The one about the incredible shrinking generation…

Friends are wilting before my very eyes. Some of them are thin people already. I’m worried. I want to know what the future holds if you’re a fan of Ozempic and these diet jabs – so I’m investigating.

Willkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome!

Here’s the tea. In the circles I frequent a lot of people have started to - how do I put this - let the air out. Their bodies have started to shrink before my very eyes. Quickly.

The thing about the Ozempic dieting phenomenon that’s troubling me is quite simple. Most of my friends and acquaintances aren’t anywhere near being Ozempic-worthy-takers. They’re slim set already. There’s no huge need for them to be making daily injections.

Some are taking the drug quietly without revealing it, some are telling me all about it in great detail, some are posting worryingly svelte Instagram posts, others are simply time-strapped and deeply unhappy with their bodies. Then others are actually in need of an Ozempic journey as they’ve struggled with obesity and weight issues for their entire life.

Then there are the celebrities clearly on the drug who are finally starting to admit the fact they’ve been “using”.

Sharon Osbourne looks like a baby bird, Robbie Williams looks smaller than when he was in his 20s, there’s a top male model that looks like he’s violently ill and there are others like Kelly Clarkson who seem to have taken the devout route of secrecy throughout their usage until being forced to admit the fact they’ve been taking it all along. So lame. Before you start, I love Kelly. But no.

Now, as a former journalist who has admitted part of my career – especially at Closer magazine and the tabloids – was to comment, research and write about most female celebrity weights at the time, I’m finding the whole Ozempic conversation highly uncomfortable.

At Closer we’d ask our ‘sources’ to tell us in great detail the weight of a particular celebrity, the amount lost if their lives were in turmoil and then how much certain celebs had put on through their relationship woe’s misery. There were also celebrities who would come to us literally to sell their story about weight loss or weight gain. Genuinely, with some of them they pretty obviously had changed their appearance to get a payment for their “story” and pay their mortgage in the process.

Weight gain and weight loss became a main source of income for some of those girl-next-door girls. They’d set up their pap shots on the beach (usually in Spain in Winter where you could tell it was BALTIC on the beach as they “larked” around for their photographer) and we’d have to pay a lot of money for the set - on top of the celebrity’s fee.

But that was then, and this is now. 2024. What the actual fuck is going on? The Ozempic conversation has felt like a minefield to navigate, and I’ve genuinely wanted to get to know more. Crucially, I want to know the negative effects for the future if you do embark on an Ozempic journey. Because it feels like there are some huge obvious drawbacks which are being ignored by many.  I’m not going to list them all here – you can google, kids.

At first, it was the celebs who seemed to be taking it on the sly. But across the past few months more and more of my friends have either admitted they’re using the diet jabs to swerve hunger pangs or the word “Ozempic” has found its way into my dinner party conversations. It’s beginning to penetrate a generation and I don’t like it.

Also, I’m concerned about where we are as a society. Sure, we’ve been becoming increasingly lazy in every aspect of our lives. That’s a given. But what happened to the past few years - maybe since lockdown - when women were celebrating their curves, talking about being happy from the inside out and generally supporting a more curvaceous form? They weren’t craving being thin. Have women decided to say “fuck it” and admit there’s nothing happy about having curves? Have people in general just decided like so many other aspects of one’s life they’d like to cut a corner? Do people genuinely not give a shit about the health aspects that come with taking Ozempic long term? It appears they just want to be thin and that’s the end of it.

Also, what’s with the high-profile female journalists writing about their usage of the drug to get skinny? And saying how brilliant they feel? Have we not, as a journalist, got some sort of responsibility about how we present these conversations around weight? I think we do. It feels like a lot of morals have been left at the door and the moral contradictions are thriving.

These female writers are the same journalists who just a few years ago were writing about how fabulous it was that the fashion industry had “plus size” models on the runways and that the industry had changed for the better because of the balance in body sizes resuming. Essentially, model sizes being achievable for the readers. Flash forward to 2024 and everyone’s back to being rake thin, clothes hanging off them and generally we are in an even weirder time to be alive.

