The Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson on Life as a Royal
From the birth of Prince Louis Arthur to the wedding of Prince Harry and Megan Markle, the world has always been fascinated with The Royal Family. In an intimate interview, The Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson is revealing what life is really like living as a Royal in the public eye. Plus, the shocking truth about her life-long struggle with her weight…and how she’s learned to cope. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Here I am talking very openly to you, but actually I've had the last two hours rather worried about things.
So I may sound as though I know my stuff.
I don't know my stuff at all, really.
I'm just a human.
But I like it because in talking to you, I can reinforce what I truly believe within my heart.
And sometimes when you sit in the darkness of the bedroom and it's all quiet and there's no one to talk to, that's when the darkness can grab a hold of you.
Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Oz and this is the Dr. Oz Podcast.
From the birth of the new prince, Louis Arthur, to the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the world is fascinated with the royal family.
And I got the chance to sit down with the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, in a revealing interview about her lifelong struggle with her weight.
Plus, what life is really like living as a royal in the public eye.
What I love the most about Sarah Ferguson is that she hasn't always been on top.
She's had difficult times in her life.
She's had to cope with these issues.
And those coping skills are reflected to us very beautifully in a new book she's written called Start Living, Start Losing.
Actually, she wrote the forward for it.
Inspirational stories that will motivate you.
But more than that, What I Know Now, Simple Lessons Learned the Hard Way.
way.
That book, I think, is for all of you, worth a quick read because it talks to her a little bit about some of the personal reflections, what she's learned, the small tales, as she calls them, to her very earthy philosophy of life.
Thank you for joining us, Sarah.
No, thank you.
What an amazing introduction you just did for me.
Thank you all very much.
What were you like as a little girl?
Were you always able to find insights, pithy lessons, and even the most tragic experiences?
I think I've always been brought up with this extraordinary belief that life is just completely brilliant and to trust everybody and always think that I really do have rose-colored glasses on, even now at this ripe old age of 22 that I am.
I love it.
You do look 22.
The thing is that really it's all about being real in your heart and speaking from your heart.
And no matter where I am, even if I'm at the UN or somewhere huge and everyone's fighting force with research and scientific views and values about I still say that at the end of the day, you've got to be true to yourself.
And you've just got to not worry.
You say it with kindness and compassion, but don't worry if it doesn't sound good to everybody's ears.
You just have to say it.
I think, and you talked about this a little bit in What I Know, Simple Lessons Learned the Hard Way, that it was not so much about what's happening outside of you, but what's happening inside of you.
And I think before you get into some of the insights you have on weight loss and the wonderful work you've done with Weight Watchers and the new Start Living book, let's talk a little bit about some of the chapters in What I Know.
I think it'll help people understand what's so appealing about you.
And you talked in there about...
In many cases about finding love.
About finding the deeper empathy.
And you know we have these things called mirror neurons in our brain.
It's how humans learn.
We see someone else do something and we copy it.
But mirror neurons are probably even more important in helping us understand the motivation behind people opposite us.
And too frequently in our lives we look at what they did and not why they did it.
And there are very few people who are jerks on purpose.
Most people who are not doing the right thing don't either realize they're doing the right thing or have lost contact with why they should be governing themselves differently.
And you talk a little bit about how you cope with the different challenges in your life through this book.
So if you don't mind, I was going to ask you about a couple of them.
Actually, which is your favorite essay in that book?
Well, thank you for asking me.
As you know, each chapter is just a page, sometimes a page or two pages, so it's not a big long read.
The biggest chapter for me was when I realized about that don't believe your critics.
And if I may just quickly say, it was for ten long years I believed that the Duchess of Pork was real and that I was this enormously huge pig.
And the fat, frumpy Fergie stuck.
And for 10 years, I really, genuinely believed it.
And it was a headline.
And so anyway, I went back to the newspaper 10 years later, who had actually written that and various other incredibly damaging stories.
And I walked in, sat down, had lunch.
Fantastic.
And then the editor, who in fact was Piers Morgan, said, why don't we go around and meet all the team of people?
So I went into the offices and met all the people that I'd known.
They knew me as history, you know, because I was part of their everyday life with these funny articles.
And there was a little fat, rotund man in the corner with a jovial face with a bald head, and he was giggling away to himself.
And I went over there and said, what's the joke?
Come on, tell me.
And he said, I was the one that wrote that fantastic headline, Duchess of Pork.
And I looked at him.
I looked at him, and I suddenly realized it wasn't real.
And that for 10 long years, it had been the cause of my demise.
And here he was.
He needed Weight Watchers more than anyone else.
