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Structure stock surges on "compelling" mid-trial results

Source: Artem Stepanov / Shutterstock.com

Structure Therapeutics (NASDAQ:GPCR) stock is surging today, up 60% after the biotech company reported promising results of its mid-stage trials for its weight loss pills.

Indeed, after 12 weeks, patients on the treatment lost an average of 6.2% of their weight, with one-third of patients losing more than 10% of their weight. This is comparable to Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) oforglipron pill at roughly the same point of its study.

However, this came at the cost of vomiting, which almost 66% of Structures patients experienced. According to the company, however, tolerability for the treatment improved over time, with no patients experiencing liver toxicity.

Perhaps most notable about Structures treatment is that its considered a small molecule pill. Small-molecule drugs are notably easier to produce than large-molecule equivalents, which presents numerous benefits for patients and manufacturers alike in the supply-constrained weight loss industry.

Our large-scale manufacturing process is expected to be more than capable of meeting the anticipated global demand of a product, said Structure Chief Executive Raymond Stevens in a statement.

As it stands, Structure remains a small fish in a large pond. Many analysts assume Structure will eventually partner with a big-name pharmaceutical company to penetrate the biotech market more effectively.

This includes JPMorgans Hardik Parikh, who believes there is a very high probability Structure will ink a deal with a larger biopharma company within the next few years.

There are surprisingly few major players in the obesity drug industry today. Indeed, just two companies, Novo Nordick (NYSE:NVO) and Eli Lilly, control most of the market. Many predict the industry is primed to explode over the next decade, with companies like Structure primed to enter the fray with their own weight loss drug.

As such, the jump in GPCR stock today can be seen as a bet that Structure will pursue a partnership of some kind. GPCR is at $54 per share at the time of writing, its highest level since December 2023. It is still somewhat below its all-time high of $75 per share, recorded on Nov. 5, 2023.

On the date of publication, Shrey Dua did not hold (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.comPublishing Guidelines.

With degrees in economics and journalism, Shrey Dua leverages his ample experience in media and reporting to contribute well-informed articles covering everything from financial regulation and the electric vehicle industry to the housing market and monetary policy. Shreys articles have featured in the likes of Morning Brew, Real Clear Markets, the Downline Podcast, and more.

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Structure Therapeutics (GPCR) Stock Soars 60% on Weight Loss Drug Success - InvestorPlace

Caroline Stanbury is speaking out about her use of Ozempic.

The Real Housewives of Dubai star, 48, said in a recent episode of her podcast Uncut & Uncensored with Caroline Stanbury, that she used Ozempic to lose weight during a midlife crisis she experienced at 45.

In a video posted from the episode on Instagram, Stanbury said, After 40, we all know, its very, very hard to lose weight. But I met so many 40-year-old women going, How have you done it? And I dont want to lie to you I used Ozempic, which I think is one of the best tools if youre able to use it.

What did Kate Moss say? Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. Theres something to be said for that, added Stanbury.

Ozempic is a type 2 diabetes prescription drug used popularly for weight loss in Hollywood. The medication is a brand name for semaglutide, found also in the clinical obesity drug Wegovy, which is a GLP-1 receptor that helps reduce appetite.

Speaking about their nutrition balance outside of these aids, Stanburys husband Sergio Carrallo explained on the podcast, We try to maintain the balance if we have a big dinner we try to just fast a little bit until breakfast.

He then told Standbury, From a professional background in sports, I think youve found your balance now.

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Stanbury's detailing of her Ozempic usage comes after she documented her painful recovery from a facelift last year on social media.

The Real Housewives star shocked fans as she appeared bruised around her eyes with a swollen face and bandages wrapped around her head in clips posted by Carrallo on Instagram as she returned home from her facelift surgery in November 2023.

Carrallo said it was one of the hardest moments of my life in the footage as his wife was seen barely able to move at home and resting in bed following the surgery.

Seeing the person that you love with all your heart suffering and in pain how she was it was very hard, he wrote on Instagram. As a husband, I will always support her and be here for her and as much as I was against it, she really wanted to do it. So, I was there for her, supporting and helping her day to day."

Stanbury appears on season 2 of RHOD, which premieres Sunday, June 2 at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo. Season 1 can be streamed in full on Peacock.

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'Real Housewives of Dubai' Star Caroline Stanbury Used Ozempic - PEOPLE

STAT teamed up with Word In Black, a network of 10 Black news publishers, to report over the past year on the impact of new weight loss drugs on Black America.

When was the last time you thought about your weight?

If youre like most of us, it was probably today while getting dressed.

In the United States, youd think the greatest achievement in life is fitting into a smaller clothing size. We praise people for their efforts to lose weight, no matter the cost. And the societal obsession with weight loss has only gotten stronger with the arrival of Ozempic and a new wave of anti-obesity drugs. GLP-1 drugs started as treatments for type 2 diabetes and have since been approved for obesity and heart disease all chronic conditions more likely to affect Black Americans.

But to think about taking the expensive drugs means grappling with affordability and access, as well as centuries of oppression, systemic discrimination, and monitoring of Black bodies. Its not easy being Black and living in a larger body in a world that worships whiteness and thinness. So, we wanted to hear voices from the Black community about living in the age of Ozempic.

How do Black people feel about their health, the new obesity tools, and the relentless pressure to not be fat?

Word In Black and STAT surveyed and conducted extensive interviews with more than a dozen people nationwide. We wanted to get as many voices from the Black community as possible, but it became clear that the burden to lose weight falls far more often on women.

They spoke with brutal honesty as they shared their journey with weight loss, and their encounters with family and a medical system rooted in anti-Blackness.

Here are their stories in their own words, edited for brevity and clarity.

Sudi Kamose, Dundee, Fla., 33, teacher

I was at home and my moms co-worker came over and asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said a model. She said, you cant do that unless you lose weight and then my mom agreed.

That has stuck with me since, and those dreams were gone because I kept gaining weight. That memory started everything I was 10. I struggled with disordered eating. Since age 11, I would go on diet after diet. It took me until, like, two years ago, to realize what I was doing was very disordered.

In 2020, I went to the doctor because my heart rate was high, and it was skipping a beat. The cardiologist said my heart was fine but that Im too large, and that its putting a strain on my heart. He said I needed to cut everything that I was eating in half. At this point, I was barely eating. I tried telling him my diet consisted of cereal he didnt believe me.

I told him I dont know what I should be eating. Im also on antidepressants. He said, it doesnt matter what you eat, you just have to cut everything in half. The cardiologist said, You cant be happy if youre overweight, I dont care what any of them say, theyre not happy.

That experience at the doctors office pushed me to be where I am now. He used my depression against me, and that was wrong. I never went back. I only got the courage to write a complaint in February of 2023.

Theres definitely a racial component to it. The way we as a society started to pathologize fat bodies or stigmatize them, is because its further away from whiteness. I think doctors need to recognize theres always been body diversity. And this is an issue because people are trying to profit off of our pain and our suffering.

The journey to being diagnosed with PCOS [polycystic ovary syndrome] was a very long one. I went to the doctor after I noticed I was gaining weight. I kept trying to lose weight and of course I wasnt believed. My diagnosis came when I had my period for three months straight. I did not want to go to the doctor because I was so afraid they were going to tell me it was my fault. Which happened anyway.

I finally went because I was bleeding so heavily, I could not work. I had to have someone come into my classroom so I could go and change my pad like every hour. Finally, I went to the gynecologist, and at 25 they diagnosed me with PCOS. Because of insulin resistance, that could be the cause of me gaining weight. And I realized it was not my fault, even though they kept telling me it was my fault.

It was a roller coaster of emotions, to lose weight and not lose weight. It really contributed to my depression, because its upsetting when you have a goal and everybody in the world is telling you, you are wrong for existing the way you are. And youre trying to change it but its not changing.

