Let's Talk About Ozempic. It's Complicated.
Let's take a deep dive into weight loss medications. It's not as straightforward it seems.
Nutritionists usually write these posts from a place of hate. And underlying that hate is always fear. The fear that a drug may lead to the elimination of our careers.
Naturally, that's why most nutrition posts on drugs like Ozempic (or other weight loss drugs) are negative in nature. While I'm not saying this is different in that regard, I hope you find it different in how I approach the subject.
I want to help you view a drug-based approach to weight loss through the lens of how your body works.
Of course, fully understand that a subject like weight loss comes with its own emotions, pains, and traumas.
I have been in this field long enough to know body fat is complicated.
Not to mention, some forms of metabolic resistance and other diseases make it nearly impossible to lose weight, at least without a drug acting on your behalf.
I don't want to discount any of that. In fact, I do believe there is a time and a place for a drug like Ozempic. Some people actually need it to help them feel better.
Like all therapies and medications, there is a time and a place to use them.
If you've chosen this path, like taking Ozempic, I'm not here to guilt or shame you. I know you are doing what you think is best. Maybe even what was best. But I also want to provide hope beyond the drug, knowing it can only take you so far. Like birth control, it only works while you take it, but as soon as you stop, you generally end up back where you started.
Ozempic and other weight loss drugs warn on their websites:
"Most people who lost weight taking Ozempic will regain that weight when stopping."
Regardless of whether you're on Ozempic or other weight loss medications, are thinking about it, or would never take it. The truth is, we could all work on our health.
Statistically speaking, 88% of the population is dealing with some form of metabolic dysfunction, and yet over half of those people have attempted to diet in the last year. Shining a spotlight on the real issue we're here: we don't understand how our body works, leaving us to approach health in ways that arguably make it worse.
In the upcoming podcast series, we're diving into metabolism, looking at every aspect, including how your thoughts influence it, while also showing you how to make natural changes to regain balance. When you understand your body, you can make changes that work.
But today, I write this post after a series of questions about weight loss drugs.
I know a medication like Ozempic might be the fix you're looking for, but like most drugs, they're masking a deeper issue that needs to be addressed.
That real need is understanding why your body chose to gain weight in the first place.
Have you ever stopped to question how you ended up here?
Why did your body decide to store excess body fat in the first place?
It's not a question most people ask, but one we should ask. Why did my body choose to respond in this way?
Your body does nothing without reason—everything it does with purpose, including storing body fat. Most often, that reason is for self-protection.
Body fat may not feel protective, especially if you're living in survival. It's one of the most complicated truths to understand in health. Your body will neglect what is healthy in order to survive. But it happens in all of us.
It's why you eat a pint of Ben and Jerry's after a hard day and binge after a period of restriction. Your body does everything possible to help you regulate or rebalance what has become dysregulated. Homeostasis is more critical to your immediate survival than long-term attempts at health.
Of course, that doesn't discount your body's desire to be well. It was designed in health for health, and it's working every day to get there. But it can only do that to the degree you support it with the right environment and nourishment to live well.
That brings to light the real issue in health.
We spend so much time breaking our bodies down trying to prevent, avoid, and restrict things that we neglect what we actually need. In the process of reducing, we limit what our body is capable of.
As long as you break down your body, you'll always miss the actual image of health. That is how all things are working together, including how your body fat is serving a role for your greater good. And the only way to change that is to add more nourishment, energy, and safety so that it no longer has to respond in unhealthy ways.
In the process, you change the entire structure of your body fat, shifting from extra body fat to building muscle.
Body fat plays an essential role in your safety.
Body fat often gets overlooked in a series of basic equations. But the truth is, how much body fat you hold onto is determined based on your nervous system, not calories.
There are many layers to body fat that we don't talk about. Honestly, they're topics we don't even consider. Not because you're to blame, but the health space is. We haven't shown you the complete picture of why your body responds the way it does and, thus, how to change it.
Leaving you believing that Ozempic (or whatever other fad is out there) is the only way to help you shed unwanted weight. But for the majority, that just isn't true.
A quick fix rarely deals with your problems. It only prolongs them.
It doesn't help you identify the reason you got here, nor does it open you up to deal with it, masking the problems until they come back up. Per Ozempic's own warnings, they are guaranteed to come back up.
You have to deal with your metabolism—the very song of our body.
I'm not trying to scare you or induce fear-based ideas that make you fear medications. I'm trying to encourage you. To supply hope that your body is capable of shedding excess weight.
I say all of that to bring you to the point where you can hear me say, in love, why I don't think Ozempic is the answer you are looking for. It's also why I don't believe there will ever be a medication that can fix you. At least not in its entirety.
Healing will always require your body to pitch in and do what was designed. And the only way it can do that is if you provide the right tools and support for it to work.