He had a zero waistband, not a size 8. And it seriously made me understand that sometimes we take things so seriously, and we really believe it, when really, actually, seriously, it was just a joke.
It's such a great insight, and I think we do take ourselves seriously.
We say that all the time.
It sounds almost trite, but many things that sound trite are true.
That's why they sound trite, because you say them all the time.
How about laughing out loud?
There's a nice essay, and I think we ought to do that more often.
I mean, I must say, when you say touches of pork, it completely strips away any malice, just because you say it so bluntly.
I can now because I've come to terms with it all.
I think it is very difficult, as you probably know, to come to terms with suddenly becoming famous and then you have to live with it.
It does seem that it's almost done purposely.
People get built up, they get broken down, they get built up again.
The average person seems to want to hear that story, and I guess because we see ourselves doing that all the time.
We get built up and then we collapse.
And it's that classic hero motif where if things are stable all the time, it's the same as being dead.
Because nothing really is happening.
And I do think that Americans in particular, but folks from all over the world, love a good fight.
And you can't fight if you're always winning.
Well, that's interesting because imagine if we knew that the New York Giants always won and they just were always victorious, then why would we all flock to the match?
Because it would be so boring, wouldn't it?
We have to have the yin and the yang, the positive, the negative.
And I think I think it's the question of how we deal with the negative balls that come our way.
Are we going to take them in and digest them and make them our own?
Or are we going to look at them, transmit them and throw them back out there?
And I think I personally believe that if someone is wrong to me, it's because I've got to change something within myself.
Rather than saying they're bad, I think it's something within me that I need to change.
So you started this conversation about mirror neurons, and I couldn't agree more.
I really do.
I think it's essential that we are just a vessel of light, and the more we can grow and become a bigger vessel, the more light we can have within us.
And that is by transmuting the negative forces that come at us.
That's quite deep, isn't it?
It is.
I was going to say, you sound like a Kabbalist right now.
You're so funny!
No, I'm not.
There's a big balance, I think, because you've hit on two things.
The one is that we are constantly needing to grow and to change.
On the other hand, you don't want to take what other people are telling you, like the Duchess of Pork, as the impetus for that change.
It has to be internally driven, and it can't be based on what other people are thinking or saying.
Yes, I think, Lisa, now you're coming to the really fine line of when we have to listen to our ego or are we listening to what we need to know or is it just the other person is a jerk?
You know, it's a very fine line, isn't it, to really balance what are the ramifications of our actions and therefore what we get back.
I'm very interested in that, Lisa, because so often I think to myself...
You know, it could be just the person is just literally a jerk.
End of story.
Or am I meant to learn something?
Right, right.
No, it's our life's journey, isn't it?
Yes, I think it is.
I think it is.
And I think that when I came to America 11 years ago, and I was this sort of broken person, Maybe I was too much of a victim.
Who knows what I was?
But all I know is that the American people took me by the hand.
And Lisa, you know very well, there's two lovely people out there, John and Christy, who helped me enormously.
And they took me by the hand and embraced me and said, look, it's okay.
Just get out there and do the best job you can.
And I think that's what I really owe a lot to Weight Watchers, because it's the leaders and the supporters that took me and helped me through.
And I had no idea that I was eating to compensate for my feelings and squashing my feelings.
Right.
Well, that's what, you know, any kind of addiction does, but eating is probably the easiest one.
And it kind of keeps you from, it helps you avoid dealing with what you're actually feeling.
So I'm sure that when you started losing the weight, you had a flood of emotions that you didn't even realize were there.
I think I still do.
And I think I still find every day very difficult.
And here I am talking very openly to you, but actually, you know, I've had the last two hours since four in the morning rather worried about things.
So I may sound as though I know my stuff.
I don't know my stuff at all, really.
I'm just a human.
And that's good to say.
But, you know, I like it because in talking to you, I can reinforce what I truly believe within my heart.
And sometimes when you sit in the darkness of the room, of the bedroom, and it's all quiet and there's no one to talk to, that's when the darkness can grab a hold of you, don't you think?
Absolutely.
And, well, you know, you said before we're really just vessels or intended to be vessels of light.
But I think we have to go through that darkness to understand that.
And what's great about you is that because you are who you are and you have experienced what you have, you can share what you've learned with the rest of us who are going through it and think we're all alone.
Right.
Right.
Yeah, the total isolation.
That's why I keep talking about these success stories and inspirational stories in this book and things.
Because when you read it, you suddenly realize, oh, thank heavens, there are many, many people out there who have insecurities, who have low self-esteem, who think they can't go forward in life.
