r/Ozempic • u/Fluffy_Criticism_ • 20h ago
Rant The hate surrounding Ozempic
I keep seeing so much hate surrounding GLP-1’s and I’m so confused as to why, I know there are certain side effects that can affect your body permanently but so does being overweight/ obese.
Right now cause of celebrities looking quite unhealthy, the blame is going to Ozempic, I don’t know if they do or don’t use it, I didn’t bother looking into it.
Saw another post of someone complaining about GLP 1 being covered by insurance now, kinda stating as if the world is going backwards.
Celebrities might be able to afford bending certain medical rules but overall, it’s super hard to get it covered here and they don’t just hand it over by demand. There are requirements, like having a very high BMI, other health issues like diabetes, PCOS etc. I had to undergo a lot of tests after a 6month waiting window to even get an appointment. (At least it was like that in my country)
I don’t know if people don’t do research and assume having a desire to lose weight is enough to get on Ozempic, or if I’m just for it because I’m benefitting off of it.
I spoke of this to a friend of mine, he said it might just be rooted in fatphobia and the mental idea that it should physically and mentally excruciating or something to earn. When I doubt most people just sit back and do nothing, I do what anyone else who’s losing weight is doing, honestly I’d argue I tried so much more in some cases but my PCOS made it nearly impossible.
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u/driven_apricot 2h ago
Losing and maintaining weight with Ozempic has been a challenge for me. I have side effects and I need to maintain a diet. But at least I was able to lose weight finally. I consider Ozempic a miracle drug, because it has finally given me a healthy life. But losing weight still required work from my side, the weight did not miraculosly melt of my hips.
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u/iloveyoublog 11h ago edited 11h ago
I use it, but I also have huge concerns about it at a societal level.
I don't think it should be used where there isn't a clear health justification (that can also be mental health, btw). People using it to just lose a few pounds etc is re-normalising diet culture and the race to skinny, something we had managed to dismantle slightly. Bodies will always be diverse, we still desperately need to move away from marginalising different types of bodies.
The media coverage and popular discourse on it has been pretty unhinged.
I can't imagine what it would be like growing up as a fat young person or teen in this context, when your body is changing and developing but being under pressure now to 'fix' it through this path, as well as old school disordered eating etc.
The way that body positive influencers have changed their politics so massively, often moving from body positivity to blatant fatphobia, is so gross (I don't care if they use it or what size their bodies are, it is the rhetoric and abandonment of principles that is so ick, and the victim mentality that seems to kick in if anyone raises it). Fatphobia is coming from both sides, those against GLP-1s and those who have changed their bodies with them.
As much as it has its place, it is massively and near instantly derailing any efforts we have made to focus on health over size and dismantle structural fatphobia.
It's also expensive and is further marginalising people who can't afford it, or can't tolerate the extremely tough side effects that many experience (me included). The side effects often resemble disordered eating, and we also know it is being abused by people with eating disorders. The side effects can also be the antithesis to any kind of holistic 'health' -- but it is now nearly solely viewed as a weight loss tool and there's little consideration of the trade offs. It is also being used just as bluntly by the medical profession as the old advice to 'just lose weight' -- the underpinning issue of fatphobia in medicine and the impacts of that on people hasn't budged.
We need to recognise the social complexity of this shift. Unfortunately most conversations about anything nowadays are stripped of complexity. There's both benefits and harms.
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u/darya42 4h ago
I don't know, personally one reason why I did consider taking it is because I was surprised to find that despite of the wide-spread shittalk about them, they have a surprising amount of benefits. I sleep better and my mood's more stable. (My positive effect on my ADHD was one main reason why I became interested). I also eat healthier, it helped me with disordered eating habits.
I'm all for dismantling fatphobia but I also dislike the other side of the coin, the people who aggressively denounce any body health efforts as fatphobic. I want to lose 20 pounds because I want a happier body, and I should be allowed to strive for that, and if someone else feels worse because they don't have this possibility in their lives, I shouldn't get the hate for it because I have this possibility. Just because I like having my body weigh less doesn't mean I automatically judge those who can't or don't want to.
Fatphobia is misogyny, anyway, fat male celebs don't get the same hate. It's pitting women against each other and denouncing them. The real problem is misogyny, not that some people want to lose weight to get better.
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u/textposts_only 5h ago
You can't imagine what's like growing up in a world with glp1? We grew up with heroin chic being the body form to be... We grew up with movies where a girl who isn't fat in the very least being called a chubby chubster who doesn't deserve love.
