked away with a valuable lesson about failure.

"I think the way life is set up for most people who have the opportunity to succeed, is that if you get the lesson, you don't have to repeat that again," she says.

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