Oprah’s embrace of weight loss drugs could tip scales

IN A sign of her stature as a cultural powerhouse and possibly the world’s foremost influencer, Oprah Winfrey had no sooner announced she was stepping down from the Weightwatchers board than shares in the company plunged by 29%. It was a fresh blow for a company already struggling to compete with Ozempic and other popular weight-loss drugs, but not exactly a surprise given how the talk show queen recently admitted to using weight-loss drugs as a ‘maintenance tool’. Where Oprah leads, others follow.

Oprah’s conversion may well mark the tipping point away from the tried and trusted and, some would say, torturous and ultimately unsustainable diet and exercise models for weight loss, to mark the arrival of a chemical solution into the mainstream. Weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, which is used against diabetes, have side effects and are life long drugs.

Sharon Osbourne has spoken about the so-called ’Ozempic face’ where facial skin sags and looks older because of the rapid weight loss. But that is probably the least of it. Some EU countries have banned Ozempic for weight loss treatment. America allows its close relation Wegovy, which has the same active ingredient as Ozempic, for weight loss. In this country, the HSE reimburses weight loss medications for patients with complicated obesity.

ACCORDING to Professor Donal O’Shea, the days of fighting obesity the old way by joining the cult of points plans, weight-loss branded products and recipes is over. Weight loss drugs are a game-changer for about onethird of obesity sufferers and that will increase as more come off patent and cheaper, generic drugs come on stream.

Operation Transformation’s dietician Aoife Hearne quit the show after nine years because she said that ‘telling people who meet the clinical criteria for obesity to ‘eat less and move more’ is not just outdated, it’s unethical’.

The tide is turning. Not only that but the wonder drug’s ability to also curb cravings for alcohol suggests that the admittedly far less profitable 12-step programme from Alcoholics Anonymous could also become redundant at the altar of instant gratification.

The psychology of AA’s 12 steps, and the science of calorie counting and burning may be sound, but they don’t succeed without abstinence and self-denial, practices steeped in spirituality and religion rather than the logic of science.

As we strive for our ideal weight by adopting the selfdenial of monks and avoiding ‘triggering’ situations, it can feel that we are being punished for the overindulgence and lassitude that led to us piling on the pounds. We are fallible so we relapse into bad habits and must begin all over again.

Human nature alone turns us into a reliable supply chain of repeat customers for the multimillion euro diet and fitness industry. Until now. Weight-loss drugs give us a route out of that quicksand of shame and guilt. We no longer have to metaphorically head out into the wilderness for 40 days or mortify our flesh in the desert.

Thanks to modern science our addictions become a health problem treatable by medicine not by a tasteless weight loss ready meal, the ritual embarrassment of the weekly weigh-in and another spell of yo-yo dieting.

The diet industry will never seem as brutal as the ancient practise of blood-letting, whereby physicians put leeches on their patients’ bodies in the belief that would cure them. But it may shortly seem as pointless and self-defeating. Let us count down the days, not the calories.