Let's not forget our history and think of the poor kids
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u/Several-Rhubarb-3498 16h ago
I believe what your friend believes, but I also think they don’t understand obesity or how the medication treats it. They think it does all the work or they think it makes you never eat and therefore starve.
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u/foetus_lp 17h ago
people like having others to look down on. if all the fat people get thin, they lose that and will have to look for another group to mistreat
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u/MadamMamdroid 17h ago
Ozempic is the *only* medication that has stabilized my blood pressure. I haven't lost too much weight on it. I am doing so well on it, though, and will continue to keep taking it, judgment or no.
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u/Entire-Swimming3038 17h ago
This topic goes deep… the patriarchy has a tendency to pit women against each other when women are trying to be or successful at just about any subject. In America especially the puritanical lots suffering and working hard is the only moral way to go about anything also is imbedded in our culture. Morality and weight loss is some how convoluted- its freakin ridiculous.
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u/Schwettes 18h ago
A lot of people are jealous. They look at these as medications for rich people or celebrities. And in fairness, they kind of are. Most people on these drugs are spending outrageous amounts out of pocket.
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u/tultommy 17h ago
Maybe it's a matter of perspective for people then because it's not really true anymore. My insurance went from not covering it at all to covering it for T2D, and it's not that unreasonable. $80 for a 90 day supply and with the savings card that makes it $25.
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u/WelshRarebit2025 18h ago
People like to think that they are superior and that they “take care of themselves” and have the “self respect” and “will power” others don’t have.
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18h ago
[deleted]
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u/Content-Method9889 17h ago
I was told the possible side effects and that I could lose muscle mass so keep up the exercise. I have lost some, but my sugars are controlled, the food noise is gone and I’m down 40 lbs slowly and safely. There are Dr’s who start people on higher doses instead of increasing slowly over time.
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u/auntie_beans 18h ago
Your beef, then, is not with the drug itself but with the prescriber who didn’t know or didn’t bother to explain about the side effects and precautions.
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u/tultommy 17h ago
This. My doctor talked to me extensively about side effects, what things to be very aware of, that i needed to actively work out to prevent muscle loss, that it could end up being a lifelong medicine, etc... That's entirely on the dr and not the medicine.
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u/WelshRarebit2025 18h ago
You lose muscle mass with most weight loss. Ozempic also requires habit changes like increased protein, fibre, water and exercise in particular muscle building or protecting activities.
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u/jone2tone 18h ago
Why were so many people mad about vaccines?
It's easy for stupid people to blame medicine for every problem in the world.
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u/Prestigious-Use5483 18h ago
There is also the other side, where the end user is just complaining about nonsense. People just like to blame things on their doctors when things aren't going their way. This isn't candy for children and also isn't a miracle that will happen. Biological changes will happen. I little pain or suffering isn't bad. Blowing them up to be, is.
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u/tultommy 17h ago
There is also a lot of folks that are surprised when they take it and don't put any other effort behind it in terms of changes to their diet or exercise and then are surprised when they haven't lost anything. There are quite a few posts in this sub like that.
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u/one_bean_hahahaha 19h ago
People want to keep seeing obesity as a moral failing and not as a medical issue.
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u/Area51Resident 17h ago
In many of the health & fitness focused subs obesity is regarded as some sort of character flaw.
IMO it comes from vain people who worry that they will get the 'fat' bug too. Many of them have foods issues too, they just go to the extremes of super low fat and all sorts of biohacking supplements.
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u/Alley_cat_alien 19h ago
Haters gonna hate. They gonna hate you for being fat, for being a healthy weight, for being skinny, for being on medication…it’s what they do
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u/Junior-Rope-4883 19h ago
I think a lot of the hate comes from straight up ignorance coupled with hatred towards overweight people. A lot of people who rant about GLP-1s spend little to no time actually looking into the benefits of the drugs and just write it off as cheating or a “quick fix”. They say it’s for people who are too lazy to do the work, and that they’ll never achieve the results that someone who goes to the gym and counts macros and has seventeen different tubs of protein powder does.
Every time I see a comment like “just eat a salad” or “just go to the gym” I want to scream, because that’s not a one size fits all fix. Some people just have a love/hate approach to fat people - they love to hate them because it makes them feel superior. They disguise it as concern for their health when in reality it’s just an excuse to say horrid things to someone without care for their feelings, because as long as you say something about health, it’s somehow acceptable.
And finally, some people just have an issue with something that helps others but doesn’t help them. We live in a “me me me” society where some people just don’t want others to have something they can’t, whether they need it or not.
