(NewsNation) — Fitness guru Jillian Michaels is warning consumers against the use of Ozempic, emphasizing that the drug is being wrongly utilized as a shortcut for weight loss.
Michaels, host of the “Keeping it Real” podcast, advocates for the importance of a balanced diet and regular exercise regimen as the safest approach to achieving weight loss.
Ozempic is a drug used to treat Type 2 diabetes, but doctors have been prescribing it for weight loss. As the drug’s weight loss use becomes more common, doctors and the FDA are weighing in on the risk risks and benefits.
While Ozempic has been proven to combat obesity, Michaels posed the question of, “For how long?”
“We know you will plateau on this drug. Could be six to eight weeks, a year and a half, could be two years, we know you’re going to plateau; it’s going to stop working. We know if you get off of the drug, all of the meta-analyses show us that you’re going to gain the weight back, and then some,” she said.
She added: “So in my best case scenario for this, where does it go? And the worst-case scenario is stomach paralysis, intestinal blockage, pancreatitis, kidney problems, thyroid cancer.”
Michaels emphasized this ultimately comes down to a “hunger problem, culturally, psychologically, and physically,” as Ozempic facilitates weight loss by curbing hunger, so people eat less.
“That’s what we need to look at. Why are we not satiated? We need to look at the quality of our food, which is absolute crap. You drink 1,000 calories of soda, it’s not going to release GLP-1, which is the satiety hormone that these drugs are mimicking,” she said. “Nobody’s having this conversation.”
Michaels’s message to consumers who are predisposed to obesity and feel their weight is genetically related is that “predisposition is not predetermined.”
“The reality is, you have no genetic disease that will prevent you from weight loss if you can eat less calories,” she said. “Then, they get into this conversation of its disease of the brain. The reality is that it has everything to do with charging insurance companies for obesity-related treatments, which I’m not opposed to, but the narrative does disempower people because it’s like, I have a disease, there’s nothing I can do, and that’s just simply not the truth.”