At first taking Ozempic was hush, hush. Hollywood’s Secret, as word of it circulated on an encrypted app mostly used for confidential conversations between the enclaves of industry moguls, reality starlets and veteran film producers. Oprah, who had been body-shamed for her weight throughout her long career, at first denied using the weight-loss drug, instead insisting that her 160 pound drop was due to WeightWatchers and her new love for hiking after her knee surgery.
But the secrecy blew wide open when Ozempic made international headlines after going viral on Tik Tok, showcasing eye-popping transformations viewed 74 million times while calling it buddy names like Ozempy, while followers sang catchy jingles and posted creative memes.
Overnight, the rich and famous became comfortable going on national T.V. to show their new bodies and admit to the world that their weight-loss journey was not attributed to plain old fashion willpower but to a new wonder drug. Why, Oprah recently did a whole hour long special on it, finally admitting she had and was still taking the drug, and encouraging others….
As stars stepped forward to publicly discuss their experiences with Ozempic, it sparked a wider public interest in the “wonder drug”. With so much hype, you may feel like you are the last one on the train out of town struggling with your weight the old fashion way…..
THE HAZARDS
I’m not an expert on this topic but I do try to keep up with trends, because my clients and students need me to be as informed as I can be to help them with health decisions, so here goes….
Ozempic is a weekly injection that works by mimicking a naturally occurring hormone that makes the brain believe you are full. Ozempic is the common known name for the drug but is not approved for weightloss by the Centers For Disease Control (CDC). In 2021 it was reformulated and approved under a new brand name, Wegovy. Wecovy contains more semaglutide then Ozempic and is more expensive.
In spite of the shift in name, calling it Ozempic has stuck….
With all the interest everything was barreling along smoothly for the Danish company Novo Nordisk as sales soared overnite to 8.4 billion dollars. Doctors were offered huge amounts of money to prescribe the drug and there were plenty of people in the U.S. desperate to lose weight and willing to take the drug. Tik Tok users still continued to jingle along with the craze and Ozempic looked here to stay as a modern miracle…..
That is, until Jillian Micheals, fitness guru to the stars, went public to de-cry the weight-loss drug. She warned of the quiet side effects no one was mentioning, like diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting, as well as the long term studies discovering stomach paralysis, kidney failure, and intestinal blockage.
Jillian Micheals started talking on every newscast, magazine and podcast about the future of a population on Ozempic, pointing out that, in only 18 months, the body plateaus on the drug. The metabolism finds a new ‘set point’. Meaning your metabolism is slower than when you started the drug. A sluggish metabolism means you can gain all the weight back, and more, if you you go off the medication. Simply put, this is because, without the semaglutide hormonal block, the region in the brain that controls appetite returns back to it’s food craving old self, sometimes more voraciously than before. This leaves any hopeful users hand-cuffed to Wegovy for life….if one can afford the steep price tag of $1,000 a month.(Want to know more? Google Jillian Micheals and Ozempic)
HOW WE GOT TO THIS POINT IN HISTORY
Overeating is a relatively modern problem. Struggling with so much weight is very recent. For so much of history we have struggled to find enough to eat. Anthropologists use the word ‘foraging’ as the most appropriate description of how we humans obtained food til 12,000 years ago.
The next stage was agrarian societies. In many parts of the world, we have maintained a combination of both until quite recently.
The great turning point in our present modern food and weight gain dilemma, with all the health problems that come along with it, can be dated to right after World War II. The War Industry converted it’s peacetime efforts into becoming ‘The American Food Industry’, a giant conglomerate of companies that moved from making tanks to making food. For the first time in our 1.5 million year timeline science took control of our foods. The 1950’s became ‘The Golden Age Of Food Processing’. Since processed foods have no flavor, a vast industry arose in the United States to make processed foods palatable. Without the flavor industry, many of our favorite food items would not exist (and this includes the ubiquitous label ‘all natural flavorings’, often a cover up for MSG and 50 other allowed chemical additives).
The New Jersey Turnpike, the industrial corridor lined with refineries and chemical plants, runs right through the heart of the flavor industry. The flavor industry is more secretive than the Pentagon. Here is where various laboratories and pilot kitchens create whole new flavors and adjust the tastes of well established brands.
These labs are divided up into ‘The Confectionary Lab, for chocolates, cup cakes, cream fillings, frostings, ice creams, ….‘The Snack Lab’, for corn chips, potato chips, breads, crackers, breakfast cereals….‘The Beverage Lab’, making flavors for bottled teas, popular soft drinks, sports drinks, wine coolers and cocktail mixes, all natural juice drinks, even organic soy drinks…….
We cannot point to any other time in history when we have been willing to consume so many substances that would not be considered whole foods.
THE STRONGEST ENEMY IS THE ONE THAT CAN GET INSIDE YOUR HEAD
Now how does this apply to the Flavor Industry? One of the components of inventing new flavors is the study of pleasure centers in our brain. Scientists have become geniuses at the addictive brain model. Hundreds of millions of dollars go into scientific brain study to create flavors that make us want to eat more long after we’re full and can’t eat another bite. Flavors that invade our days and nights. Flavors that sit on nerve centers in the brain and create nagging obsessions and cravings. Many women will explain bingeing as “I knew my eating was not aligned with my values, but it was like I had another me in my body.” You did: the American Flavor Industry.
GIVING THE BRAIN A CHANCE TO RE-WIRE
If you have spent a lifetime of eating foods that were doing you harm, you’re going to have to give the brain a chance to rewire, reset and repair. This will take getting clean. This will mean leaving behind foods created in laboratories, the ones that keep us addicted, overweight and chasing after our health for years. It will mean taking a chance on a new way to eat and live.
Few of us in the Western World have been brought up to trust a diet of, say, 80% Plant Based Living Foods, to nurture and sustain us. I myself was 53, a late bloomer to this new way of eating after struggling with my health for years. When it was brought up to me those many years ago that all of the wild animal kingdom is thriving on living foods, it was almost more truth than I could bear. There are no fat animals in the wild animal kingdom. They are all their own ‘natural’ weight. How had I not ever noticed?
Even as I learned to make raw almond milk and fresh juices, to create homemade fermented foods, to eat dairy free cheese and to alter my lifestyle, it took time to process that I wasn’t going to die from the change. The irony was my body was doing great. It would take time for my brain to catch up.
RELAXING THE EXHAUSTED PLEASURE CENTERS
There is an extra bonus when we eat our foods from pure natural sources. Those exhausted pleasure centers, triggered daily by eating chemical filled processed foods, relax. Our weight no longer yo-yo’s with the ups and downs of our moods. Our food cravings calm. We get to experience what it feels like to be in a body that belongs to us, the one we were gifted with when we came onboard the planet. With time we heal, we become free, we become whole.
But the gifts do not stop there. It’s then that we get to affect the course of history. As caretakers of generations to come, we put an end to the cycle of self hate of our bodies and our relationship to food. For ourselves, our children, and everyone. When we find a way to make our life work, as big hearted people we want to share it with others.
When we give back to our communities, as Holistic Nutrition Coaches, mentors, guides and educators, everyone benefits.
“Because, at Diet For Living School, we believe there is no greater goal than helping people live a long-disease-free life.”
Sending Love And Support As We Go Forward Together
Paula Diana, Diet For Living School
Education That Changes Lives
#ozempic wonderdrug #weightloss #oprah