In a world saturated with the idealism of garnering a quick fix, is there any way of knocking sense into people? I’m not talking about ALL people. I’m talking about the skinny pack who have been doing their jabs across a few weeks and then going back to “normal” eating for a few weeks until they feel they need it again. Let’s call them the maintenance Ozempic-oids. You know, the ones who CLEARLY aren’t getting Ozempic (or one of the MANY emerging appetite suppressers) from their Doctor. Step aside hash, cocaine and heroin dealers, there’s a new drug needed and it’s probably becoming the fastest selling drug on the dark black market.

BTW, this is before you even stop to consider whether the demand for these drugs is leading to fakes being made…essentially meaning you’re injecting an unknown chemical substance into your leg or belly all in the hope of getting thinner.

I’ve been working with a number of fitness outfits across the past decade. I worked with Madeleine Shaw who was one of the original “influencers” and reached the dizzy heights of fame and notoriety online with her healthy cookbooks. I’ve worked with Body Camp, Europe’s top fitness retreat based in Mallorca and now the UK, for over nine years now and they’ve always been about the no-fad aspect of the fitness industry. I’ve recently worked with Kate Rowe-Ham on her menopause book and she’s very much no-fads in her approach. Finally, I still work with Roar Fitness and my great friend (from school days) Sarah Lindsay. She’s a former Olympic Speed Skater and her motto is about lifting to be lean. No shortcuts.

Everyone I work with has something in common – they don’t cut corners. It’s 80% what you fuel your body with (diet) and 20% what you do exercise and fitness wise. All of them, in their individual way, have a method that works for their followers and fans. But they’re all grafters. They don’t believe in the quick fix and shortcuts and in return you get some wonderful endorphins from your physical and mental achievements. 

When I went to Body Camp for the first time after I left journalism it genuinely changed my life. I came back and cleared my entire kitchen cupboard space out and started again. I realised I was mainlining sugar on a daily basis, and it was why I was soft around the edges. TBH I’ve always had a belly – despite being a near-National swimmer and training seven times a week throughout my childhood. It’s just the way I am built in some ways. I’ve never been a porker but put it this way I’m not going to starve if I’ve missed a meal because of work. We have reserves.

Anyway, I digress, I remember going to Body Camp for the first time and leaving a yoga class on day two because they had a tantric yoga expert who was – in my mind – making suggestive groans and I was uncomfortable. I left the class slamming the door like a mentalist. Kate Whale, the Founder, pulled me aside and checked in to see if I was OK. She knew exactly what was going on. She said very calmly, “Dean, what’s going on with your diet. Like, if you’re hungry after getting in from dinner and you’ve had a glass of wine what do you have?”

“A bowl of Rice Crispies, probably,” I replied.

“7.9g of sugar per 100g worth of sugar right there. What’s happening is you’re having a detox from sugar and your mood is wild because of it. You’re not getting sugar like you do in your day-to-day life so you’re freaking out. It’s like coming off crack.”

Kate was right. I’ve not touched a bowl of Rice Crispies since. If you feed your kids shite cereals (Cheerios or Crunchy Nut Cornflakes are pretty much the worst) you may as well be poisoning them or blowing smoke into their face. Sorry, it’s just true. Poison.

This week’s newsletter was always about opening a conversation about Ozempic and these diet drugs that are emerging. I get it has turned into a rant about the whole movement of diet drugs - don’t even get me started on the celebrities with power and influence like the Kardashians who were happily promoting diet drugs and potions for years before Ozempic was even born. Plebs.

So here we go - on Sunday this week I’m going to be speaking to some of the experts I work with for a proper deep dive into these diet drugs and what the future will hold if you continue to use them as you get older.

I’ve already started having these conversations about Ozempic with some of my clients, friends and experts and it’s been interesting what they’ve been able to tell me.

So, stay tuned, my Ozempic deep dive with the fitness experts will be out on Sunday.

Have a question about Ozempic that you want an expert to answer? Shoot over your question below…