The Magic Pills Are Coming. Are You Ready?
Even though I have been rocking this no-more-dieting lifestyle for a bit, and sort of feel like, yeah, I’m getting the hang of it and can even see that one day I will be 100% all-in on body acceptance, I still feel the call of the Magic Pill.
You know the Magic Pill. The one that’s going to make you skinny and help you achieve the body you’ve always dreamed of, the body you deserve after all of the shit you’ve put yourself through to get it.
The Magic Pill isn’t necessarily a pill, although at times it has been.
For many years, it was fen-phen, a popular weight loss drug combo that came to market in the ‘90s. It was great until it was found to cause potentially fatal pulmonary hypertension and heart valve problems and was taken off the market. Many of those lawsuits are still pending.
I used one half of the fen-phen drug combo, phentermine (the one still deemed safe), for a few months under the supervision of a weight loss doctor and did indeed drop a large amount of weight in a short amount of time, but it did not last. One, phentermine is approved for use up to 12 weeks. That should tell you something. Two, my body built a tolerance to it, and as time went on, it was less effective at curbing my hunger. Three, it came with side effects. For me, they were insomnia and restlessness, although there are more serious ones.
I was jittery all the time, even when in theory the phentermine should have been out of my body. When I was taking it, I had trouble sleeping. I spent more time obsessing over my body than at any other point in my life. I was also the skinniest I had ever been in my life, a size 8 or 10 in women’s clothing, but I was still not within my chosen “target weight.” And I didn’t understand what was wrong with me, because I couldn’t get to that weight, even though it was still higher than what I thought was “normal” for most women my age. Going by the BMI, or body mass index, which has been discredited for decades but is still nonetheless the American medical community’s standard for determining “healthy weight,” my target number would have still put me in the overweight category.
It didn’t really matter, because as soon as I stopped taking it, I started regaining weight.
I took a break from it for a couple of years, and then gave it another go, again, under medical supervision. That time around, I saw almost no benefit from it. I’m not even sure I lost any weight. My body still had the tolerance to it.
Right now, if you follow the news, the Magic Pill is going by a few different names. Ozempic, Wegovy, semaglutide just to name a few. There are a few more on the market and many more in development.
These injectables, approved for use by type 2 diabetics (Wegovy is approved for those with obesity), have been found to lower blood sugar and hemoglobin A1C levels — and have helped people drop significant amounts of weight — so long as they keep taking them. To be clear, these drugs are intended for long-term use. Once patients stop taking the medication, studies indicate what you’d expect to happen — they start regaining the weight.
Thanks to their high-profile endorsement from celebrities and influencers, demand for these drugs has skyrocketed in the last few months — and caused massive shortages. Celebs, many of whom are already underweight by society’s standards, are rumored to be using the drugs to drop even more LBs for awards season and high-profile events, reinforcing the message that we’re never thin enough and must be thin at all costs.
And the costs aren’t cheap. Without insurance as of this writing, Wegovy is weighing in at $1,627 for a month's supply. And even the dreaded “Ozempic face,” one of the more common side effects that produces a more aged, gaunt face, hasn’t been enough to curb demand. Neither has a lack of long-term study of these drugs, whose more serious side effects include pancreatitis, kidney failure and medullary thyroid cancer.
“The issue is that this is one of the tools in our box, it is not the end-all. The longest study done on these injections was conducted over less than two years. A lot of questions have not been answered,” said Zhaoping Li, the chief of clinical nutrition at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, who was quoted by Variety in September 2022.
For those of us who have struggled with our weight and the stigma that comes with it our entire lives, it’s tempting to say, “Side effects, be damned!” But are we as willing to do that to our children?
The American Academy of Pediatrics released in January its first comprehensive “Clinical Practice Guideline for the Evaluation and Treatment of Children and Adolescents With Obesity” with overweight and obesity determined by the (again) outdated and erroneous BMI. The guideline recommends “intensive health behavior and lifestyle treatment” for overweight and obese children ages 2 and over, weight-loss drugs for obese children 12 and older, and weight-loss surgery evaluation for severely obese teens 13 and up. These guidelines also go against their previous recommendations on this topic.
There is probably no medical board in the country that doesn’t receive some sort of payout from Big Pharma. But it is important to look at financial and other conflicts of interest, because it can sometimes create bias and prevent objective study of an issue. Researcher Regan Chastain, who writes about weight science, weight stigma and healthcare, dug into the ties of the guideline’s authors to these drug makers. Of the 14 authors who are medical doctors, half of them took money from companies making or selling weight loss drugs. Novo Nordisk, the maker of semaglutide (which is marketed as Ozempic and Wegovy), is also a patron of the American Academy of Pediatrics and has donated $25,000-$49,999 to the organization, along with many other drug makers.
That’s potentially a lot of Magic Pills to swallow.
We live in a culture that tells us it’s only acceptable to be one size — damn the side effects. And if we’re not within that range, we’re told we’re weak, we’re making the wrong choices, we can’t possibly be healthy. But what if our normal — what is healthy for our bodies — is just right of center?
I can’t tell you I won’t chase another Magic Pill. I read the stories and hear about the weight loss on these drugs, and it sets my wheels turning. Despite progress I’ve made to rid myself of my restrictive past — and the limiting beliefs that came with it — I’m occasionally still tempted to say, “Screw it, I can solve all my problems with this one Magic Pill.” Except I know better.