That is the ultimate goal of health. To create health by supporting your body to do the work it was designed.
Getting skinny will never be the same as getting healthy.
Ozempic may help you lose weight and even reduce blood glucose levels, but it fails to make you metabolically healthy because it neglects the interconnectedness of your entire body.
You can't influence one hormone without affecting them all, which is why weight loss drugs have so many side effects. You might be helping one area, but you end up harming another.
Whether you're taking it or thinking about it, understanding medication-induced weight loss can help you come to healthier conclusions that will healthify your entire body.
Let's start by understanding how Ozempic works.
First, I need to clear one thing up. While everyone calls this new weight loss drug Ozempic, many people are actually using a different drug that has the same active ingredient, semaglutide.
Ozempic was just the drug that brought to light the weight loss effects of semaglutide. However, it was initially developed to help manage blood glucose levels in diabetics. But in the process, they realized a side effect and benefit was weight loss.
Technically, Ozempic is not approved for weight loss. Although some physicians still prescribe it for such. Other medications birthed out of Ozempic, like Wegovy, a semaglutide injection, are approved for weight loss. The only difference is the amount of active ingredient used.
Semaglutide prescribed for weight loss has over twice the dose found in Ozempic. I'll let you make your own assumptions based on that information.
But to keep digging, semaglutide reduces blood glucose levels by mimicking a natural hormone called GLP-1. GLP-1 has several actions:
It stimulates the production of insulin, reducing the amount of blood glucose.
It travels to your brain centers to trigger satiety, making you feel full.
It slows gastric emptying, reducing how quickly glucose appears in your bloodstream and how quickly food moves through your GI system.
Essentially, it's working to produce the effects of a natural hormone in synthetic quantities that lead the body to regulate blood glucose and keep you feeling full for long periods. Reducing the sugar roller coaster and the need to eat.
And it does a pretty good job, like most medications. On average, semaglutide users can expect to lose roughly 15% of their body weight.
But with all that comes downsides, even beyond the listed side effects, which have only been produced from short studies on the medication.
It should be presumed that any synthetic drug that works outside your natural homeostatic balance will always bring some cons.
It's these downfalls that leave me under the opinion as to why weight loss medications have never been nor will ever be a healthy, widespread solution for weight loss, especially in otherwise healthy individuals.
Not only because it misses why your body decided storing fat was the safest option, but it neglects the immense power of your body to regain a healthy state.
It hacks your body instead of supplying what your body needs to thrive. And I will forever and always be under the assumption that the best way to achieve a state of health is to support your body to get there on its own.
You can help it, but you can't change it.
You must think long-term, even if you use it as a quick support. Because, most likely, you won't be using semaglutides forever. Leaving me to explain the red flags I have with using semaglutides.
01. It destroys your gut microbiome.
While the research is new, the interaction between semaglutides and gut bacteria has been negative. But that's no surprise considering the list of known side effects listed on the medications: stomach pain, bloating, diarrhea, vomiting, constipation, excess flatulence, heartburn, and basically every other gastro-intentional issue you can think of.
Anytime we see this level of gastrointestinal issues, we know it is stressful, even damaging the entire makeup of your microbiome.
Remember that your gut microbiome changes your hormonal makeup, immune function, and brain chemistry. Some consider your gut microbiome more influential to your brain chemistry than your thoughts. Research shows the health of your gut microbiome actually influences how you think and the response of your entire nervous system.
In stress, the gut microbiome shuts down the vagus nerve, forcing the body to respond in a sympathetic state, which is a state of stress, storing body fat rather than releasing it.
These are just a few complications with the reduction in healthy gut flora.
Considering how important the gut microbiome is to your health, I would caution you to use anything that puts this much strain on your GI tract.
How your GI tract works is a sign of how all cells work inside your physiology. As they say, you are only as healthy as your microbiome.
02. It changes your brain chemistry.
We already know the hormone semaglutides mimicking GLP-1 hormone acts on the brain to produce satiety. Interestingly, the same action leads to a drop in pleasure.
It's why food doesn't taste as great when you get full. When pleasure decreases, so does your desire, making food unappetizing. In health, this can be beneficial, helping you stop eating when you are full. But in artificial forms, it can reduce the amount of pleasure you feel across the board, with food and all other aspects of life.
Other researchers have started to indicate a linkage between the use of semaglutides and the loss of sexual function and desire. Research in the field of urology has found that semaglutides increase the chance of erectile dysfunction in men.
While the research is not clear, there is concern. Like all things, it's not about removing what you think is hurting you but developing a better relationship with it. It's important to understand that pleasure is not a nuisance in your life. Pleasure provides satiety and even safety, changing the entire makeup of your biology.
