"Why I'm Ashamed Of Using Ozempic"

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BY ANONYMOUS

I’m an over-sharer by nature. I’ll happily talk about sex, trauma and bodily functions, and I don’t even need alcohol to go there. But when it comes to admitting I’ve started using Ozempic, I’m not sharing at all. The reason I’m not talking about it, either with close friends or family, is that – frankly – I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed of how people will see me: that by taking this medicine I’m taking the easy way out, or a shortcut, or they’ll think I’m stealing from people who “really” need it.

And I’m also a bit ashamed of my own self-judgement. I see myself as a bit of a cheater, and definitely a failure. As someone who says they’re all for body positivity, but actually wants to lose weight – for aesthetic as well as health reasons. As a mother who is desperate to model a healthy attitude to food for her daughters, who doesn’t want them counting calories obsessively as teenagers, but who is also secretly injecting herself in the bathroom when they go to sleep.

Ever since Ozempic first entered public discourse last year – around the time Kim Kardashian et al started looking suspiciously thin – any discussion about it has been threaded with judgement. A semaglutide that works by making you feel full, Ozempic was originally designed to treat Type-2 diabetes. So when its weight-loss benefits hit the headlines, prompting a worldwide shortage, those of us who were using it for non-diabetic purposes were suddenly the target of a whole heap of criticism. After all, why couldn’t we just eat less and move more to lose weight? Why were we taking drugs from people who really needed them?

I haven’t lost piles of weight – after five months, I’m six kilos down. But my blood glucose levels have reduced by a third, which my doctor says is an excellent result. For the first time in my life, weight loss has been straightforward. Not easy, exactly, but not a Sisyphean struggle.

The decision to use this 'miracle' weight-loss drug has proved hard to justify for this writer – even though it has changed her life. Read the full article at PRIMER.

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