Makeover of the Year: Oprah!

"Skin-nee!" Trading compliments with Star Jones Reynolds on the red carpet, Oprah Winfrey showed off her newly svelte look in a hand-embroidered Vera Wang gown. "Gold is good with my complexion," she said of her dress. And her other secret to looking so good? Two to three Pilates workouts per week. "I did it every day this summer," she told PEOPLE in September. "I'm moving from my core. I move differently. It really has changed my life."

With her toned body, Winfrey ruled the red carpet in a platinum Gianfranco Ferré. She says she has made peace with workouts, and swears off fad diets for a sensible eating plan. Her strategy:
• No "white stuff" – bread, pasta, potatoes, rice – or candy, cookies and cake.
• No alcohol
• Two fruits a day
• Everything low-fat
• No eating three hours before bedtime

Back when Winfrey was nominated for a Golden Globe for The Color Purple, it was a different story. She hid her extra weight under fur. At her heaviest, the 5'6 1/2" Winfrey weighed 237 lbs.

When she showed off her size-10 Calvin Klein jeans (left), the show was Winfrey's highest rated to date. Now she's back to a size 10, and dressing herself in figure-revealing fashions, like the Celine suit she wore to kick off her show's 19th season.

Winning a Daytime Emmy at her heaviest – 237 lbs. – "I felt so much like a loser," Winfrey wrote in the Februrary issue of O. Now she looks for moral support in her weight-loss struggle. Last month, still aiming to reach her "safe zone," in the 150s, she recruited four Oprah staffers for a 12-week "boot camp" program.

Winfrey got in shape after "making the connection" with trainer Bob Greene and a low-fat diet. "Don't get me wrong," she wrote in O. "You won't see me jumping up and down, going, 'Oh, jeez, exercise is great,' but I no longer dread it."

By the first anniversary party of O, she had regained the pounds she'd lost. But now, she wrote in the magazine, "after many years of my weight going up and down, I realized that the commitment to do well and to be well is a lifetime of choices that you make daily."