03. It leads to nutrient deprivation.
The hashtag #foodnoise has generated millions of hits as people claim one of the best benefits of these weight loss prescriptions is their ability to reduce the time they think about food or obsess about it. Many even claim it makes them forget about eating altogether.
While that sounds like freedom, as I mentioned in the Food Freedom Course, the goal should not be to eliminate food thoughts but to find a healthy relationship with them.
To think about food without obsessing about food.
The reality is we all need to eat. Of course, many people don't eat for nourishment, but not eating doesn't solve your food problems regardless of why you eat. It just exacerbates other issues that stem from not providing the nutrients your body needs from food.
Without adequate nourishment, your body begins to compensate, even breaking down its own structures to provide what is essential for survival.
You won't notice it immediately because your body is amazing at compensating. But eventually, it will hit through small signs like brittle nails, hair loss, acne, tooth decay, and poor skin health, not to mention the internal effects that tend to go unnoticed until the disease hits.
Semaglutides may reduce your food desires, but they do so at the expense of nutrient needs. Without nutrients, you'll never have the tools you need to heal.
04. It breaks down healthy structures.
The structure of your body, or at least what makes up your structure, is arguably one of the most important conversations we can have in health and weight loss. The structure changes the health of your whole, including the look of your body.
Most people use semaglutides to lose weight, changing how they look, but they're relatively unconcerned about where that weight is lost and what other structures are broken down in the process.
All weight loss, even naturally, breaks down more than body fat. All weight loss includes muscle, collagen, bone, and other cells. But in healthy weight loss, the ratio tends to be closer to 3/4 body fat and 1/4 fat-free mass (like muscle and bone).
Semaglutides may help you lose weight, but it comes at the cost of a lot of healthy structure. Structure necessary for a healthy and robust metabolism.
You can witness this as weight loss via semaglutides often causes a shrinkage of large muscle groups like thighs and the buttock as well as in the face and hands, or what is known as 'Ozempic-face.'
This is a massive concern, especially as you understand how important structure is to the body's resiliency. Your physical structure is a metric of safety, physiologically, emotionally, and mentally. A more robust structure produces more resiliency, enhancing longevity. When that structure is weak, you are more likely to develop illness and disease.
Structure should be of top priority when it comes to healing.
Stop neglecting what is healthy to become skinny.
05. It makes you misrepresent your biology, changing your perspective of what it means to be healthy.
This entire post brings up a conversation we've had for decades. How do we, as humans, handle body weight and image?
It's easy to tell you not to fret about your weight, but I do understand that, for some people, it's what separates them from living.
I understand that for many people, semaglutides feel life-giving. Perhaps they even are. I don't doubt there is a real need for certain people to have access to such medications. But for the majority of overweight individuals, it's not a need as much as a desire driven out of cultural fear of body fat.
Living true to the idea that skinny is best.
But that doesn't mean it's healthy. Unfortunately, the more people who use such medications distort the image of what it looks like to be healthy. You could argue the same is true for things like Botox and other physical enhancements. It has created an artificial image of beauty that is impossible to achieve in natural ways.
I want to caution you to be careful about how you view the artificial skinny image. Don't let it change how you view health.
Skinny does not always mean healthy.
Believing the two are intertwined leads to the body war, making it feel like your body is against you. When you believe your body is against you, you have no option but to turn to external ideas to fix you because you can't possibly trust what is in you.
But I need to remind you that your body is for you. The only way to get healthy is to learn how to support it.
I keep repeating the last one because it's easy to miss your body when you're desperate to change it. It's easy to miss that it's always working on your behalf to regain balance.
It doesn't need you to fix it. It needs you to support it.
Support can come in many forms. The most important are nourishment, energy, and safety. The big three are required to change your biology. The three things you should focus on are not only to change how you look but for longevity.
But supporting your body means understanding it, which we often miss in the picture of health, how your biology works, why it works, and what you can do to support it. Influencing the change you want.
It starts by recognizing your body isn't that sensitive! And this just happens to be what I talk about in this week’s podcast, “Your Body’s Not That Sensitive.” Click the Button Below To Listen In.
For now, I'd love to know what further questions or comments you have about weight loss medications. Do you feel like we have a good image of what it looks like to be healthy?
The struggle is real. I don't want to discount or dismiss that, but I come alongside you to show you a new path. These conversations are always more complicated than black and white.
The most important thing is learning how to pay attention to your body, understanding it, and even respecting body fat for how it’s helped you survive.
Here are a few additional resources that help you understand body fat on a deeper level:
I yes, everything Alissa said. This is such a fantastic and caring article! Great job!
This is so so good! Thank you for stepping into a hard space coming from a place of genuine love and care for your readers. You are so knowledgable and I hope others can glean awesome tidbits from this very informative and necessary approach to health, challenging the mainstream ideas and fads. Well done!