Fear and Loathing in Weight Loss: Ozempic crashes the diet scene

by heyimtalkinhere

Body positivity had a nice run. Post the Covid 20 that everyone gained while binging Vanderpump Rules and chugging wine, it had a solid 15 minutes of fame. I work from home and don’t think I’ve worn actual pants for more than four hours since 2020. Unfortunately for me, it seems the zeitgeist has returned to Kate Moss’s heroin chic circa 1995.

Society has always focused on obtaining the optimal female form. This ideal is incredibly malleable, creating industries that can “help” women meet the current standard—capitalism at its finest. A problem is invented, fed until inevitable, and a miraculous solution emerges.  

Below are some effective steps used to catapult body insecurity into a mega money-making machine:

Step 1: Pinpoint/create a pervasive problem 

Obesity is rampant in the US. Affordable and readily available food is often terrible for you, contributing to the never-ending cycle of obesity. Fresh produce costs a week’s pay and has a short shelf life, compounding the problem. 

Step 2: Ensure people internalize the problem

The age of social media means we are inundated with curated images of beauty meant to be consumed as realistic and aspirational. Television and film created a barrier between the stars and us. It made figures to idolize without demanding we see ourselves in them. Things shifted, and creators now seek to build the illusion of a barrier-less society. Celebrities and “influencers” post on the same platforms we do, promoting lifestyles they tout as accessible. I don’t think there’s anything more dangerous than a celebrity whose PR team feels they need to be relatable (without losing their shine, of course). 

Around the time Kim K. was dieting to fit into the Marilyn Monroe dress for the Met gala, my friend DMed me, saying, “We’re fucked, Kim decided to get super skinny”. I immediately felt worse about my body. I can’t continue to claim “curvy”. I’m back to being overweight. It’s not just how we see ourselves that can shift instantly, but how others see us as well. Or how others see us seeing ourselves through the new lens of insecurity. It’s hard to put on the confidence to feel sexy when your self-esteem and worth diminish with every scroll. 

And if you think being body conscious as a woman means you are vain or overly susceptible to influence, look at some data. The Economist recently stated in Can Being Thinner Make Women Richer?,  “For an obese woman, losing weight could boost her salary as much as earning a master’s degree.” On top of obsessing about our weight to be considered acceptable, we are getting skinny to make ends meet! Unsurprisingly, the same correlation of thinness to success does not exist for men.

Step 3: Incentives to overcome the problem 

I’ve never received more compliments than when I lost weight. Unfortunately, these often coincided with less than healthy mental and physical health. I went from a chubby elementary school kid to a skinny middle schooler by obsessively rationing my food. My weight fluctuated in high school, going through stints of counting calories and exercising multiple times a day.

Of course, I tried the same approach post-college but found as I got a little older, the same tactics didn’t work as well (little did I know then that my 20s wouldn’t be nearly as hard as my 30s). It always followed the same cycle of gaining weight when I was depressed or stressed, then getting more depressed until that depression shifted to overwhelming anxiety that killed my appetite enough to start losing weight and getting some positive reinforcement. 

The second time I lost a lot of weight was after college. I was so busy I stopped eating actual meals. I also wasn’t sleeping and was drinking and partying excessively. Since I was young enough to be relatively buoyant, bouncing back after a night out, people assumed I was healthy and thriving. Many of those years were a blur, but such are the sacrifices to “look good”.

Since COVID, I started fresh and adopted a newfound mental and physical health technique involving sleep, hydration, and healthy eating. Although my diet, exercise, mental health, and alcohol consumption have been the most steady and consistent in years, I look “unhealthy”. I believe that is what they call irony.

Step 4: Reveal a singular, miracle solution to the problem

The diet industry is worth $60 billion. Because every diet claims to cure fatness, and it works for a bit until it doesn’t, we are perpetually presented with the next fix. Keto blew up for a while until people realized that primarily eating meat and cheese wasn’t great for cholesterol. But not until a ton of pills, meal kits, restaurants, diet books, food, and more were pushed to all of us trying to lose a few pounds. 

The fusion of tech with the medical world has introduced us to ailments we never knew we had. Remember when people used to think direct-to-consumer drug commercials were weird to have in America (really showing my age here!)? Now, social media feeds are full of posts that diagnose you before roping you into paying monthly for a drug you probably didn’t need in the first place. When I open Instagram, I’m hit with ads for weight loss startups boasting their programs: Semaglutide. Ro.co, Calibrate, Noom, Found, the list goes on. All of them are ready to cure me of my unwelcome appearance.

I’m not sure if you’re aware, but a shocking number of Americans struggled in silence for years with undiagnosed ADHD until the pharmaceutical industry helped tap into the adult market. They’ve aided so many people in getting the correct diagnosis that there’s now a national shortage of the highly addictive amphetamine. Did I mention it completely curbs your appetite? Big pharma really does do God’s work.

Step 5: Make a lot of money charging for a solution that’s only accessible to the elite and all the more desirable because of it

One diet pill subscription company I found costs $100+ a month just to join. The doctors on call, reminiscent of the pain clinics of the early 2000s, are more than happy to prescribe anything to a loyal customer. What they don’t advertise is that the monthly subscription doesn’t guarantee that you will get access to the new wonder drugs Ozempic, Wegovy or Mounjaro. It’s the insurance companies that are less willing to fill your needs.

Wegovy has been approved by the FDA for weight loss (why is unclear, given it chemically seems to be the same as the others). Weight loss, despite doctors citing obesity as one of the worst impacts on life expectancy, is still considered a “cosmetic” health concern. All this adds up to the fact that Wegovy goes for about $1500/ month WITH health insurance. Meanwhile, Ozempic and Mounjaro (both sold as medications to combat diabetes) are covered for a mere $25/month, as long as you qualify. Sounds like a deal! And the reason why people are being accused left and right of Ozempic face. However, this is nowhere near as bad as being called thick when sitting comfortably at a very average weight. 

The fucked conclusion:

Thinness has been my life’s mission ever since I was young, and my grandmother shared the adage “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels (used by my grams but popularized by Kate Moss)”. Compounded with living in a city full of literal models and desperately wanting to achieve a high level of success in my career, I’ve reached near desperation to get my hands on the exclusive weight-loss injectables. Unfortunately, my insurance won’t approve me unless I get actual diabetes, and I haven’t yet reached an economic status with a significant disposable income (most likely because I’m not skinny enough). 

So, in summary: the diet industry is fucked. It was invented to keep women down while funnelling money into the oppressors’ pockets. Yet dieting and the need to be thin is so pervasive that, despite this knowledge, I’m literally “bought-in”. On that point, I’m wondering, does anyone have a hookup for some cheap Ozempic? Asking for a friend…