It's wild, I talked on stream about a month ago about people abusing Ozempic, a perscription diabetes drug, for the purposes of rapid weight loss, but a major article just dropped about it and the entire article is just one giant documentary on the normalization of eating disorders in the United States.
Ozempic (and other "GLP-1" drugs) prompts your body into a repellant response towards food. As in, the thought of eating food makes you feel disgusted or sick, and eating food can often make you feel nauseous while on the drug.
The article explains how diabetics who NEED the drug are severely struggling to get it because so many people have requested prescriptions to help them lose weight, and that there is an entire class of people who all have no appetites because they're all getting weekly injections of Ozempic or similar drugs. They cant stop taking Ozempic because they will immediately regain the weight because the way the drug works is to MAKE FOOD REPELLANT TO YOU and when that effect goes away, none of your habits have changed.
The long-term side effects of Ozempic aren't heavily studied and its generally prescribed because, for diabetics, the effects can be life saving and are almost assuredly less dangerous than the negatives of diabetes.
And yet all over the country TONS of people are rushing to take the drug as a miracle cure for body fat, and reading the way people talk about it in the article...they literally talk about it as if the drug is purging them of sin.
The American psyche is so fucking broken.
I was barely chubby as a child and was ruthlessly bullied for it even by family members, so at this point I am well aware that people consider me a monster for being fat. Sometimes I feel like I don't always deal with the pain from that or the internalized fat hate all that well, but this article has reminded me just how far ahead of the pack I am.
American culture treats psych meds like they're the devil, they treat HRT like its this sinister injection you have to rely on forever, and yet you dangle weight loss in front of them and all of a sudden they're signed up for life no matter the cost, even if they're sick from it every day.
Americans hate fat people (themselves, usually) so much it literally breaks minds.
The article: https://www.thecut.com/article/weight-loss-ozempic.html
@DemonMama A great podcast to learn about anti-fat bias where they also debunk research quite often and talk about diet and wellness culture is "Maintenance Phase". I always recommend that podcast if people want to learn more about how we got here. https://maintenancephase.buzzsprout.com/
