Is Ozempic the wonder drug we’ve been waiting for? Or is it playing directly into the hands of disordered eating?
I’m told the fashion at this year’s Oscars was thin, courtesy of the injectable prescription drug, Ozempic.
Ozempic, Wegovy, Trulicity, Victoza… They are all the same class of drug: GLP-1 agonists. Aside from working to reduce the complications of diabetes by stimulating insulin production and lowering blood glucose levels, they also suppress appetite and cause food to move more slowly through the gut – so you’re less hungry and you feel full easily. This is why they’re being used extensively for weight loss, even if the person taking it doesn’t actually have type 2 diabetes.
They’ve been trending on social media, burning their way through Hollywood, and spreading through word of mouth like a juicy rumour. Now, when I ask a client what they hope to get out of their consultation with me (a dietitian with a decade of experience in helping people ditch unsustainable diets and find food freedom), they say “I want that injection everyone’s getting.”
One thing users rave about is Ozempic’s ability to reduce ‘food noise’ – the thoughts of food that plague them. Oprah said of it, “All these years, I thought all of the people who never had to diet were just using their willpower, and they were for some reason stronger than me. You weren’t thinking about the food! You weren’t obsessing about it!”
The thing is, ‘food noise’ sounds an awful lot like hunger. And the reason so many of my clients are obsessively thinking about food is because they are hungry but they are denying themselves food due to the diet they are on. They force their bodies into a state where they’re more likely to binge eat, and the ‘famine’ their body thinks they are going through triggers it to cling on to every calorie it can get – making them more likely to gain weight than lose it.
The way I get my clients to reduce their ‘food noise’ is simple. I advise they use nature’s appetite suppressant: I tell them to eat.
This is why I don’t see Ozempic as a miracle drug in the obesity crisis. Instead, I see it as a powerful aide to diet culture. It aides people in their pursuit to disconnect from their bodies, instead of teaching them how to listen to what their body is telling them. And because there seems to be very little screening around disordered eating, I think it may just be an eating disorder’s best friend.
90% of women are already dissatisfied with their body, and many undergo desperate attempts to alter their weight and shape. We should be teaching them to respect their bodies, reassuring them that they are allowed to eat and to enjoy their food, helping them to lower their cortisol levels through regular meals and snacks, encouraging them to learn their own body’s unique hunger and fullness cues, and addressing the emotional reasons they may be drawn to binge eating or other disordered behaviours.
In this way, they can slowly attain their natural weight and rediscover their happiness.
Yet instead, health professionals are too often reinforcing their client’s disordered thoughts and behaviours by prescribing a drug that is essentially a diet on steroids.
And what happens when someone can no longer afford Ozempic, or there’s a shortage and they can’t get it anymore? Predictably, like any restrictive diet, they put the weight back on.
Content creator Remi Bader went viral last year when she revealed that she put double the weight back on after stopping Ozempic, and that it made her binge eating worse. Ozempic didn’t address her stress, or her anxiety, or her past trauma, or whatever reasons she may have felt compelled to binge eat in the first place. It treated the symptom of her distress, not the cause.
I’m filled with sadness for Remi, for Oprah, and for so many others who take Ozempic. And I feel more compelled than ever to spread the word about disordered eating and how to deal with it.
If you’re on my page, then you won’t want to miss my free LIVE Disordered Eating Masterclass: the roadmap from yoyo dieting to intuitive eating (and where weight loss fits in).
In this free online training, I’ll walk you through:
- The 5-step system I personally use to move my clients from a dieting mindset to intuitive eating
- How sustainable weight loss can fit in with intuitive eating principles
- And as a special bonus, in the first 5 minutes I’ll reveal my single best strategy to gain trust with clients and get them to open up to you. It’s so simple it’s either stupid or brilliant – you be the judge!
Plus, I’ll do a LIVE Q&A afterwards, where you can ask all of your questions. This Masterclass is for you if:
- If you’re frustrated with clients who fall back into their old dieting habits that backfire in the long-run
- If you’re nervous that you’re not picking up disordered eating red flags in your niche area
- Or if you’re simply an overachiever who thinks it can never hurt to get a new perspective and do more learning!
I’m running multiple so you can pick your date and time, and there will be a recording available but only if you register.
Let’s take on the Ozempic culture one client at a time. I’ll see you on the Masterclass.