And their stories inspire me.
The other day I was in Hull and I was living with a family that lived below the poverty line.
She has about $50 a week for six people's food and they really are very, very poor.
And I was just spending some time with her to learn what they must go through and yet they are obese and why are they obese and what do they put in their shopping trolleys and so I'm really focused on Eliminating obesity in the world.
It's just got so out of control.
It's an epidemic.
So I'm studying it.
So I went to live with this family.
We need a quick break.
When you come back, I want to hear the story about this family.
Talk a little bit more with Sarah Ferguson about Start Living, Start Losing, the inspirational stories that will motivate you.
And I've got two more questions about what I know now.
Sarah's been through a lot, and she's written about it in her very typical, honest, authentic way.
A book that I've looked at that I think the world of called What I Know, Simple Lessons Learned the Hard Way, which is a collection of these small tales reflective of what she's been telling us on the show today.
And her new book that she actually wrote the forward for, Start Living, Start Losing, these inspirational stories that will motivate you now.
And you're just telling us about one of the stories, a story similar to one of the stories that you've just lived through.
Well, yes, I was just quickly telling about my friend Tonya who lives below the poverty line.
She has about $50 a week for eight people, to feed eight people.
And I was talking to her because she's a little overweight and her husband has diabetes from being overweight.
You know, her 10-year-old child smokes.
I mean, it's a very sad family.
And so anyway, I was talking to Tonya and we had a really good talk about the effects of obesity and feeling overweight and how it can completely demoralize you.
And we looked at each other and she held my hand and she said, you know what?
I don't have a title before my name or after it.
I'm just plain old Tonya.
And in this room, you're just plain old Sarah.
And you know what?
Isn't it extraordinary?
We both are exactly the same.
We have the same issues.
And we believe the same thing.
And I really honestly at that moment became very choked because it was such an honour that she should have said that to me, that it doesn't matter who you are, you've got these issues, we'll deal with them together.
Well, you spoke earlier about getting up at four in the morning, being by yourself in the darkness, and I think a lot of us understandably fear that moment in our lives, and everyone listening has had a time like that.
On any hand, some of our most creative moments come when we're in a dark space.
In fact, if you look to the history of the most creative people on the planet, they often will say that it was the challenges of life, the times when they just didn't know what was happening, when they were afraid, when it was dark.
When they came up with their most creative work.
And I think we have too often run from that fearful moment because we don't want to be uncomfortable.
Food happens to be a way that we cover up and self-medicate and everyone has heard us speak of that.
But it is remarkable how frequently otherwise rational people do irrational things to themselves.
And the real question, of course, is would you put in your mouth The same things that you would put in the mouth of someone that you loved.
And when the answer is no, then we know we've got a little bit of a problem.
Tell us a little bit about Start Living, Start Losing.
What got you stimulated to collect these inspirational stories?
Okay, well, firstly, can I thank you for being a good doctor because you just helped me enormously.
You're very kind.
What you just said really was exactly how I might look the next time I'm locked in my darkness.
I will tell you, when I got in the shower, I did think to myself, well, it's your own stupid fault for making the decisions you made perhaps a year ago in ego.
And it wasn't coming from the right place.
And so don't complain, just live with it and go through it and learn from it.
So that's the answer to that dark thing.
Now, going back to the inspirational stories, one of the great key things that I love doing is going out on the road in the middle of, I don't know, Birmingham, Alabama, wherever I might be.
I love to meet people and I've noticed that when I went up on the public stage in front of, I don't know, 5,000 people and talking to the Weight Watchers success stories, I asked them to tell their story on stage and I suddenly realized I'm using it as a meeting and they're helping me more because it's like therapy.
And when Rolando looked in the mirror and said he felt completely uncomfortable and didn't like the way he looked at all, And that's why he went to lose the weight.
I so could relate to him.
I thought, oh, phew, this is a relief.
And he was a man, and he felt this.
So we all decided that we have to write this book, which if it affected me the way it has, then so many other people could be moved into either encouraging them to go on or encouraging people to take the first step and the courage to join Weight Watchers.
Walk me through a couple of the ones that you like the most.
I shouldn't say the most.
Some of the ones you think might be most informative for our listenership.
Well, I've just mentioned Rolando because I like the fact he's a man.
Because everyone says, oh, you do that Weight Watchers, that women's thing, that ladies thing, you know.
Shut up.
I do not.
They normally get the handbag over the head at that.
Anyway...
We got the Mighty Python stuff again.
Come on.
Yeah, we have...
No, I didn't do that.
You've got hearing.
It's another person in another room.
