Woman Embarrassed About How She Lost 45 Pounds Keeps Lying To Her Friends And Family
She fears being ridiculed and mocked if she reveals the truth.
Pixel-Shot / Shutterstock A woman who struggled with her weight since childhood recently opened up about losing 45 pounds. However, she is unable to find joy in her accomplishment due to the shame she feels regarding how she was able to lose the weight in the first place.
The woman admitted that she feels like a “fraud” since she has not been truthful with her friends and family about how she was able to shed so much weight. Now, she is seeking advice on how she should handle the situation moving forward.
The woman confessed to using the controversial weight loss drug, Ozempic, to help her lose 45 pounds.
The anonymous woman shared her story by writing to best-selling author Jane Green in her advice column, “Agony Aunt.”
She first admitted that she has struggled with her weight since childhood. “Despite trying every diet out there (keto, juice cleanse, low carb, no carb ... you name it), my weight has continued to fluctuate in a rather extreme way,” the woman wrote.
“Last year, I reached a breaking point in this cycle when I tried to put on a pair of jeans that simply refused to do up and ended up breaking down in tears in front of the mirror.” Still, she kept her struggles to herself, not wanting to be a burden to her friends and family.
Photo: Natalia Varlei / Shutterstock
Feeling as if she had no other option, the woman sought the help of a doctor for weight loss management. The doctor prescribed her Ozempic, a drug meant for type 2 diabetes patients to help even out their blood sugar levels and maintain a healthy weight.
Ozempic is taken through a weekly injection and increases insulin production in the pancreas to get one’s blood sugar to a healthy level. The drug also contains an active ingredient known as semaglutide, which induces a feeling of fullness and suppresses one’s appetite. Some people who want to lose weight use Ozempic to reduce their hunger levels so that they eat less frequently.
Although the woman claimed that she felt “embarrassed” about resorting to drugs to lose weight, she decided to give it a try without telling any of her loved ones.
She rapidly began to lose weight, eventually shedding 45 pounds after using Ozempic. When her friends complimented her new figure and asked for her secret, the woman told them that she had been “eating healthy, working out, the 'usual' stuff.”
She says that she now “feels great” and “looks great,” noting that she has since “tapered down” her Ozempic use.
However, she has not revealed to anyone the real reason behind her significant weight loss out of fear of judgment.
“The more and more popular Ozempic becomes, the more and more my friends talk about it and trade opinions on it, and judge the people who take it, completely unaware that I'm one of them,” she wrote. “They keep complimenting me on my new body and begging to know how I did it, and I feel like such a fraud pretending that it was just the result of workouts and dieting, particularly when I know how useless those techniques really were for me.”
Photo: Andres Ayrton / Pexels
Now, the woman is considering whether or not she should come clean and finally reveal the truth about her dramatic weight loss — and possibly face being ridiculed.
Jane congratulated the woman on her weight loss and encouraged her not to feel shame surrounding the way she made it happen.
“If you’re not comfortable telling people, that’s your choice, although I don’t believe anyone will mock or judge you, as you fear,” she wrote. “That you used Ozempic is nobody’s business but your own, although as more and more celebrities confess their own weight loss is due to one of these new drugs (Oprah Winfrey is the one that immediately comes to mind), there will be less and less shame attached.”
Jane encouraged the woman to seek the help of a therapist to help get over her feelings of self-shame. She added that if her friends mock her or give her a hard time about using Ozempic, then they were not good friends to begin with and she is better off without them.
“Ozempic reduces your appetite, and deadens the 'noise' around food, so you eat far less. Frankly, that has always been the key, so it isn’t a lie to tell people you are eating less,” Jane points out. “How and why you have decided to do that now is really nobody’s business but yours.”
There is often societal shame surrounding weight loss drugs, especially from those who have no concept of just how truly difficult it can be for some to lose weight.
Weight loss is often associated with willpower and self-discipline. Some people believe that using weight loss drugs implies a lack of commitment or effort on the individual's part, contributing to the stigma. While healthy eating and exercise contribute to some weight loss, some people may need extra help from medication. It is a personal decision that is entirely up to them and not for us to judge.
In fact, more and more people are using Oziempic for weight loss. During the final months of 2022, an analysis of medications revealed that healthcare providers wrote over 9 million prescriptions for Oziempic and similar weight loss drugs.
How people choose to go about their weight loss journey is entirely their business. Reducing the stigma revolving around weight loss drugs involves fostering empathy, understanding the complexities of weight management, and promoting a holistic approach to health and well-being.
Megan Quinn is a writer at YourTango who covers entertainment and news, self, love, and relationships.