Moving forward, Im learning to dismantle my own internalized fatphobia and continue accepting myself. I still struggle with my ideal body type and what that would look like. My end goal is to understand that despite what body I reside in, I am still worthy of pursuing happiness, joy, and having fun.

Alishia McCullough, formerly of Carolina Shores, N.C., 29, licensed clinical psychotherapist

As a teenager, I dealt with a lot of restrictive eating. Sometimes it would mean eating a can of fruit a day or grabbing snacks throughout the day. I didnt have a lot of education or awareness about my body.

At that time, I would hear negative connotations about Black food, being labeled unhealthy or unclean. I started to internalize those messages and thought the way my family cooks and eats isnt acceptable. So I followed very rigid and restrictive diets as a way to modify my body the ideal was to be thin.

Now, Im so much more intentional about how I respond to my body. I dont look at food as good or bad. More so, what does my body need to feel nourished?

It wasnt until I got into graduate school where I learned the term eating disorder I could resonate with that experience. In grad school, I interned at a counseling center where I started to help lead their eating disorder support groups. But I noticed the training was through a white lens. I had to work with clients with a diverse background to learn that the BIPOC experience is different.

The medical field uses BMI to equate weight with health. But theres lots of research to show that BMI is a made-up construction the purpose was to see what the average white man looks like. That instrument got adapted into mainstream society, when insurance companies figured out they can use it as a way to increase peoples premiums, recommend weight loss surgeries and medications and quite honestly discriminate against certain patients.

In my household, we grew up watching My 600-Pound Life or The Biggest Loser, with constant messages from the media showing that fatness is bad, fatness is disgusting. The premise of these shows is this idea that these people are thin, lovable, desirable people within a fat body. And if you can burn off all the fat, you can uncover the person within.

A lot of our bias is coming from these media messages. When people say youre fatter and more likely to have chronic illness, I challenge back and say, do thin people also not experience chronic illness?

The way we define health is so limited. Our mental health and stress go into our health concerns. Were seeing higher rates of health issues in Black communities but a big part of it could be that we have been exposed to so much chronic stress over time, that its manifested into health issues that we dont see in other communities. I think it is a result of living in these very racially high-stress environments, and its been passed through generations. When we look at health, it does need to be more expansive healing our culture systemically and culturally can play a big piece too.

Its not actually the fat itself that makes people unhealthy. A lot of times its the fatphobia and weight stigma they experience when they go to a health care provider. If folks go to their provider and know theyre gonna say all these negative things about their body, they are less likely to see a medical provider.

Ive heard so many stories of folks being dismissed because a provider blamed everything on a persons weight.

Fatness was not labeled as unhealthy or bad until Black folks were enslaved. Body size became a way of creating a culture of hierarchy around human worthiness. And it became this whole messaging around Black people being gluttonous, or promiscuous, and all these things associated with the Black body.

Our medical system could benefit from seeing people as experts on their body.

As Black women, theres so many layers in our relationship to our bodies. On one hand were lifted up as the standard, we see that with the [Brazilian butt lift]culture, and on the other hand, were being degraded and hypersexualized.

One of the things diet cultures promote is thinness at all costs. Youd rather be thin and dead than another size and alive.

Jonathan Gustave, Orlando, Fla., 38, licensed marriage and family therapist

Ive been overweight my entire life. As I got older, I realized that losing weight had a lot to do with how I saw myself. I felt that if I didnt lose weight, Id be less than a person and less than acceptable in society.

My relationship with food has been very terrible. As a child, my father abandoned my mother and I, in a cold basement of Chicago. Then, my mother disowned me, she left me in the hands of my grandparents, she never came back for me.

And my grandmother suffered with a lot of depression after my grandfather passed away when I was 5 years old. There was a lot of abandonment and neglect in my life from the time I was born, until I got married and had my own family.

Ive learned that every single human being desires connection, in some way. So, in the times that I was bored, lonely, and frustrated as a child, I found comfort and connection with food. It just became a crutch for me, because of the lack of connection that I had with family members.

I was recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in August 2023, and I was forced to change my diet. I also have more love in my life my wife and my kids. So, I do my best to connect with them, so that I dont seek that connection and comfort from food. But its difficult because Ive been operating like this for 37 years.

Funnily enough, people have never said that I was overweight. But thats because Im 6 feet 8 inches, my weight now is like 335. My weight has fluctuated from 320 to 365 throughout my adult life.

My primary care physician suggested that I get on Ozempic. Now that Im type 2 diabetic, if I stay in this range, the cascade effects of losing a toe, foot, going on dialysis, and kidney failure has me more focused on my body being healthier.

Tigress Osborn, Phoenix, Texas, 49, executive director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance

Theres an increasing discussion around the idea that obesity is, in the words of obesity experts, a complicated chronic disease. There are many people who are resistant to the framing of obesity as a disease, and its not because we are in denial about whether there are health impacts of being in a larger body. Its because we are resistant to our bodies being inherently pathologized, medicalized, and classified as a problem.

The only way obesity is classified as a disease is through correlation with other diseases. Some of those same diseases correlate with Blackness.

A lot of Black folks are bigger because we have different body types that werent taken into account when we created these standards of how we designate body types. These huge capitalist entities are increasingly seeing Black folks as a market. As a fat liberationist, my perspective is that anti-fatness is a much more serious problem for Black and brown folks than being fat.

When I think of fatness, its just a kind of human diversity.

Anti-fatness is a form of systemic discrimination its pervasive and insidious. One of the systemic injustices is the medicalization of fat.

So, what I want is for people of all sizes to have true body autonomy. Where we are presented with research that starts from a neutral perspective.

One of the challenges when we are talking about weight loss drugs is that we are talking about them as the end of fatness. Its all over the media, Ozempic, Ozempic, Ozempic. And the chorus behind that is, so why are you still fat?

People are still fat because even if they take these drugs, fat people are still gonna be fat. If I lose 20% of my body weight right now, Im still going to be a visibly fat person. Im not going to turn into Beyonc by taking Ozempic, even if I take it for the rest of my life.

Culturally, weve been waiting for magic. And we like the narrative that magic has arrived. But those of us who are more suspicious of that narrative may be more cautious in relation to our health choices and may choose never to opt into these drugs.

Novo Nordisk has never had my best interest at heart. The idea that we can undo the social or systemic pieces, by asking individual fat people to lose weight, is preposterous. Injustice should not be solved by asking the people who are subject to the injustice to change themselves.

Im a pretty confident fat girl. Im middle-aged, disabled, fat, and Black there is no cultural preferencing of me in the world. Ive learned to self-advocate for myself and Im willing to. We want to build a world where people dont have to advocate for themselves because were all advocating for each other at a community level.

I am aware of the days that I am unhappy in my body. Its hard to live in a fat disabled body. I celebrate my body a lot, but Id be lying if I said there were never moments where I think it would be easier if I had some other body. But I dont have that as a permanent mentality the way many people do.

The reason I feel like that is because the world is terrible to this body. I want the world to treat me better as an individual in my body and everyone better in that way.

I am concerned that we as a community buy into these oversimplified health narratives like soul food makes all Black people unhealthy, but is it though, or is it racism?

Timothy Conley, Los Angeles, 46, department chair of cinema and film at California College of ASU

When I was a child, I was bullied. My family has a way of saying things that can be hurtful. Even my own relatives made fun of my weight when I was a kid. I was sad and I felt like the only friend I had was food. I started gaining weight in elementary school.

Around 2007 and 2008, I lost 123 pounds. I was eating six meals a day like a bodybuilder. I was in pretty good physical shape, but I was not in a good emotional shape.

A lot of it was ego driven. Someone bet me that I couldnt get down to a certain weight. Off of that bet, I was determined to get down to that weight. The problem was there were no healthy mental, emotional habits as I began to lose weight, I was just determined to prove people wrong.