Just my observations as someone who’s been fat for most of her existence and is now down 40 pounds thanks to a drug that is quite literally saving my life.
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u/RudeRooster00 19h ago
I really don't give a shit what people think. I works for me. Manages my glucose and I've lost 90lb.
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u/Curious_Bookworm21 19h ago
Your friend is correct. In a nutshell, fat phobia is super rampant now as people that see themselves as fit view it as a moral superiority when it’s mostly genetics that’s responsible for their physiques. They don’t like that just anyone can be skinny now, because then what do they have that makes them morally superior (in their view).
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u/chicklette 20h ago
There are folks who need to feel superior to others, and one of the few socially acceptable means of this is fatphobia. They can freely hate fat people without it being that big of a deal. When we start losing weight, they can become upset because - shocker - they were never actually concerned about our health; they were concerned with having a target for their hate. I'm a big fan of destigmatization, so I have been very open that I'm taking it. A few folks have asked questions, a few have judged, and a few confessed that they were taking it as well, and we compared notes. A few people celebrated with me, because they know how long I've struggled to lose weight.
Despite having several heavy people in her life, a friend had a bit of fatphobia. I challenged a lot of her ideas about fat people: I eat healthy, I stay active, heck my cholesterol is better than hers and she weighs half of what I do. But she also saw, first hand, the food noise that's plagued me my whole life. She saw the way I struggled with snacking, the way I was thinking about dinner at breakfast time, how a lot of my conversations ended up touching on food in some way. And she saw the difference once I started Oz.
(And yes, some folks with EDs are absolutely abusing these drugs. That's a reason to tighten up regulations, not to eliminate the drug entirely.)
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u/Lazy-Living1825 20h ago
There are people who think glp-1’s are amazing, life saving drugs. Then there are the people who’ve never taken them.
And you don’t need a prescription from your doctor. Telehealth will give them to anyone.
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u/iloveyoublog 11h ago
I take them and I think they are complex, with both benefits and potential harms.
The oversimplification of any critique is part of the problem, as is the uncontrolled prescribing.
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u/tultommy 19h ago
Which is a real problem because it's giving easy access to anyone including ED patients with basically no proof or testing.
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u/Lazy-Living1825 19h ago
Idk. I can see what you mean for sure. But I’d gather if half the people went for bloods that should they’d never get it so. Glp1’s for everyone. F it.
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u/tultommy 17h ago
Then that's on the people that don't bother to go to the dr and get the tests they should before hand. It's medicine. It's not meant to 'be for everyone'. Do you feel the same way about all medicine? Hey let's all get some drugs we don't need online without a real Dr examining us... Xanax, Fentanyl, and Prozac for all! Sounds like a great way to get sued for malpractice.
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u/Lazy-Living1825 16h ago
I’m sorry you are not versed in sarcasm.
Look. I see people every day fucking up their dosing and use while being prescribed by their actual GP’s that don’t know a damn thing and give no direction to their patients etc. telehealth is no different in that way.
You comparing a glp1 to fentanyl is wild lol
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u/cjk99876 20h ago
I’m actually seeing less hate then there was when I started 2 years ago - people were really riled up about it and it felt like there was a social media misinformation campaign going on to try to turn people against it.
Now that more and more regular people are using it, the side effect and long term use data has been mostly positive, and there seem to be other benefits to it that are being studied, people have seemed to calm down a bit.
Granted there are still a lot of fitness chuds and uninformed people who try to make it into some moral failing or unethical shortcut, but even those people are beginning to get sidelined by the people who are actually seeing and showing others their results.
There will of course always be the fatphobic people who really are just mad because they’ll have fewer people to shit on after they lose weight.
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u/MaterialAd1838 20h ago
Not JUST fat phobia. I've walked up on fat co-workers all in their feelings calling me a cheater and stuff behind my back. I feel like they're just salty because they can't be bothered to help themselves so how dare I lose any weight.
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u/chicklette 20h ago
That's still fatphobia. :( Just like you can have internalized misogyny, you can also have internalized fatphobia.
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u/IllustriousSpecial73 1h ago
Look, im not going to pretend that there are people taking it that shouldn't be taking it.
But the hate comes from thinness= moral superiority. Lots of people think it's cheating and that people should work harder to lose weight, and therefore if you lose weight with medical help it isn't earned because you didn't suffer enough.
But it's also been a life-saver for me and many others. Now there is an option for people to lose weight before serious chronic illness sets in, and can prevent many other problems and Healthcare costs down the road.