It's true.
Anyway, so Rolando's pretty cool.
And Lisa, you know, she's a beauty.
Actually, I saw her the other day, and Lisa looked like a model.
I walked past this one.
I nearly went up to her and said, are you a model?
And she's lost, I don't know, 200 pounds.
She now can play with her grandson.
And I just think, whoa.
She had no way of going forward, and now look at her.
What is it about the Weight Watchers, for example, for Lisa or Ronaldo that allows them to succeed where they otherwise couldn't have done it?
But what do you think was the key to success for them?
Was it internal to them?
Was it them seeing the world differently?
Was it a rule system?
Was it the support of people around them?
It was all of the above, but I think the biggest thing they found the easiest was that it was flexible and they could eat anything they wanted to eat.
So you could have a glass of wine for two points.
Well, actually, they didn't say that.
I said that because that's what I like.
But anyway, moving on.
But you can have anything you want, and so it's up to you, portion control.
It's all about you, and therefore, you know, you can have a very frugal day, and you can bank your points the next day, so it balances out.
So it means that you never need to say no.
So if you want a bit of chocolate cake, have it, but maybe take two mouthfuls and give the rest away.
Don't you find that hard to do, though?
Oh no, I love it.
You can do two mouthfuls and walk away.
I know, I can do that.
I can do that.
If you said to me, no, you're not allowed it at all, I would then eat the whole thing.
Deliberately, just because you told me no.
Right, of course.
But I find with myself and my continuous issues with food, it's not so much about what I'm eating as why I'm eating.
And usually that entails wanting the whole cake.
Right, right.
But that comes down to I don't want to go back being called...
The Duchess of Pork or Fat Frumpy Fergie again.
In answer to your question, Lisa, is that I don't want to go back there.
So I do now know I've just got to stop, you know.
And it is a constant battle, and I think it will always be a constant battle for me.
But I agree with you.
You know, there are some days when you just want to eat the whole...
In my case, I want to eat the whole plate of sausage rolls.
You know what sausage rolls are?
You see, I'm back from British again.
Spam.
Spam.
Sausage rolls are sausages wrapped in pastry.
What do you call them?
Devils in...
No, what do you call them?
Pigs in a blanket.
We're pig mad in this show today.
We are pig mad.
We're in spam.
Pigmalion.
Oh, goodness.
And my daughter called Miss Piggy.
Yeah, yeah, that was horrible.
I told you that though, didn't I? No.
She's a beautiful girl, 19 years old, and...
She had dyslexia very badly, so she had special needs at school for 19 years, and she doesn't drink or take drugs, and she's a really good person.
And that's because Andrew and I are, of course, perfect parents.
But anyway, moving on.
The real truth is that this girl is such a good girl.
She's much more dutiful than her mother.
She's much more responsible and turns up on time and things like that.
But Beatrice really has a sense of duty and has...
Really adapted herself to public life.
Anyway, suddenly this nasty journalist, who clearly must have a weight problem herself, and she has children, so I'm going to go and try and find her.
But she wrote five lines which said, the pampered princess Miss Piggy.
And then she went on to say, surely the only protection she needs is the protection from the attack of the Krispy Kremes.
And she's a size 8 to 10. And, you know, this little girl who I just, you know, there's the blood in my veins, as you know, she sat down with big tears coming down her face and said, Mommy, what more can I do?
You know, why have they done this?
Do they want me to get anorexia?
And this woman, this journalist, had absolutely, it is the best example of irresponsible journalism, had demoralized and taken the confidence of my daughter.
And that is just not right.
Beatrice, having got over dyslexia, got A stars in his reading history at university in September.
I mean, what more does the British press want?
Do they want more Britney's or do they want more Beatrice's?
They want more Beatrices, they should.
But I think it's, and you've said this beautifully, perhaps using other words, you can't take it personally.
And I know it sounds crazy, but that person, that journalist, that sorrowful individual, sees it as their job to write text like that, as harmful as it might seem.
There are many times, and I have articles written, and I start to chortle because they're so far from what reality is, at least for me.
Maybe, of course, we're all deluding ourselves sometimes a little bit, but usually I'm not that far off.
And you'll see the article, and you'll start to laugh to yourself.
And I'm sure you do this, too, when you see something that's not truthful.
But it's also appropriate to laugh when people, even when they're close to you, say things that are so clearly motivated not by what you're doing, but what's going on in their sometimes tragic lives.
And the challenge for us, and you talk a little bit about this in what I know now, is how do you actually bring empathy to the equation?