So, I ended up gaining all that weight back, and more. I became a type 2 diabetic in 2012.

I was completely depressed. Growing up in the Black community, there was no promotion of seeking therapy, or other pathways outside of the Black church. What happens after church on a Sunday? Mac and cheese, fried chicken, barbecue ribs, greens, cakes, and pies that was not a place I could go to for health and wellness.

I have been as heavy as 422 pounds and as lean as 250 pounds. Even when I weighed more than 400 pounds, because of my height of 6 feet 6 inches, and being an ex-athlete, I dont look like an obese person, I look like a large ex-football player.

My relationship with food has been like a rough marriage that needs counseling. I love food, but then I hate food. Im addicted to fast food.

I used to be the guy that at 1 a.m., Im go through the Jack in the Box drive-thru and load up on the $1 menu. I would eat all that food and somehow go to sleep after.

I used food as a coping mechanism, like some people use alcohol or drugs.

I looked forward to the sensation, the taste of refined sugar and processed crap. I tried going to Overeaters Anonymous; that didnt last very long, because I wasnt really connecting with anybody. There were no Black folks in there, it was a bunch of white folks in a room.

Now, I am an advocate of mental health support, especially in the Black community. Personally, I think that every human being on this planet should have somebody to talk to, that is not a relative or a loved one. The problem is the medical industry has made this unaffordable or really hard to access.

Before going to therapy, I used to say I hate you in the mirror. Even when I lost all that weight I hate you.

Sixteen years since thats happened, Ive done a lot of work. Now my practice is being mindful. I use positive affirmations for myself and tell myself that its going to be OK and that youre loved. And loving myself regardless of what size Im at because you got one shot at this thing called life, in this body, and youve got to make the most of it.

Ozempic was a suggestion from my doctor to get my A1C blood sugar levels down. The challenge with Ozempic is Im not really hungry, so I have to remind myself to eat.

I started Ozempic in the middle of October. Ive had issues with diarrhea and nausea, and some stomach pain when Im eating certain foods. My doctor didnt give me a time frame he said its either Ozempic or surgery. Its a big industry to keep people on drugs, and Ozempic is making a lot of money.

Im hopeful that itll be worth it. Im at an age now, where a lot of folks that look like me start passing away as they enter their 50s. I do have my concerns because I know the medical industry makes a lot of money especially off of the Black and brown community.

DJ Rock, Brooklyn, N.Y., 28, fitness instructor

Ever since I started my transition and gone on estrogen hormones, weight distributes differently. Its more difficult for me to put off weight. In the past few years, Ive seen a lot of weight gain, a rapid transformation in my body. That has taken a while to get used to.

In some ways, gaining weight has been really exciting. I feel like I have an ass now. Ive talked to other trans women about the way our bodies and muscles work is just so different now than it used to be. That brings up anxiety.

Ive had some surgeries to feel better in my body, and part of that has been a fat transfer from my stomach to my hips.

There are some things that all women experience, which is societal pressure to look a certain way. For trans people in particular, there are concerns with my body for safety reasons. As a Black trans woman, I do feel safer after having gender-affirming surgeries because of my ability to not get outed when I walk down the street.

Ive connected transness, weight loss, and my fitness journey as like this loss of control. You just kind of get on hormones because I want to look a certain way, but I have to wait and see what happens with my body. Its kind of scary.

Most gym people fall into this cycle of bulking and cutting. For me, its constantly a challenge. I lose some weight and my stomach looks flatter and Im feeling good, but then my ass looks smaller. Then I want to gain weight and grow my ass back.

Ive never tried weight loss supplements. As a fitness instructor, Ozempic feels like cheating.

I dont think its cheating for everyone. I would never blame or fault someone for being on Ozempic. I would support my clients if they decided that was best for them. For me, it feels like I cant do it.

As a woman, I think about my body way more than I ever did before. Also, as someone who is always on display as a fitness instructor. Once I had gender-affirming surgery it felt like this is the body Im supposed to be in. In a weird way, thinking of my weight is gender euphoric because I really am a Black woman.

Paige Booker, San Diego, 34, IT supervisor

I ended up ballooning towards the end of college. I didnt realize I had gotten so much bigger until I saw my photos from my wedding. When I saw the pictures, I was like, Oh, my goodness, who is this?

Ive talked about this in therapy a little bit: When I was younger, I remember sneaking food in my room. As an adult, Ive come to realize Im an emotional eater.

Even when I was much smaller, growing up in the South, I had what we call a frog in my arm.

Im not supposed to be in this large body. It did not always used to be this way. I need to do what I can, to make it a body that Im proud of. What I found works for me is tracking my food, because I didnt know how much I was or wasnt eating. Most of the time, Im looking at the number on the scale, but Im into checking in more with how I feel. Ive tried a lot of different exercises like CrossFit, strength training, cardio boxing, HIIT, tennis, and hiking to see what sticks.

I feel like weight loss culture is ingrained in Black women. Theres always this need or feeling to be whatever is trending at the time. That changes, which makes it harder to always love who you are and celebrate your own uniqueness. I think about how many Black women I know who use waist trainers, or drink detox teas.

Especially if you have something special coming up, theres this need to put it all into overdrive. We deprive ourselves in order to be rewarded with a good time. Which is really sucky.

For all the things that have been said to me about my body, my husband has been a huge help as well. Hes like a cheerleader hes always complimented my body; hes never made me feel negatively about my body. While I have external sources that say, do better and be smaller, I also have my own voice and the voice closest to me thats saying youre doing good.

Joycelyn Terri Turner, Desoto, Texas, 59, corporate trainer

I gained weight in adulthood; after my only brother was killed in a car wreck when I was 29. I was very comfortable and happy in my body until my brother was killed. Ive always been a foodie after he died, food was my comforter. Food was always there if I didnt have anyone to talk to. It was there when I got home from work and when I woke up in the morning.

I went through a periodic succession of losses. My father died in 1990. My brother died in 1994. My mother died in 2003. In 2008, 2011, and 2019 I lost three very close girlfriends who were like sisters to me.

When I recognized I had a problem, it was about 10 years after my brothers death. From 1994 to 2015, I gained 140 pounds. I had gone through diets, fitness clubs, exercising on my own, and with friends. But in 2015, I made the decision to get gastric sleeve surgery. Once I had the surgery, I lost 95 pounds within six to seven months. Since then, Ive kept off 90 of the 95 pounds.

Growing up, I was always on the thin side. And I had a very positive self-image. As I gained weight, it was interesting to see the different treatment I received from people. That was new for me, not shocking, but surprising. When I was smaller, guys readily opened doors, but when youre a big girl, theyre not tryna open the door.

Im not nearly as confident walking into a room as I was, when I was smaller. As a smaller person, my attitude is very open and joyful. As a bigger person, Im much more reserved I dont like that because thats not who I am.

I would say for the past 10 years, its been hard for me to warm up to people, because Ive had so many losses. Im afraid to feel. As far as my psyche goes, Im coming to grips that Im a survivor. And my body is going to be what my body is going to be.

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Black voices, Black bodies: Life in the age of Ozempic - STAT

Ozempic is no laughing matter for the comedian. Handler revealed her "anti-aging doctor" prescribed the medication without her realizing what the drug was.

"I didn't even know I was on it," she said during the Jan. 25, 2023 episode ofCall Her Daddy. "She said, 'If you ever want to drop five pounds,this is good.'"

But while she tried the drug, Handler noted that she didn't like how it made her feel.

"I came back from a vacation and I injected myself with it," she recalled. "I went to lunch with a girlfriend a few days later, and she was like, 'I'm not really eating anything. I'm so nauseous, I'm on Ozempic.' And I was like, 'I'm kind of nauseous too.' But I had just come back from Spain and was jet-lagged."

