6 Reasons Why Ozempic Weight Loss is Dangerous

Shawn Baker did a great video being very reasonable and covering the facts about how using drugs like Ozempic is problematic (see below), Because I am a nutrition and weight loss coach and an eating psychology practitioner, I have already encountered these problems that Shawn talks about in this video and I will add my observations here. These are all based on my observations of clients who have been put on Ozempic and the understanding I have about eating behavior and the biology of metabolism.

First, every client that I have on Ozempic experienced significant weight loss. Great. BUT. Every single one started putting the weight back on after a few months. Uh oh. So here is the crux. Now, they are faced with the decision to up the dose, which increases the risk and occurrence of side effects. This is inevitable. If a person is making no other lifestyle changes other than taking the drug for weight loss, the drug will stop working. Then, upping the dose will cause significant side effects to maintain weight loss.

So here is my position on this: if using this drug is the catalyst for you to make significant lifestyle changes and gives you the motivation to make changes with the goal of no longer relying on the drug at a near future date, great. If you are just taking it to lose weight and are not willing to make any other changes, then you are doomed to fail (and with significant health consequences).

As Shawn Baker eloquently covers in this video, here is how Ozempic works. It slows your digestion, therefore it makes you feel fuller faster. So, basically, it’s an appetite suppressant in the form of slowing the digestive process (which by the way has its own health risks including severe constipation, bowel blockage, acid reflux, and “paralyzed stomach”). So, it’s a calorie-restriction diet in a sense. This is how weight loss occurs.

What do we know about calorie-restricted diets? Everything. We already know about them, so the results of the Ozempic craze are already predicted. It will and has followed the same pattern of calorie-restricted diets. They are a great short-term way to lose weight, if you don’t mind also losing a significant amount of lean muscle mass. But, they are not a way to lose weight long term. Your metabolism will adjust to the “new normal” and slow down accordingly, thus halting weight loss in its tracks. Plus, due to significant nutrient deficiency, mainly in the form of protein, you will lose a significant amount of lean muscle mass. So then, as you begin to gain weight again, you are gaining fat mass and you have lost your lean muscle mass, so then you have the unfortunate double health risks of having high body fat with low lean muscle mass versus high body fat with high lean muscle mass (think Fat Albert versus an NFL linebacker).

I also am highly alarmed by the casualness by which we understand that Ozempic works is to slow down the digestive process. So, we go from telling people to eat a lot of fiber and increase their digestive process to saying it’s okay to slow down the digestive process and there are no problems at all with this? I am sure you can imagine the head-scratching here. I don’t know about you, but I cringe at thinking that the food I eat would stay in my digestive system for much longer than it would if my natural biological processes were working. There is obviously a reason for the digestive process and the way that it works, so why slow it down and think there are not going to be any problems with this? I just feel like my tummy would be so bloated and full of the not fully digested yet foods that I have been eating that are taking twice as long to move through me than it normally does. That is highly concerning.

And I find it VERY hypocritical yet again that people won’t take a vaccine because they “don’t know what’s in it” but are the first in line to pay $950 a month for a weight loss injection and when I ask what they understand is of how it works and what is in it, they say “I don’t care, as long as it works”. We have NO IDEA what the long-term effects of this new drug are, just like those new vaccines. There just haven’t been enough people on them for long enough to know this yet. So, stop with the hypocrisy and be honest and say, “I don’t give a shit about what I put in my body as long as I get the results that I want.” I can respect that, at least you are honest.

I am by no means minimizing how hard it is to lose weight and battle food addiction. Because this is what it is, food addiction. Until we start treating it like an addiction, we will never make headway in this battle with obesity. These people are addicted to food. The cravings are overpowering, extremely emotionally disturbing, and even physically painful, just like any addiction to any other drug. And it’s the only DRUG that we can’t just stop taking. So we tell these food addicts, “Everything in moderation”, or “Just eat less”. We wouldn’t say that to a heroin addict. “Everything in moderation” or “Just use less”. That would be silly, right? But we do it to food addicts. That’s just silly.

I don’t pretend to have the answers to this problem. But one thing is sure, Ozempic won’t work. It will work for a very small minority, but only because it will be a catalyst to help them make other necessary lifestyle changes to be healthy in the long term. For a majority using the drug, this will fall under the category of every other diet, drug, pill, potion, etc. they have ever used before, just another thing that “did not work” because it never got to the root of the actual problem, their food addiction.