There's last more to come after the break. - One thing I noticed by the way is, and it was one of the topics in your, what I know now book, is bending the rules.
What does Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, say about bending the rules?
Don't you have to follow the rules if you're in your social position?
That's a good one.
I think that we should not be like the oak tree.
I think the oak tree breaks in the hurricane comes, the gale force winds of Britain, or anywhere, but the oak tree breaks, but the willow tree bends.
So I think that it's very good to have boundaries, and I think there is...
I think it's very good to be very disciplined.
However, there are certain times when I don't see the rulebook of life.
Is there a rulebook of life?
I think the rulebook of life is to be kind and have good manners and to never go out of a way to be malicious to others and have integrity, honesty, loyalty and all of those good things.
But at the end of the day, Don't always do as you're told.
Don't follow Mr. and Mrs. Jones next door just because they say that's the way it's done.
Why don't you follow what you feel in your heart, upholding the values that I just mentioned.
You know, we hosted a conference on longevity with the Dalai Lama, and sort of at the climax of the meeting, he was talking about his sort of game plan in life, and he said, you have to learn the rules really, really well so you know how to break them.
Yeah.
And he came Lisa and I fight about that daily.
Here's the question for all listeners out there.
You come to a three-way intersection and there's nobody on the road.
You're in the middle of one of the plain states and you can see for miles and miles the beautiful big horizon and there's no cars on the road.
You come to the three-way intersection and there's a red light.
No, the question is, do you even slow down?
Because I ran a stop sign today at 30 miles per hour.
I'm asking that.
I didn't run it.
Yes, you did.
You do.
So you come to this three-way intersection.
This is a hypothetical situation.
Hypothetical that happened this morning at 6 o'clock.
And it has nothing to do with the Plain States.
It's New Jersey, USA. So any cops from Close Head Park?
If you hear this, you can send him a summons.
So we come to a three-way intersection.
The Duchess of New York, Sarah Ferguson, is still listening because she's been interrupted so many times by my co-host here.
So Sarah, you're at a three-way intersection.
It's a Plain State.
You can see four miles.
No cars visible.
It's a red light.
Do you stop or not?
She had to think about it at least.
She didn't run it.
I'm thinking about it.
It's a red light in the middle of a crossroads.
And are we in a city or are we in the middle of the desert?
Middle of the desert.
Middle of the desert?
Yeah.
And there's one red light?
It's a red light, but it's the law.
It's the rule.
It's the law.
It's the rule.
Are you putting yourself above the law?
That's the question my wife always asks me.
Okay, well, my answer to that is I would look left, right, and above and beyond, and I'd really check to see if anyone was watching, and then I'd jump it.
I think everyone would.
I agree with you if it's no one's there and you've looked and it's the middle of the desert.
But if it's 6 a.m.
in a suburban area of a major metropolitan city and people are on their way to work.
Just as the last word here, your mother would never run that light.
Who knows?
Why don't you get on the show and ask her?
They're all shouting at me, stop talking, Sarah, stop talking.
Can I just say that if I was in an area where there might be people or bicycles or I hadn't quite watched it, then I would actually probably really slow down almost to stop and then go on.
But if I was in the middle of the desert, I'd just go for it.
Sarah, I personally, and I'll be very honest with you, there's no question I'd go through it.
I wouldn't think twice about it.
Now, here's the real issue for me.
The purpose of that red light is to help all of us stay safer.
Right.
And the real issue, of course, and this is the challenge we always face in life, is if there's a moment when a rule doesn't help us all do better, then it actually doesn't fulfill the spirit for which it was created.
And that's where Lisa and I disagree.
Her argument is, who are you to argue what the spirit was?
The law is the law.
And my thought is the rules were created for a reason.
Someone had a good idea to put a red light there because, God forbid, maybe there is a time when there's a purpose for it.
But the purpose of that was not to slow us down at 6 in the morning when there's no one else on the road.
And so that's the disagreement that we fundamentally have.
And I think when it comes to dieting and the passion you have in life and how you deal with crises, that's a fundamental dividing point.
It's one of those questions like, do you like the Partridge family or the Brady Bunch?
You can divide all Americans into a couple categories.
When we talk about weight loss in particular, there's sort of a couple basic rules of thumb that people...
But you need to break those rules.
You need to break those rules.
Rules of thumbs that you have to be able to break so you don't get fixated on them.
But these are rules of thumbs that most people know, and yet, obviously, most of us are unable to do them.
These are all topics that she addresses in her different writings and interviews.
Sarah, thank you so much for joining us.
It's been a great honor having you on.
Thank you all, and thank you so much, Dr. Oz and to Lisa.