Ultimately, Handler stopped using the drugbecause it wasn't medically necessary for her, adding thatshe gave away the remaining doses to friends.

"I've injected about four or five of my friends with Ozempic, because I realized I didn't want to use it because it was silly," she said. "It's for heavy people. I have people coming over to my house, and I'm like, 'OK, I can see you at 1, I can see you at 2.'"

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Why Real Housewives of Dubai's Caroline Stanbury Used Ozempic During "Midlife Crisis" - E! NEWS

A mum whose shock shopping trip inspired a weight loss transformation has revealed how she managed to shed almost four and a half stone.

Emma Vyse decided she needed to change her lifestyle habits for good upon realising she was a dress size 22 while out looking for new clothes.

The mum had not long jet off to Turkey where she sadly felt self-conscious about her weight only wore oversized clothing.

READ MORE: Mum unrecognisable after seven stone weight loss - this is how she did it

Though her size was affecting her mentally, the mum also struggled lifting heavy items at work and feared she would one day develop diabetes. Thats when the 38-year-old made the decision to sign up to Greater Manchester and Cheshire slimming group Beeweighed in September 2023.

By watching her calorie intake and exercising, Emma, who has a six-year-old daughter Olivia and three step children, watched as the pounds fell off. Previously tipping the scales at 16st 3.5lbs, her motivation has seen her drop down to 11st 12lbs a total loss of 4st 5.5lbs.

The mum, who is now a dress size 14, says the main key to her weight loss success is intermittent fasting, which sees her only eat between the hours of midday and 8pm.

Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern that may benefit heart health, reduce inflammation, improve cell repair processes, and help burn fat. The idea behind intermittent fasting is that it gives the body a break from digesting food, which can potentially lead to a lower calorie intake than someone who eats regularly.

Emma, who lives in Crewe, Cheshire, told the Manchester Evening News: My dad is diabetic and I didnt want it. I also felt embarrassed when I went shopping. I exercise including spin classes and invested in a walking pad. I also bike to work. I fast between midday and 8pm so I only eat between those hours. Im feeling a lot more confident and I have more energy.

Emma, who could order takeaways including Chinese food or a kebab twice a week, feared she would develop diabetes with the condition running in her family.

She puts her weight gain down to snacking on chocolate at work and eating late at night while already feeling full.

Im very proud, she added. I couldnt have done it without Beeweighed or my leader Vanessa. Its a lifestyle choice, not a diet I think. My husband is very supportive too.

Lynda Leadbetter, owner of Greater Manchester and Cheshire group Beeweighed, which offers national online classes, said: Emma is smashing her weight loss goals and is loving the meetings that are held by my amazing leader Vanessa. Vanessa says shes a big part of the groups and shes really proud of her.

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Mum who shed almost four and a half stone shares secret key to weight loss success - Yahoo News UK

Emily Lankiewicz

In 1918, Lulu Hunt Petersone of the first women in America to earn a medical doctoratepublished the best seller Diet and Health With Key to the Calories, makinga name for herself as an apostle for weight reduction in an era when malnutrition was a far greater public health threat than obesity. She pioneered the idea of measuring food intake via the calorie, which at the time was an obscure unit of measurement familiar only to chemists.

A century later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 42 percent of American adults are clinically obese and that Type 2 diabetes is on the rise. With those who can afford it now turning to pharmaceuticals to help them lose weight, well examine why and how calorie counting has failed to help Americans maintain a healthy weight.

In this episode of Theres More to That, we hear from food historian Michelle Stacey about Peters legacyand from Ronald Young Jr., creator and host of the critically acclaimed podcast Weight For It, about how American society continues to stigmatize what he calls fat folks for reasons that have nothing to do with public, or even individual, health.

A transcript is below. To subscribe to Theres More to That, and to listen to past episodes on the complex legacy of Sojourner Truth, how Joan Baez opened the door for Taylor Swift, how machine learning is helping archeologists to read scrolls buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago and more, find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Chris Klimek: Michelle Stacey is an author and Smithsonian contributor who writes about the history of the American diet.

Michelle Stacey: Ive written about food and food in America for years, and we have a long history of food fad-ism.

Klimek: She says that diet crazes are uniquely American.

Stacey: I mean, even back in the 19th century there were crazy fads. There was one thing that was called Fletcherizing, and it was the idea that you had to chew every mouthful of food hundreds of times, which is grotesque when you think about it. Most of the rest of the world really thought about food as first of all sustenance, but also largely pleasure, tradition, joy, sharing, and Americans have long wanted to discount that part of the equation.

Klimek: Michelle says that a big part of this is Americas fixation on the calorie, a unit of energy that somewhat nonsensically became the center of our food and diet world, but it didnt really have to be that way.

Stacey: Our national way of looking at it is very numbers-oriented and very control-oriented. I was researching the history of the calorie, and I had an old diet book Id picked up years ago, and I was flipping through it, and this little pamphlet fell out, and it was by Lulu Hunt Peters, and it was literally printed in 1929.

Klimek: When it comes to diet fads in America, movements have come and gone. Right now, Ozempic is the new craze, but Michelle says it all goes back to this woman named Lulu Hunt Peters. Shes the person who got America obsessed with calorie counting, but not without her own flair for personal branding, as Michelle could see in this pamphlet.

Stacey: It was called Reducing and Gaining, and in parentheses it said, Petersizing. And I thought, Wow, this womanshes a marketer. And it was like a sign to me that I had to write more about her. She was such a character. I really wish I could have met her. Her personality just leaps off the page in a very modern way. She was very well known in her time. She was a phenomenon. She wrote the first diet best seller ever, and then it stayed on the best-seller list for five years in the early 1920s, which was amazing. And hardly anybody knows who she is now.

Klimek: From Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions, this is Theres More to That, the show where if youre listening to this now, we think you look great just the way you are. On this episode, find out how America got hooked on calorie counting, and why the system continues to endure. Im Chris Klimek.

Klimek: Michelle Stacey recently wrote a feature about Lulu Hunt Peters for Smithsonian magazine. We began our conversation by talking about Peters origins.

Stacey: She was born in New England. She went to college, a teaching college, which is what young women did around the turn of the last century. At some point she moved to California and became a doctor, got her medical degree in 1909, one of a tiny percentage of doctors at the time who were female. She was very active in all kinds of medical groups in Southern California in the 1910s and really very prominent in that world. She was the female head of the pathology lab at Los Angeles Hospital, stuff like that. But what she really wanted to be known for was that she had lost 70 pounds. She had been 220 pounds, and she ended up at 150, which by the way was not where she wanted to end up. She wanted to [weigh] even less, and she decided that the method that she had found everybody should know about. She was almost like a proselytizer for the calorie, and for calorie counting.

Klimek: So more than the fact that she was one of the first women to become a medical doctor in the United States, it was her dramatic weight loss that she wanted people to know about.

Stacey: Yeah, absolutely. It was her greatest triumph, the way she writes about it. She wrote in her book about how when she got her first jobs in medicine at the hospital, she was still so fat, and she felt like she should have repaid some of her salary because she couldnt have been that good a worker if she was so fat then.

Klimek: Wow.

Stacey: Yeah, very judgmental! And the funny thing about her is when she writes about weight and diet and the calorie, which is her obsession, she is so open. She will tell you how she hated herself when she was fat and how she goes crazy for candied nuts and eats 4,000 calories at one time, but the rest of her life is a real secret.

Klimek: Do we know what her personal story behind her weight loss was?

