A MAGIC BULLET

“I’ve had to buy all new clothes” exclaimed a great friend of mine who came to dinner the other night wearing fabulous faux leather slacks but having shed the 35 extra pounds she had been carrying on her for years.

Wow, I thought.

“I’m not even hungry,” (double wow) she told me, ordering the tiniest two appetizers on the menu and only finishing one of them.

“I’m on OZEMPIC,”
she freely admitted and has spent the last three months dropping weight completely effortlessly.

“It’s a miracle drug,” she told me.

So why should she or anyone like her spend her entire life suffering to lose weight when medical science can provide a cure? Because a lot of people think that they are weak if they cannot do it themselves, it seems, including one of the most well known personalities and successful entrepreneurs in the world..

Oprah – the woman who, like Cher and Madonna, is so famous that no surname is unnecessary looked like a movie star at a recent movie premier poured into a fabulous purple gown with nary a bulge showing. Questions were asked and she has admitted that she too has sought the help of (unnamed) pharmaceuticals in her historic battle with obesity.

“The fact that there’s a medically approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier, in my lifetime,” Oprah told PEOPLE MAGAZINE, “ feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift, and not something to hide behind and once again be ridiculed for.

In that interview Oprah said that her ‘weight fluctuations ‘occupied five decades of space in my brain, yo-yoing and feeling like ‘why can’t I just conquer this thing, believing willpower was my failing,”’ says Winfrey.

No one would associate failure with Oprah or doubt her ability to achieve. She is a huge American success story. So, if she could not keep her weight down with all the resources available to her (money, personal trainers and chefs) how could any of us? By perhaps admitting that being overweight may not be all our fault.

The website OBESITYCANADA agrees.
“It’s time to stop shaming and blaming people for their weight and start treating obesity for the chronic, relapsing disease science says it is.”

To that point, the website reports that, “The American Medical Association (AMA) designated obesity a disease in 2013. As a result, the idea that obesity is caused by insufficient willpower, lack of discipline, and bad choices began to transform. The headline, “AMA Recognizes Obesity as a Disease” was catapulted across both academic and mainstream media.” So, if obesity is a medical problem, why shouldn’t we treat it medically? With medicine?

Scientists point out that the hypothalamus, which produces hormones that control hunger, could start to malfunction in some people creating unstoppable cravings. Furthermore, there is a genetic, perhaps even predisposition, component to obesity. If your parents are heavy you too may struggle with weight. Sleeping problems have an impact on weight too. Inactivity contributes to weight gain and of course your environment and how you live dictates how you look. These new drugs seem to smash through these barriers to some extent.

‘It’s a miracle drug,” my friend repeated. And a lot of people could benefit.

According to the National Institutes of Health most of our country is overweight.
“Roughly two out of three U.S. adults are overweight or obese and one out of three are obese,” NIH research shows. Given that obesity is one of the greatest risk factors for heart disease, which is our country’s number one killer, why wouldn’t doctors want to provide a “miracle” drug to obliterate what will-power alone has been incapable of?

“I understand that when people stop taking OZEMPIC they gain the weight back,”

suggested a friend with whom I had been discussing the pros and cons of OZEMPIC use. Fair enough. But most people who go on diets gain most of their weight back too and then some – “85 to 90%” according to the Cleveland Clinic. Even Oprah admits that she still exercises religiously and eats well to maintain her weight, and follows WEIGHTWATCHERS (for which she is an ambassador). She makes the point that she looks to weight-reducing drugs as “part” or her healthcare regime but not the sole focus.

I am not trying to be an advocate for Big Pharma, per se, but why look a gift horse in the mouth. I have seen friends and family obsess over a figure that seems beyond them and welcome a drug that could help them be successful. A major drawback is the cost. Insurance will usually cover OZEMPIC if you have type two diabetes which is what the drug was originally designed for but it will cost almost $1000.00 a month (4 injections) if you are using it to lose weight. Hopefully, Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus, all of which help suppress appetite, may see reductions in their costs over the next year or two. In the meantime though they could just provide the magic bullet to not only kickstart a weight loss program but generate a new life as well for some. Who wouldn’t give up a new wardrobe, a vacation or maybe a new car given the chance to spend that money to lose 100 pounds, one friend said to me.

In addition to wanting to improve her health, Oprah told PEOPLE that, she also wanted to stop the embarrassment she would feel everytime the scales tipped North.
Specifically “that she would notice how people
would treat her differently when she weighed over 200 lbs.” An attitude probably described best by Marie Southward Ospina, a writer for BUSTLE.COM who sees this anti fat attitude as “A blatant prejudice for a characteristic that has been deemed aesthetically undesirable, if not physically revolting,” says Ospina.

Weight issues are thorny, sensitive and varied ones to be sure. I hear of so many people who want to be thin rather than those who choose obesity, but Ospina offers a very different perspective entitled AN OPEN LETTER TO HUMANS WHO WANT TO BE FAT. “It just feels right” for her, she says. “It’s what feels right under my clothes. It’s what feels right when I am in a romantic or sexual situation. It’s what feels right when I am naked in front of a mirror.” It’s about your choice says Ospina, who adds, “You get to rock your own unapologetic fatness”

Whatever your personal choice in life is, everybody needs support and help in one way or another. I can’t cut (or cut well) my own hair, for instance. I go to a professional. I can’t cure my lazy thyroid all by myself. So, I go to a doctor and take a pill. If I were sad, maybe I would seek out counseling. Oprah searched until she found what was right for her and she is the perfect vessel for her more compassionate and honest message about the struggle of overweight men and women and their self esteem bashing tendency to feel failure because they can not achieve their idea of success on their own. I say cut yourself a break and take a look at the new options-both medically and attitudinally- the world is offering up. And Good Luck.