Ozempic. Wegovy. Semaglutide.
These are all names for the diabetes medication that has recently become the “magic weight loss drug” all of Hollywood is injecting themselves with.
Everyone from Elon Musk to Chelsea Handler, to the Kardashians, Real Housewives mainstays, and Amy Schumer – just to name a few – have all admitted to taking this medication for its weight loss effects.
And they’re not alone. Celebrities and “normies” alike are flocking to their doctors for a prescription to help them shed a few pounds so much so that there is now a shortage.
Meaning, people with Type 2 Diabetes who actually need this medication to live are now scrambling to find it, meanwhile prices for it off-label are skyrocketing to $1600 a month.
It’s all over the news. Rivaling even Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift’s recent NFL-romance.
People are obsessed with this new “miracle drug.”
And frankly, it has me sick to my stomach.
As someone who almost succumbed to anorexia in my past, I try to stay away from fodder about diet culture — particularly weight loss — like the plague. That just isn’t something I need filling my mind.
But this Ozempic obsession — it’s inescapable.
And I’ve got some thoughts.
{And just allow me to set the stage for those who may have stumbled upon this article from a Google search: I battled a severe case of anorexia in high school, wasting away to 78 pounds before I went to an inpatient treatment facility for three months, and now have dedicated my life to helping others regain their life and kick their eating disorder for good.}
First and foremost, it is the epitome of irresponsible to be abusing a life-saving medication for diabetics for vanity purposes to the point that there’s a shortage. I cannot believe how selfish some people are, and how little they think of others. To put one’s own weight loss above a necessary medication that diabetics need to survive. It’s unconscionable.
But morality — and its risk of thyroid cancer — aside, this drug is an eating disorder in a syringe.
The rapid weight loss associated with taking Ozempic becomes an addiction. Believe me, I’ve been there. Your shrinking body, the complements you receive, the ease with which your clothes now fit, the adrenaline rush you get from the mirror and the confidence it brings, plus the satisfaction of control you have over food — it is insanely addictive. (And that in and of itself can trigger a life-long skewed relationship with food restriction.)
But that addiction to weight loss is unsustainable. For once a person stops using Ozempic every week, the weight comes right back on. Ozempic mimics the hormone that tells the brain that you’re full. So once a person stops, their body’s “fullness” hormones start regulating normally, and the weight will come back on. That is where the trouble starts.
Because now, addicted to that feeling of losing weight, the person may seek unhealthy methods to attain it again. Enter binge eating, enter bulimia, enter orthorexia, anorexia, exercise-induced anorexia. It becomes a hellish cycle of binge-restrict, binge-restrict, self-hatred, negative self image…and thus begins a battle that can take literally decades to overcome.
But that’s not the only concern I have with it. That’s just for the people actually taking it.
Let’s turn now to the impressionable young lady who sees all of Hollywood shrinking, obsessed with thinness, and now, able to just snap their fingers and *poof* they’re posting bikini photos on Instagram where you can see their ribs.
It is sending such a destructive message to our young girls — and guys. It’s “thinness at all costs.” It’s seeing a rain-thin celebrity woman proclaiming she’s a “guy’s girl” eating pizza and donuts…all the while she’s taking Ozempic to keep a nearly impossible physique to naturally attain and sustain. It’s creating a devastatingly difficult standard of beauty that they literally are achieving by cheating unnaturally.
What is that young girl supposed to think?
What happened to loving oneself for who we are on the inside? What ever happened to taking care of our bodies, and embracing the shape that God gave us? What ever happened to rejecting this obsession with thinness and embracing “healthy” over “skinny?”
Friends, I’ve been the rail. I’ve been that walking skeleton that turns heads because people are concerned. That life consists of only two things: obsessing over food, and isolating yourself from others to avoid it. That’s the long and short of it. Truly.
You might be skinny, but you’re alone, insecure, irritable and irrational, lonely, you can’t sleep, you spend every waking minute thinking about food, and to top it all off: your breath stinks, nails are brittle, skin is gray and old-looking, and your hair is falling out.
That is a place I am never going back to.
I pray that our country snaps out of this Ozempic craze. I pray that there aren’t any serious side effects that pop up 10, 20 years down the line when we actually have data about the implications of taking a diabetes drug for off-label weight loss purposes. I pray for all those who develop disordered eating as a result. I pray for all those with Type 2 Diabetes who now no longer have access to the medication they desperately need. And I pray for all those young people who see our society’s obsession and celebration of thinness, and are tempted to turn to destructive habits to mimic the “Ozempic effect.”
What do you think of this Ozempic craze?