Stacey: Well, after the book came out, she ended up writing a syndicated newspaper column for years, and the title of one of her columns was A Disgrace to Be Fat. And she felt like this was completely a personal choice. You could be fat or you could be not fat. So when she learned about the calorie, which was a very new concept at that time, mostly it was something that scientists and chemists knew about, and it was something that was being discussed as a way to figure out: Whats the perfect diet for humans? How can you eat just the right amount for the least amount of money? That was the approach. She came across it in medical school and she learned about the calorie and flipped it around. She thought, Well, if its good for fighting hunger, then what about if youre fat? Maybe its good for getting rid of extra weight.

So she used these brand-new calorie charts to make herself eat between 1,000 and 1,200 calories a day, which is very low, and the weight just kept coming off, and she lived that way the rest of her life. And then she felt like this was her mission, and she would write about it with such fervor. She would address her readers as if they were sitting in the room with her and say, I know you dont want to be fat. I know youve tried to lose weight for years. I was the same way, and it can be done. She would speak almost like a minister. She would say things like, Verily only food maketh fat. And Yea, I will save you even as I saved myself, I will save you. And she got this huge following. People would write letters to her when she was doing the newspaper column, and she would write back to them in her column and say, Mary, Im so proud of you. Youve lost 20 pounds. I know you can do more.

Klimek: So how did Dr. Peters popularize the calorie?

Stacey: First, she started giving lectures, and then she wrote this book. It came out in 1918. Again, she was a great marketer, and the first thing she did was she serialized the book in a newspaper before the book came out. So it really raised its profile and it was well reviewed, and people were talking about it as this new way of thinking about food that was so cool. And then the first World War ended, and she ended up going to the Balkans for two years on a Red Cross journey, and she came back, and her book had been selling like crazy. So her publisher said, Well, why dont you write a new chapter at the end, and well reissue it? And then it just built from there. I think the first year she was on the best-seller list was 1922. The extra chapter she did was so funny because it was all about how she gained all this weight and she was in the Red Cross because she ignored her own teachings and she thought, Oh, Im working so hard and Im riding donkeys over rough trails, and so I can eat whatever I want.

And then she finally gets in front of a full-length mirror for the first time in months and shes like, Oh, my God, and starts starving herself again. Her struggle with weight was a huge part of the story that she was telling.

Klimek: Who was Dr. Peters book popular among?

Stacey: Women.

Klimek: Okay, women, all right. Tell me more.

Stacey: I mean, women were the ones who were writing to her. They were the ones who were engaging with her, and its not like there werent some men out there who wanted to lose weight. Every now and then in her book shell mention men, but it is really about women, and it was women who were just snapping up the book right and left and reading her newspaper column.

Klimek: What is the tone of the book overall?

Stacey: Its hard to describe. Its so unusual. Whats so funny in her book is that she had her 10-year-old nephew, who she called the little rascal, do all these little stick-figure drawings throughout the book. Theyre so funny. I mean, it was just part of her folksy approach. I mean, its really like having a conversation with her. But, no, her whole message is, You can do this, you can do this, absolutely. Anybody can do this if you just count your calories, and it doesnt matter which foods youre eating, all that matters is the number of calories.

One historian that I talked to about Lulu said that at that time and writing from the point of view that she was writing, which is, Ive been there, Ive done this, I know it can be done, she felt it gave her a pass to be I mean, this historian used the word bigotry, to just be bigoted about fat people. And she makes up derogatory names, silly names like Mrs. Sheesasite and Mrs. Tiny Weyaton and stuff. And yet people, they didnt take it personally, I guess. They felt like, Well, I dont want to weigh a ton. Every chapter ends on a now Im going to tell you how to do it tone. But, yeah, the way she talks would be so unacceptable today. But the thing that strikes me in thinking about her is that were still very, very judgmental about weight. We just dont admit to it as easily.

There was an article in the Economist in the last year or two, and it was about the economics of slenderness, especially with women much more than with men. Literally, you will earn more money if you are not fat. We are still penalizing being heavy even while the majority of Americans now qualify as overweight. But its very hard for people to change their weight. And it is possible, but counting calories has been studied and tested for decades and very rarely leads to permanent weight loss.

The story of dieting for weight loss over the last century, which has really, since its been a thing, is that when it fails, the dieter is always blamed, and she blames herself or he blames himself. And, in fact, our government guides have been telling us for decades that its our fault. The calories are the biggest count on the nutrition label, and all of the dictums from the USDA over the last few decades, many people feel very misguided to cut fat, to not worry about carbs. And, in fact, weve seen a huge surge in obesity since they started giving that message. Again, its not working. But people tend to blame themselves.

Klimek: To pull back a little bit here, what is a calorie? What is it actually measuring?

Stacey: Its measuring heat. Various Europeans have been circling around this, but its generally credited to Nicolas Clment, a French chemist and physicist. At least he seems to be the first one to mention it in scholarly articles [in the 1820s]. And it was actuallyyou cant really say inventeddefined, I suppose, having nothing to do with food. It had to do with steam engines. And the early researchers wanted to have a measure of how much fuel it took to produce X amount of energy. And so what it measures is how much fuel it takes to raise a certain amount of water one degree.

And very early on after it was defined, more European researchers, and these were mostly in Germany, started saying, Well, our bodies are kind of machines. Food is our fuel like our coal that makes the steam, and it runs our body and it heats our body. So these researchers started measuring foods. They would set it on fire, basically, and see how long it took to raise this amount of water by one degree centigrade. And they started assigning values to all these different foods based on how they incinerate.

Klimek: They are burning foodstuffs and measuring the resulting temperature of water around it?

Stacey: Yeah, theyre putting food in a little incinerator thing. It was called a calorimeter. And then they started creating these things called respiration calorimeters, which are when you put an animal or ultimately a human into this chamber where everything is regulated, and theyre measuring what goes in, what comes out, oxygen, carbon dioxide, but also what food is going in, what food is being excreted. I mean, these were experiments where they would weigh feces. And what that was looking at was what happens to this food when its in the body? And so they got more refined about what a piece of bread was worth in calories.

Klimek: So are calories an effective way of measuring what we eat?

Stacey: Yes and no. I mean, when I tell people the calories dont count, and people say, What? I count my calories all the time, people still do this all the time, they count in a macro way. If you eat 10,000 calories worth of food for a period of time, you will gain weight. And if you cut your calories way back for a period of time, you will lose weight. But its not the whole story at all, which is why many calorie-restrictive diets dont work, because your body is not a steam engine. It is way more complex. Steam engines dont have hormones, and hormones affect how hungry we are, our metabolism, how fast our little motor is running. It affects our satiety, when you feel like youve eaten enough.

Klimek: So prior to Dr. Peters idea of we should count our calories and restrict them, what was weight loss like before that? What were people trying?

Stacey: There was not much of an effort before that. One reason that Lulu got so popular was that fashions were really changing. And until the first decade of the 20th century, having a little extraI mean, nobody wanted to be fat, but having a little extra poundage was actually seen as a sign of privilege and comfort, and it was also seen as feminine. So as long as you had a nice strong corset to give you a waistline, all your other clothing was covering all ills. And a bunch of things started to change at the beginning of 20th century that made people want to be more slender.

Thorstein Veblen in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class wrote about conspicuous consumption and conspicuous waste. Conspicuous consumption was mansions on Fifth Avenue and Rhode Island cottages. And the conspicuous waste was that if you were wealthy enough, you didnt have to worry about food, therefore you could worry about being slender for the next ball gown youre going to slip into. And so then the leisure class became more associated with slenderness, and this was happening at the same time that fashions were really changing. And the Gibson Girl, which was a famous series of illustrations around the turn of century, very buxom girl, hourglass figure, the fashions around that started to change in the first decade of the 20th century.

And you started having these very slimmed-down skirts that were called hobble skirts that you could hardly walk in, they were so slim. But for that, you really had to have a pin-like physique. You no longer had the big bustle or the big hoop skirt to cover your behind, so to speak. So fashions and socioeconomic changes worked together, and then by the time we got to the 20s, you had legs being exposed, you had the flapper look, which was the opposite of curvaceous. So all of that pushed it in that direction.

