‘It’s an eating disorder’: Kayla Itsines lashes off-label use of Ozempic
Fitness queen Kayla Itsines has slammed the off-label aesthetic use of Ozempic, calling it an “eating disorder”.
Fitness queen Kayla Itsines has slammed the off-label aesthetic use of Ozempic, calling it an “eating disorder”.
The injectable drug – intended to treat diabetes by regulating blood sugar levels – has been co-opted in the last 12 months as a “magic pill” for weight loss, thanks to its ability to greatly suppress one’s appetite and slow the rate at which the stomach empties.
Demand for the drug and its sister treatment, Wegovy, has been so rampant that last year, global supplies of it ran out in most places, including Australia.
At The Australian Financial Review Entrepreneur Summit on Tuesday, Itsines, arguably our nation’s most famous and successful personal trainer, lashed women her size who were taking Ozempic to stay thin.
“They’re like: ‘Oh, well, I just don’t have to go to the gym anymore because it keeps me slim’,” Itsines said.
“But it’s making you not eat. It’s an eating disorder.”
Itsines isn’t the first to flag thin women’s interest in the drug: speaking to The Cutfor its viral story on the topic earlier this year, one stylist observed it was the one’s who “never really have to diet” that were most enthralled.
“Especially for women who have been thin their whole lives – but not skinny, not fashion thin – the idea of touching that without having to sweat [during a workout] is really fun,” she said.
“It’s really fun for them to have their jeans hang off of them like they’re [Gigi or Bella] Hadid. There is an addictive quality to it.”
But, as New York dermatologist Dr Paul Jarrod Frank told The Cut, “anyone who thinks they’re gonna take a shot of Ozempic and it’s gonna cure all their problems, then they’ll eat and do whatever they want, those are the people that are gonna be very disappointed in life”.
“No matter how skinny you get, you may still have your mother’s outer thighs.”
Professor of medicine at the University of Adelaide, and senior consultant endocrinologist at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, Dr Gary Wittert, said that healthy people seeking Ozempic are not only exacerbating its shortage for those who actually need it, but could be potentially damaging their own health.
“They are not aware they might be compromising their health,” he told Financial Review last month.
“They are robbing Peter to pay Paul. They’ll lose muscle and bone mass and when they stop the drug, they’ll put back the fat, and more, but won’t regain all the muscle or bone. This is a medication meant for people with serious health problems, and that’s how it should be used.”
He added that, “in terms of nutrition”, “if these people are eating a suboptimal diet, they are not getting the right nutrients”.
“On the drug, they’ll eat less of that diet which is not going to help them. By analogy, if you drive a Maserati, and you put ethanol blend in your car, and your car doesn’t go very well, putting less ethanol blend in is not going to help the situation,” Dr Wittert said.
In a recent interview with Wired, a scientist whose work in the 1970s helped pioneer weight-loss drugs like Ozempic warned people will struggle to take it for more than a few years because it takes the pleasure out of eating.
“Once you’ve been on this for a year or two, life is so miserably boring that you can’t stand it any longer and you have to go back to your old life,” Professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen, Jens Juul Holst, said.
“What happens is that you lose your appetite and also the pleasure of eating, and so I think there’s a price to be paid when you do that. If you like food, then that pleasure is gone.”
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