Half the men I know are using Ozempic to lose weight – the signs are hard to miss. By Celia Walden.
“Trust me: by this time next year, everyone you know will be on this drug.” It was a bold claim, made by a well-known LA designer at a supper last February. Although I nodded along – even getting her to spell out the name of the wonder weight-loss jab I’d never heard of – inside, I was scoffing.
How wrong I was. Although the designer’s claim did turn out to be a tad overblown. Thirteen months later, I’d estimate that at least 50 per cent of the over-45s I know in London are on Ozempic, Wegovy or Rybelsus – all brand names for semaglutide, a hormone released by the body when we eat, stimulating insulin. And here’s the curious thing: most of them are men.
How do I know this? Because unlike women, men admit to it. They’ll even volunteer the fact. In January, Elon Musk told his Twitter followers that the drug had helped him lose 30lbs, and Jeremy Clarkson also opened up about his experience with Ozempic. And just last week a conversation with one of my best male friends went like this. “Wow – you’ve lost so much weight!”; “16lbs. Ozempic. Obvi.”
Then there is my husband, who has recently lost 14lbs on a wacky diet that involves not putting as much in his mouth, but who now gets a pointed finger at the belly region and the one-word question: “Ozempic?”, from men at every social occasion we go to. …
Warning:
The drug was designed to help the very overweight get to a healthier weight – not for slim healthy people to lose those last few pounds for summer. …
I’m worried that the misuse of this drug (because to be clear, it is being misused) is particularly appealing to men. Women of my generation may have wasted decades obsessing about their weight before eventually coming to the realisation that any quick fix or magic button will come back to bite your bitty behind, but many men haven’t understood that yet…
What’s going to happen to all these men and women when (and if) they ever go off the wonder drug? …
But yet:
Unscrupulous dealers on sites such as eBay and Instagram are also reportedly selling the drug to anorexia and bulimia sufferers, desperate to find out whether the magic shot lives up to its hype.
It does. I’ve never seen people lose as much weight, as fast, as they do on Ozempic. At a recent dinner party, I looked around the table trying to work out what was jarring before realising that while the women looked perfectly normal, every man there looked like a deflated balloon.