Klimek: Where did Dr. Peters go once her book becomes a best seller and she gets her syndicated column? Whats the arc of her career?

Stacey: Well, the arc of her career was sadly cut short. She was very big in the 20s. She was traveling the country giving speeches all the time, and then she got on a boat to England for a medical conference. She got sick on the boat and arrived in London deathly ill and died of pneumonia in 1930.

Klimek: How has the narrative around body weight changed in the century or so since?

Stacey: In some ways its changed very little. I think thats why aside from the fat-shaming stuff Lulu sounds so modern. She talked about 100-calorie portions of things. Her whole book was set up in terms of: This much chicken is 100 calories, this much applesauce is 100 calories. You go to the grocery store, and theres all packages that are 100-calorie. A 100-calorie granola bar, a 100-calorie whatever. I think she influenced decades of how weve dealt with food and even forecast a lot of things.

In her book, she talks about getting little clubs of women together to lose weight together. And because this was during World War I, she called them Watch Your Weight Anti-Kaiser Classes, because she felt it was a patriotic act to not be fat, because that food should be going to the troops, and it was a patriotic thing to not hoard fat in your own body. But when she describes these classes, they sound identical to Weight Watchers, which started in the 60s. Lulu had said, You should weigh yourself once a week in this little group and trade tips and talk about what youre doing and how youre counting your calories. And, decades later: Weight Watchers.

Klimek: The advent of drugs like Ozempic runs counter to Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters vision. In a way, they have the same outcome, meaning it can make people thin, but the mechanism is a lot different than calorie counting.

Stacey: They work on, it seems like, a hormonal basis. And what these drugs point to is that its the opposite of the calorie. The calorie assumes that we all have control over our eating, and what Ozempic and these drugs point to is that eating is subject to way more than just our conscious control, and it involves how those hormones affect how quickly we digest our food, which apparently is one of the tricks of these drugs, is just that the food moves more slowly through your digestive system, and you just dont feel like eating for hours. I dont think we know yet, but I think itll be interesting to watch how attitudes may change and approaches may change.

Klimek: For some context on the legacy of Lulu Hunt Peters, I called up my friend Ronald Young Jr. Hes the host of a podcast called Weight For It, where he examines how he and others feel about weight and body image.

Ronald Young Jr.: I felt like there was a lot of stuff that I wanted to talk about personally when it came to weight, especially how I feel about my own weight and the conversations that were not having in society when it comes to weight. The more I thought about it, the more I thought about the connection between the idea of waiting to enjoy the life that you want because you are waiting to lose weight. Once I had a name in mind, it made it pretty easy for me to decide what types of stories I wanted to tell about weight, and thats how the podcast was born.

Klimek: What were the strategies that you used when you wanted to lose weight?

Young: I mean, the standard, man. Just do the cardio. You lift the weights, you eat a lot of chicken and brown rice and raw almonds and try to get that eight hours of sleep. Wash, rinse, repeat every day. What I found for me is, one, it just feels like the mental game sometimes that people are locked into feels different. For instance, you havent brought it up, but Ill break it up. I remember the first time somebody told me about Ozempic, and I remember one thing that they said is that they say it quiets the food noise in your mind. And I remember saying that is probably one of the few positive things that I like about Ozempic, which is that it acknowledges that there are people whose brains work differently from others, which means that if you are saying to Ronald, Well, youre just not locked in, and youre a trainer and youre ripped, and youre saying, Well, Im locked in, thats why Im ripped, no, you dont have any food noise in your brain, and I do. You know what I mean?

If we also acknowledge that difference, then maybe you would be talking to me differently when you were trying to get me to work harder in the gym or get me to be motivated. When I think about the things that worked for me and the things that didnt work, it never takes into account the differences in our genetics and in our minds when it comes to trying to lose weight for people or trying to, again, get to this amorphous area of perfection that were likely never going to get to because we are genetically different. And thats not to say that theres not people out there who have, again, worked hard and kept it off. You know what I mean? Which I always struggle with because Im always like, Does that come with any sacrifices? And what does that actually look like? Its not just a success story where they just ride off and theyre happily ever after. What do they have to consistently do in order to keep it off?

Thats what I did to lose weight. But oftentimesand, again, Im using so many air quotes, this is audioI failed at it.

Klimek: The idea of failure goes back to Dr. Peters conflation of weight loss and morality. I asked Ronald what he thought about her writings.

Young: I mean, its a story for its time. Its just not surprising that of that era here we have yet another story of people trying to solve fat. You know what I mean? And I think what youll find is, especially in the United States, there are sinister strategies and policies that serve to keep the status quo as much as possible. So when you think about the idea of the ways in which we connect being fat to being less than, its just not surprising that you keep having scientists and social scientists coming up with strategies in order to solve for fatness. And in those days, you could be louder about something that was utterly disrespectful. You know what I mean? Today, they know you cant just say, Get those unsightly pounds off, you look terrible. Get out of here. You cant really say that anymore. But you could say things like, Hey, you want something thats going to flatter your body, and this helps you get your body to a place where you feel good about yourself. Theres just different language.

And I feel like thats something weve been wrestling with as Americans probably even globally, but definitely as Americans for a long time, which is: How do we actually address this distasteful thing that we dont like? And at that time, it was fat.

Klimek: Do you think we are any more sympathetic or nuanced in our thinking about this now a century later? Or do we just learn to hide our prejudices better or use some softer-sounding euphemisms?

Young: I think youve already answered your question, Chris. Because one of the hottest stories is: Who in Hollywood is using Ozempic right now? And even amongst my peers and colleagues, someone already asked me if Im going to start taking Ozempic. You think about how that language has changed. Now that weve made obesity a disease, its like, Oh, well then medicine cures disease. Youre still trying to cure fatness. You know what I mean? So, yeah, our language has changed, but the intent hasnt changed at all. Were still trying to do the same thing weve always done, which is just get rid of these unsightly people that we find distasteful, especially knowing that Ozempic is supposed to be for diabetics so that theyre more effective in their use of insulin. So to know that thats the case, and now its this crazy side effect that everyones homed in on, I dont know, it just doesnt sit right with me.

To be clear, I think if people want to use Ozempic for whatever reason, I think that is perfectly fine. You really have to make your own choices for yourself. But what makes me struggle is the ways in which were talking about it as this miracle catch-all drug that will get us to a destination that I think we need to be, again, doing some large self-interrogation, saying, Is this a place that we all really need to go as a society? I think the answer is no, but I dont know that as a society weve answered that way.

Klimek: In Weight For It, Ronald discusses bariatric surgery at length, sometimes called gastric bypass surgery. This is a measure that some people take when they want to lose weight that involves making physical alterations to the digestive system, but the procedure comes with serious risks, and Ronald sees it as another medicalized, potentially dangerous option presented as a cure to fatness similar to Ozempic.

Young: We havent done enough studies on Ozempic to talk about the long-term effects of being on Ozempic. Were talking about something that if its turning off the food noise in your brain, and when you go off it, it stops doing that, then are you just going to be on Ozempic the rest of your life? Ive talked to people who have used Ozempic who are just like, Yeah, Im fine. Ill take a shot and then once I get in gear, Ill lose the weight, and then Ill be fine. Ill go off Ozempic and I wont need to do it anymore. And Im just like, Thats not a solution. And, also, if that is a solution, is that how you want to solve it? It still feels equally drastic in terms of you plunging yourself in the unknown rather than accepting your body as it is and demanding that the world be more progressive and change.

The other thing that I think is I think people forget that you will gain and lose weight your entire life for a variety of reasons. Theres probably ways and methods that you could be healthier or you could take care of yourself in a way that was advantageous to you without you having to make these huge sacrifices or drastic sacrifices that require you to spend the rest of your life committed to a weight-loss journey. I just feel like Ozempic is more of that. You know what I mean? Ozempic is bariatric surgery. I just feel like they are of the same brand, if you will.

