Each time I open Instagram, it appears to solely take a number of seconds of scrolling for me to be served a put up for a GLP-1 medicine like Ozempic, Wegovy, or Zepbound.
Typically it’s an advert that includes a montage of before-and-after images, together with a clip of a lady boasting about how “life-changing” the drug is and the way “simple” it’s to get on-line. Different instances I’ll see somebody I’ve adopted for years—an acquaintance, a celeb, or a content material creator—posting images the place they’re out of the blue a number of sizes smaller, a weight reduction so dramatic it seemingly wouldn’t have been doable with out pharmaceutical help.
And it’s not simply my algorithm. Our bodies appear to be shrinking IRL too—and GLP-1s are a part of the rationale why. Between February 2024 and October 2025, the variety of American adults who reported taking GLP-1s for weight reduction greater than doubled, constituting roughly 12% of the inhabitants, in response to Gallup polling.
The ever-increasing recognition of GLP-1s bubbles up conflicting emotions for me. On the one hand, it’s none of my enterprise which medicines folks take or what they select to do to their our bodies. Nobody owes me a proof for a way and why they determined to pursue weight reduction, and I don’t suppose it’s all the time problematic.
However then again, it’s an actual mindfuck that it looks like in a single day so many individuals’s our bodies have shrunk to suit a mould that society deems extra fascinating. It’s particularly triggering when the physique belongs to somebody who used to tout self-acceptance and the evils of food regimen tradition.
Maybe I discover this shift notably difficult as a result of, as a millennial, I noticed thinness glamorized and disordered consuming normalized within the media throughout my most childhood and know the injury it might do to our collective well-being. Now that fashionable drugs has made weight reduction simpler than ever, it’s arduous to not backslide and internalize the message that we should always all prioritize being smaller, regardless of the potential dangers to our psychological and bodily well being.
On paper I’m an excellent candidate for the medicines. I reside with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a hormonal dysfunction that’s typically coupled with insulin resistance and makes weight reduction notoriously tough. GLP-1s have been studied and prescribed particularly for folks with PCOS, and the outcomes look encouraging.
My physique mass index (BMI) is roughly 33, and something above 30 is categorized as overweight. I’m conscious BMI has a racist historical past and is a poor measurement of well being (it doesn’t account for muscle mass, for one). However sadly, BMI remains to be utilized in scientific settings, particularly to prescribe GLP-1s.
