Al Roker has firmly insisted he will never "judge anybody" who is battling a food addiction. The Today Show anchor, who lost 100lbs after a gastric bypass in 2002 and another 45lbs in 2022, has published his first cookbook and spoken openly about the difficulty of overcoming a dependence on food.
"I'm not gonna judge anybody. Listen, it's unlike any other addiction or dependence. You can live without alcohol, you can live without cigarettes, whatever that drug of choice is... but you've got to eat, and so for some people, it's just difficult," he told the Daily Mail.
When it comes to the individual choice to use Ozempic, or other weight loss drugs, Al added: "If this is what works for them, who are we to say, 'Oh, don't do that.' As long as it's safe and effective, good for you. I think everybody's journey is their journey."
Al, 69, decided to have surgery in 2002 after failing at numerous diets. At his heaviest, he weighed 340lbs, and wore size 54 jeans.
"Hard to believe it was 20 years ago today, I wore these size 54 Levi jeans to my #gastricbypass at 340 lbs and here I am today," he told Instagram followers in 2022.
"It's still a struggle but I'm never going back. I have setbacks and struggle every day, but I never forget how far I've come."
His new book, Al Roker’s Recipes to Live By: Easy, Memory-Making Family Dishes for Every Occasion, aims to encourage families to make memories around the dinner table, and he added that his wife Deborah Roberts has a strict "no phones at the table" rule, sharing that anyone who is dining with the Rokers must leave it "in a basket and that's that".
He previously shared in an essay for Today that his weight became an issue for his wife, because she did not understand that he had an addiction: "She was upset about it, she was frustrated, she was angry.
"She thought, 'Why don't you care enough about yourself and why don't you care about me and our relationship enough to change?' And I said, 'Look, it's not about you. It’s about me.'"