Klimek: We also asked Ronald about the state of the body positivity movement in America. Body positivity began as a pushback to toxic diet culture but, like other movements, has become complicated over time. Ronald spoke about companies that play into this dynamic.

Young: Capitalism always morphs, man. Theyre going where the money is, and if the money and the buzz is toward body positivity, then thats the adjustment that businesses are going to make. So its not surprising to see people with a lot of half-baked body positivity ideas, especially these companies that are doing it in some ways. But you walk into the store and you cant even get all the sizes in the store. So theyll be like, Were doing this plus-size campaign, and then in some cases, theyve been quietly retracting them and putting the regular sizes back in the store. I know thats happened with a couple of retail stores. So theres a lot of businesses out there that are willing to make changes if youre still going to spend your money, but the minute the money moves and the interest in the culture moves, then those changes will often retract back unless weve really moved forward as a society and decided that this is something that needs to be here and were going to put our dollars behind it.

Klimek: Thank you, Ronald, for this conversation. Its a joy to talk to you, buddy.

Young: Thanks for having me, Chris, and congratulations on your podcast as well. I love it.

Klimek: To read Michelle Staceys reporting on Lulu Hunt Peters and the origins of the calorie, head to SmithsonianMag.com. Well also have a link in our show notes along with a link to Ronald Young Jr.s podcast, Weight For It.

Klimek: Before we end our episode, as always, we have a dinner party fact for you, but this one also comes with a dinner party game.

Nina Goldman: Hi, my names Nina Goldman, and I am a copy editor here at Smithsonian magazine, and we recently ran an excerpt from Sabrina Sholts new book, The Human Disease. She talks about hands and their role in disease transmission, but to get there, she talks about hands in general. I learned something new. I mean, I knew that we have opposable thumbs. Everybody learns that in school, and we know theyre important, but I never thought about why theyre called opposable thumbs. Did you know, Chris?

Klimek: I mean, I just assumed it was because theyre facing your other fingers.

Goldman: Exactly. Its because you can put them in opposition to the pads of your other fingers, which allows us to pinch things and manipulate them a lot more easily than our other mammalian relatives, I guess. But some other primates do have opposable thumbs, but theyre not as powerful as ours for a bunch of reasons, one of which is that they have very long fingers, and so its harder for them to get the tips of their fingers to touch the tip of their thumb. Weve got stubby little fingers compared to a chimpanzee, and so thats one of our evolutionary advantages.

So I learned this fact while I was working on the article, and Ive enjoyed telling it to people, because it immediately makes them do silly things with their hands, trying to get the pads of their index and pinky finger to touch, which you cant unless youre super double-jointed. And so I thought if youre at a dinner party and you want to share this fact, you could get people to try to eat with a fork and knife without their thumbsor chopsticks. So thats why theyre called opposable thumbs.

Klimek: Theres More to That is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. If you like this show, thank you. Also, please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps other people find our show.

From the magazine, our team is me, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly.

From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Genevieve Sponsler, Adriana Rozas Rivera, Ry Dorsey and Edwin Ochoa. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. Our episode artwork is by Emily Lankiewicz. Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Our music is from APM Music.

Im Chris Klimek. Thanks for listening.

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Read the original:
How Americans Got Hooked on Counting Calories More Than a Century Ago - Smithsonian Magazine

This weight loss hack is all smoke and mirrors.

People looking to shed pounds fast have turned to a cheap new craze that doctors are sounding the alarm against. Called gas station Ozempic, influencers are now using ZYN nicotine pouches to help suppress their appetites and lose weight, saying the inexpensive buy which runs about $5 at a convenience store is a far better deal than popular semaglutide weight loss drugs, which can cost thousands of dollars.

But the habit, experts say, is a terrible idea.

There are the dangers of becoming addicted to nicotine and the potential associated long-term toxicity. There are no studies in this area but I think likely the dangers outweigh the benefit, Dr. Anthony Pick,an endocrinologist at Northwestern Medicine Lake Forest Hospital, told The Post.

Regardless of the health risks, ZYN, a nicotine pouch designed to help people quit smoking, is being touted as a fast and easy way to shed unwanted pounds.

This has even led some to nickname the pouches O-Zyn-pic, according to Snaxshot, who rounded up social media comments from people who lost weight with the pouches.

Yeah Im addicted. Like the other thing they dont tell you is youll lose so much weight just replacing Zyn with any hunger, said one social media user, @thiccyfowler, in a video which has over 67,000 likes to date.

The social media golfer enthusiast added: #golf tip I wish I knew earlier develop a crippling Zyn addiction, lose 30lbs in a month, swing faster now that your fat gut isnt holding you back. Zyn took me from 7hdcp to a 5hdcp in three weeks. Absolute mind bending results. (Hdcp refers to a golf handicap, which is a rating for the difficulty of each hole. One is the hardest and 18 is the easiest.)

In a statement provided to The Post, ZYN noted that their product is designed and marketed for existing adult smokers and nicotine users age 21 and older as a better alternative to continued smoking. The statement also noted that ZYN has been sold in the US for about a decade now.

Pick said nicotine may suppress appetite, but warned that taking nicotine for weight loss isnt recommended.

It is well-known that nicotine can suppress appetite and has other potential metabolic effects, he explained.

However, using a highly addictive substance for this purpose, with no clinical safety or efficacy studies is likely a very bad idea. The major role for non-tobacco nicotine products is to be able to move patients addicted to cigarettes to arguably a safer alternative. Avoidance of nicotine in any form is ideal, he added.

The American Heart Association has also warned against the dangers of nicotine, noting that the substance can cause increases in blood pressure, heart rate, flow of blood to the heart and narrowing of arteries. On top of that, nicotine can contribute to a potential heart attack by hardening artery walls.

Pick mentioned there have been preclinical studies on mice treated with nicotine and GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, which found the combo was synergistic and may increase metabolic rate and thereby reverse obesity.

This is part of the holy grail of weight management and may be part of the appeal of nicotine, Pick explained.Despite acknowledging the potential for weight loss, Pick says that doesnt mean people should pick up the habit.

Not only is using ZYN patches for weight loss potentially dangerous, people could regain their weight once they stop taking them.

Weight gain occurs with quitting cigarette use, so it is another argument to avoid smoking and otherforms of nicotine, Pick said, adding that quitting is often extremely challenging as nicotine is well-known to be one of the most addictive substances around.

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All studies and clinical experience have shown there is a trend to weight regain off pharmacotherapy [or using drugs to treat weight loss], and post weight loss surgery, he also shared.

Pick said that the main goal of weight loss therapy is improved health outcomes and numbers on a scale.

Pick emphasized that people who want to lose weight without drug interventions will need to sustain a negative calorie balance meaning theyre eating less and moving more plus prioritize sleep, reduce stress and may need to use behavioral change tools (like tracking their meals).

Studies show a consistent weight loss [in the range of] 3% with lifestyle alone and up to 6% with intensive lifestyle change efforts, he added.

He added there are rare outliers who have surpassed weight loss of 6% and can then keep the weight off.

He added that people who lose weight with drugs need to support their bodies in other ways during that process.

With weight loss [using] agents such as semaglutideor tirzepatideor surgery, the goal is to have adequate protein intake and strength exercises to try offset the invariable loss of lean mass that occurs, he explained.

Pick said people who want to lose weight healthily can see a doctor who can also assess them for other health issues, such as pre-diabetes, sleep apnea or asthma.

Long story short, if youre thinking of taking up nicotine to lose weight you may want to nip that in the butt.

