A Few Things | June 18
Reactions to my essay and further thoughts on Ozempic.
More Thoughts on Ozempic
It’s been almost a month since I wrote the newsletter about Ozempic. Here are a few things I’ve observed since then:
-I’m not the only one thinking about this.
I just saw this IG Reel this morning about micro-dosing these medicines, not for weight-loss, but for regenerative purposes.
I was also sent this Reel about certain investment stocks that are losing value because of the effects of these drugs. (Be aware: I don’t like this one as much, because it seems very obesity-focused.)
Related to stocks losing value, there are careers focused on weight loss and nutrition — often small businesses or solo entrepreneurs — that are also feeling the effects of more people using these drugs.
-Reactions to my newsletter have been mostly (but not totally) positive.
Since the day the newsletter was published I’ve received upwards of a thousand messages from women sharing experiences about using these medications. It’s like taking that original instance of a phone call with me (that I wrote about) and multiplying it hundreds and hundreds of times. It feels like confirmation that this is really a new phenomenon that we are experiencing as a culture.
One thing I feel bad about: A couple weeks after publishing the newsletter, I cut the essay down by about half so that I could share it as an Instagram post. Apparently the shorter edit made people notice the word ‘productivity’, and the word stressed some people out. Prior to the edit on Instagram, no one had mentioned productivity in response to the essay so I hadn’t been careful about replacing that word when I made the edit.
In the full essay, I think the use of the word ‘productive’ communicates the idea that freed-up brain space allows us to work on new and exciting projects and ideas that are personally valuable to us. But in the shortened version, it seems to communicate productivity as in being a more-productive-cog-in-the-capitalist-machinery.
I should have used another word, and I’m sorry that I stressed people out and communicated poorly.
-The responses are worth reading.
Some of the messages related to this topic came as DMs, and I don’t have a good way to share those, but the rest are publicly available. You can find dozens on the newsletter and hundreds on the Instagram post.
-Thoughts on ‘addressing the underlying cause’.
One recurring criticism I’m seeing about these medications is that they ‘don’t address the underlying cause’ and that people who are taking these drugs specifically for weight-loss should be focused on things like childhood trauma, or quality of food instead. I find myself disagreeing with this idea. While I would be happy to hear people had the help they need to deal with childhood drama, and had easy access to delicious food, I don’t think we need to assume every issue in our bodies comes from an ‘underlying cause’. Sometimes the problem we’re dealing with is the problem.
We know bodies are amazing and vary widely. Some people have bodies that don’t produce insulin, or have very poor vision, or have hormones that misfire, or brains that don’t communicate satiation, or are missing a limb or an organ — not as a side effect of an ‘underlying cause’, but just because that’s the body they’ve got and that’s how their body works. As a society, we try to come up with medical interventions that can help address these issues, and that’s great!
We don’t seem to feel the need to ‘address the underlying cause’ when someone needs glasses, and I don’t think we need to ‘address the underlying cause"‘ when someone is using Ozempic. Our cultural fatphobia runs deep, and we approach size and weight as a moral issue instead of physical one. But really, body size is more analogous to other physical attributes we don’t choose — like height or eye color or hair texture — and very far from being a moral issue.
-There are changing fears about these medications.
For quite awhile, scarcity seemed to be the biggest concern raised about these drugs. People were worried that people using them to manage diabetes couldn’t get them, because people using them to manage weight loss were using up supplies instead.
I have no idea if that was actually what was happening, but I haven’t heard that concern much lately, so maybe supplies are starting to even out, or maybe people are using off-brand options from compounding pharmacies instead.
The fear I hear the most about lately is loss of muscle. People who are using these medications have made a point to tell me how they are trying to be careful about protein intake, and doing weight-training exercises.
I’m sure other fears will surface as more and more people experience these drugs
-Have your thoughts on these medications changed over the last year?
Personally, I find the conversations around these drugs really compelling and am trying to stay tuned in to news about these topics. How about you? Are you still curious about these medications? Or are you sick of hearing about this stuff and wish you could block it out?
Teen Reactions to Ejaculate Responsibly
Something fun and unexpected: Ejaculate Responsibly is on major discount at Amazon for $6.99. That’s the best price I’ve seen! I have no idea how long they’ll run this sale — in fact I didn’t even know about it until someone noticed the great price and DMd me on Instagram. If you’ve ever wanted to pick up a copy, now is a great time.
I mentioned the discount in my IG stories, and I’ve been receiving so many amazing messages in response. Here are a few:
Those messages made me so happy.
Grab a copy for a graduate! For your local Little Free Library! Send one to a politician who needs to shift their thinking — local, state, or federal. You could get one for your high school's coach, or the health teacher. Are you a urologist? Keep a stack at your office to give out — this book is guaranteed to increase your vasectomy appointments. Or order copies for your book club or women’s group. It's a quick read and leads to excellent and important conversations.
Don’t miss out on the $6.99 price!
That’s all for now. I hope you’re having a wonderful day. Feel free to comment on anything I mentioned above, or whatever’s on your mind. And thank you for the parenting book pre-orders!
kisses,
Gabrielle
Thank you again for such a thoughtful look at these medications. As a person who has been in psychotherapy for my entire adulthood (I’m in my mid-forties now) and much of my teens, I can say with confidence that addressing the “underlying causes” of obesity is not enough. So many of the “causes” these people refer to are problems with society at large, not just our own family or childhood experiences, so it would be nearly impossible to escape those. I also think that this rhetoric just feeds into the “you shouldn’t need help, and if you do, you’re a failure” that is pervasive in modern society.
I have also been trying to lose weight my entire adult life (and much of my teens). There’s a history of obesity in my family, and I don’t know if that indicates a genetic component or not. All I know is that after decades of exercise and diets, anytime I *have* lost weight, I have also gained it back. Perhaps people who have never been obese don’t really understand that weight loss for someone like me requires a *constant* and unending amount of effort, both physically and psychologically. It requires policing oneself, always chastising and feeling guilty about one’s own desires. Every time I have gained the weight back, I have been more and more demoralized, and I know that’s common. It becomes harder and harder to do the work when it feels Sisyphean. The mental freedom I have felt from my time (4 months) on Wegovy has been an immense relief, akin to how I felt when I first started taking anti-depressants and realized I didn’t *have* to be depressed all the time.
Three decades of therapy to address childhood trauma (and yes, I’ve tried many modalities) and three decades of feeling like a failure because I couldn’t keep the weight off… and in just the first two weeks of semaglutides, I immediately began not only losing weight but also this incredible emotional and psychological freedom. Anyone who doesn’t believe that people deserve that chance, regardless of their background, probably has some issues of their own that could be addressed in therapy. ;)
I just wish women didn't feel like they needed a drug to either lose or weight or free up brain space. I say this as a 53 year old who's been fat for 25 years. I've never dieted. I don't always love my body, but I mostly have other things to obsess over. I really can't imagine feeling the need to take Ozempic or anything similar.