Life After Ozempic

I’ve been waiting to write about the latest GLP-1 fad for about a year.

By GLP-1 fad, I’m talking about just about everyone you know taking Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wegovy to lose 50, 25, or even just 10 pounds. People with otherwise normal BMIs, no comorbidities. Women who have jobs, date, vaccinate their kids, think for themselves. People who are proud of being on the drug (see Suzy Weiss’s Free Press article, or Serena Williams’ Superbowl commercial), people who lie about not being on the drug.

I waited because I was hoping the trend would fade, and because I wanted my own reaction to soften. I understood that my aversion to GLP-1s necessitated some serious soul-searching before writing this. Do I hate the fad because I worked so hard to become something else? Because I spent years learning intuitive eating and now there’s a drug that can quiet the food noise in a matter of weeks? Am I against this because it makes my work look foolish and unnecessary? Maybe a little. But not entirely.

So here it is. My thoughts on Ozempic.

I’m a Nurse Practitioner, so I prescribe GLP-1s all the time. Originally designed to treat diabetes—which they do wonderfully, by the way—these medications gradually became weight-loss drugs when researchers noticed one of their side effects: reduced appetite and significant weight loss.

This happens frequently in the pharmaceutical world. A drug is developed for one purpose and then gets repurposed when people notice other benefits. Finasteride is a good example. Originally for prostate issues, now widely used for hair loss. GLP-1s followed a similar path.

And there’s no denying it. GLP-1s work. People lose weight. The food noise quiets. Many people finally feel a sense of relief around eating that they’ve been chasing their entire lives. For someone who has lived with constant mental chatter about food—what to eat, what not to eat, how much, how little—the quiet can feel miraculous.

For decades, weight loss has been this exhausting pursuit involving diets, willpower, and a lot of self-blame. None of it worked particularly well—diets have about a 90% failure rate long term. Now suddenly there’s a medication that suppresses appetite, leads to real weight loss, and is being endorsed by doctors, celebrities, and health influencers alike. Of course people want it.

But there are realities worth acknowledging too.

First, the medication works as long as you take it. When people stop the injections, the weight typically returns. So if the goal is maintaining the thinner body, we’re essentially talking about a lifelong drug.

Then there are the side effects: nausea, diarrhea, fatigue, and muscle wasting among them. When I asked my Instagram followers about their experiences, about half reported significant side effects, many of which eventually led them to stop the medication. Research shows something similar—roughly 50–75% of people discontinue GLP-1s within their second year.

And of course the cost, the lack of accessibility, the absence of long-term studies. The research on some of these medications only extends about two years. That’s not very long when we’re talking about a medication that many people may end up taking for decades.

But the technical concerns aren’t actually the thing that interests me the most. What interests me is the relationship people have with the drug. Because if an unhealthy dynamic with the body existed before taking the medication, it will certainly continue after. It manifests as the urgency around needing the GLP-1. Dipping into savings to afford it. Using it to lose fifteen pounds. Lying about being on it. Or boasting about being on it from a place of defensiveness.

A problematic relationship with food and the body doesn’t necessarily disappear once starting Ozempic, it just shifts shape. And before people get lost in that reverie of glorious, purchasable weight loss, I want to remind everyone that another option exists. Because somewhere in this national excitement about acquiring a smaller body, we’re losing sight of a different path entirely. 

Intuitive eating is often misunderstood as a movement that pits fat against thin, or body acceptance against body change. But that was never the point. Intuitive eating isn’t about staying fat, rejecting weight loss, or pretending body image doesn’t matter.

It’s about building a healthy relationship with food and with your body.

Anything that doesn’t do that, simply isn’t doing that.

When you practice Intuitive Eating, you do the work of learning to listen to your body. You pay attention to hunger, fullness, emotions, and physical sensations. You become less judgmental about those cues and eventually more compassionate toward them. Slowly, you learn to care for your needs instead of fighting them.

Over time your body stops feeling like the enemy. It stops feeling like something you must control before it ruins your life. Instead, it becomes your most reliable communicator. Every time you eat what feels good, you strengthen that relationship. Every time you eat something that doesn’t feel good, you learn from it. The process is gradual and often imperfect, but it builds something incredibly powerful: trust.

This is the part that medications can’t replicate.

GLP-1s may quiet the food noise, but they don’t address why the noise existed in the first place. The issues that brought someone to overeat—the need for comfort or attention, loneliness, anxiety, low self-worth —don’t disappear simply because appetite decreases. Those needs have a way of resurfacing somewhere else. The work of intuitive eating is about untangling those precious needs from food altogether. It’s about learning how to meet those needs directly, with compassion instead of control.

Ozempic will get you thin but intuitive eating will get you well.

I worry about what gets lost if our culture moves entirely toward pharmaceutical solutions for food and body distress. I’m afraid of what happens to our society if thinness becomes chemically available to anyone who can afford it. A world of uniformly thin bodies isn’t necessarily a healthy one for humanity. We’re a universe that thrives on diversity. Without it, the stigma against larger bodies doesn’t disappear—it sharpens. People won’t just be labeled fat, they’ll be labeled poor.

But more so, I’m worried about what gets lost when we stop doing the work of learning to trust our bodies. I want to paint a picture of it before it disappears entirely. 

But before I describe that life, I should say something honest about myself: if this drug had existed when I was 20, I probably would have taken it.

Back then, I wanted the smaller body. I wanted the quiet mind around food. I wanted the validation that came with thinness. If someone had offered me a weekly injection that promised all of that, I doubt I would have hesitated.

But the drug didn’t exist yet, so I had to go through the process. I had to learn to stop fighting my body and start listening to it. I had to build a relationship with it.

Looking back, I’m grateful for that process. Because this is what my life now looks like: I eat well. I move. I don’t obsess over food. My mind is clear. I’m not nauseous. I feel strong and energized and free. I feel my emotions, the warm ones and the rough ones, and I know how to give myself what I need in response. And if I can’t give myself what I need, I mourn that. And then I move on. I know my self worth, and it’s not contingent on my body size. I’m as beautiful as I am, and that is absolutely enough for me.

If this life interests you, the life outside of know that you’re not alone. Our community’s voice may be drowned out at the moment, but we survive. And when the next diet lion roars, we’ll still be here, quietly in the background, laughing, dancing. Eating.