See the article here:
I'm a doctor here's why you shouldn't lose weight using ZYN - New York Post

Whoopi Goldberg is opening up about her experience using the type 2 diabetes medication Mounjaro for weight loss.

On May 13, the 68-year-old discussed the medication and its impact on her weight during an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show. According to Whoopi, the medication helped her to lose the weight of "almost two people."

After Kelly complemented Whoopi on how young she looked, The View co-host replied, "Its all the weight Ive lost."

On a View segment two days later, the Sister Act star defended Kelly, who also revealed during the conversation that she used a medication to lose weight. "They kick her behind when shes bigger, they kick her behind when shes lost the weight, and now theyre kicking her behind because she said it out loud," Whoopi said.

"We have to let people do what they need to do to get where they need to get to," she continued. "Stop being mad that theyre not doing it your way. Its not like we really know what youre doing."

Whoopi first revealed that she had used Mounjaro in March, during a discussion on The View about Oprahs new special, Shame, Blame and the Weight Loss Revolution. My weight has come and gone and up and down, but its never been an issue for me because I dont listen to what other people say about me," she shared.

But, after gaining weight during a near-fatal health scare, Whoopi said she used Mounjaro to feel like herself again. Here's what she's shared about her weight loss.

Whoopi realized she had gained weight during the making of Till in 2022. In the film, Whoopi played Mamie Till-Bradley, an educator who wanted justice after the murder of her 14-year-old son Emmett in August 1955. She also produced the movie.

"I will tell you, I weighed almost 300 pounds when I made Till," she said.

Till was shot not long after Whoopi recovered from a scary health incident. After catching what she thought was the common cold, the host landed in the hospital and was diagnosed with pneumonia in both lungs.

The EGOT winner also had sepsis, a life-threatening complication in which the body responds improperly to an infection, per The Mayo Clinic. Instead of fighting the disease, the body turns on itself, causing organs to work poorly.

To treat the diagnoses, Whoopi was prescribed steroids and a number of medications. But the drugs had some adverse side effects.

I had taken all those steroids, I was on all this stuff, she shared, noting that she didnt realize that she had gained weight until she looked at herself in the mirror one day. I just always felt like me. And then I saw me and I thought, Oh! Thats a lot of me!

Whoopi shared that she used a weight-loss medication to shed the pounds. One of the things thats helped me dropped the weight was the Mounjaro. Thats what I used, she said. (Whoopis The View cohost, Sunny Hostin, also shared that she used Mounjaro to lose weight after gaining 40 pounds during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.)

Mounjaro is a medication designed to control blood sugar levels in patients with type 2 diabetes. However, the medication has also been used off-label for weight loss. The active ingredient in Mounjaro, tirzepatide, has since been FDA-approved for weight loss under the name Zepbound.

Mounjaro is similar to fellow diabetes drug Ozempic, which is also used off-label for weight loss. But, there are a few key differences: The active ingredient in Ozempic is semaglutide, while the active ingredient in Mounjaro is tirzepatide. (Both work to increase insulin production.) Research has found that tirzepatide helps patients lose more weight by targeting an additional receptor.

Whoopi also opened up about her experience with Mounjaro during a May 13 appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show.

"Im doing that wonderful little shot that works for folks who need some help," she told Kelly. "Its been really good for me."

Whoopi said she had a wake-up call when someone accused her of wearing a "fat suit" while filming Till. "I was indignant," she said. "I was like, 'This is not a fat suit. This is me!' And then you see."

Whoopi didn't realize she wanted to lose weight until that moment. "Youre living your life and youre doing what you need to doand thats the last thing youre thinking about because youve got other stuff on your mind," she continued. "When you realize it, you go, 'Well, damn.' And everyone says, 'Well, I thought you knew.'"

Ultimately, Whoopi has urged people to be kinder to each other concerning the subjects of weight and weight loss. During a March appearance on The View, she explained: "Maybe the key is to stop judging everybody. Maybe thats the key."

Korin Miller is a freelance writer specializing in general wellness, sexual health and relationships, and lifestyle trends, with work appearing in Mens Health, Womens Health, Self, Glamour, and more. She has a masters degree from American University, lives by the beach, and hopes to own a teacup pig and taco truck one day.

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Whoopi Goldberg's Weight Loss: How Mounjaro Helped Her Slim Down - Women's Health

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Six percent of U.S. adults, representing an estimated 15.5 million people, report having used injectable diabetes medicine to reduce weight, including 3% who are currently using such medicine specifically for this purpose. Current or past usage runs slightly higher among women, those with health insurance and those aged 40 to 64.

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This analysis is part of the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index. The results are based on a web survey of 5,577 U.S. adults, conducted March 4-9, 2024, using Gallups probability-based panel encompassing all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the Eli Lilly drug Wegovy for weight loss in 2021, the use of diabetic drugs containing semaglutide has rapidly gained popularity among those hoping to lose weight. Other options have since come on the market, including Zepbound (tirzepatide), which received FDA approval in November 2023.

To measure current or previous household use, Gallup asked: Have you or a family member ever taken an injection for weight loss, such as semaglutide (brand names Ozempic and Wegovy) or liraglutide (brand name Saxenda)? To measure current individual use, Gallup asked: Are you currently taking injections for weight loss, such as semaglutide (brand names Ozempic and Wegovy) or liraglutide (brand name Saxenda)? The data reported here are based on individual rates rather than household.

Close to two-thirds of Americans who have taken weight loss injections (64%) say the drugs have been either extremely effective or effective at helping them lose weight. Only 11% report weight loss injections to be not at all effective.

Perceived effectiveness is relatively consistent among younger and middle-aged adults, with 70% of those aged 18 to 49 and 67% of those aged 50 to 64 reporting weight loss injections as effective or extremely effective. Among adults aged 65 and older, however, reported effectiveness is much lower, at 48%.

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Both current and past users of weight loss injections are more likely to be obese than those who have never taken injections. Current users are about twice as likely to be obese as those who have never taken injections (71% vs. 36%, respectively).

Associated chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes are also substantially higher among both current and past users than among those who have never taken weight loss injections, indicating a higher overall disease burden among users.

However, compared with current users, Americans who have previously taken weight loss injections report lower levels of obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes. While these differences are consistent with the benefits reported in clinical trials, weight loss injections that are prescribed in conjunction with changes to diet and exercise may also help reduce disease burden.

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Current users are more optimistic about their weight loss and wellbeing than past users. Nearly three-quarters of current users (73%) say weight loss injections are effective or extremely effective, compared with 53% of past users.

Although experiencing lower levels of effectiveness may contribute to decisions to discontinue using weight loss injections, less positive reports among past users are also consistent with recent critiques of weight loss injections as a long-term solution, with sources indicating that discontinued use can be associated with weight gain or other side effects.

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Reported effectiveness among users of injectable weight loss drugs indicates that a substantial number of Americans -- about 10 million -- believe they have benefited from the injections. Evidence of lower rates of obesity and other chronic conditions among past users relative to current users may corroborate these reports.

However, lower levels of self-reported effectiveness among older adults and past users, as well as lower rates of use among uninsured Americans, suggest a need for further exploration of patterns of access and benefit across various subgroups.

To stay up to date with the latest Gallup News insights and updates, follow us on X.

Learn more about how the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index works.

Learn more about how the Gallup Panel works.

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Excerpt from:
Injectable Weight Loss Drugs: Who Uses Them, and Do They Work? - Gallup

Asked if he does now feel more agile, Jackson responded with a "heck yeah."

"I feel great," Jackson said. "It's been so long [since feeling this agile]. We had COVID that happened to us; it slowed us down a little. But I feel great now. I feel great."

Jackson took off on one long run during Wednesday's practice, but it's hard to gauge whether, or how much, quicker he is compared to previous seasons. His teammates say he looks fast to them, but he's always looked fast.

If he stays at 205 pounds, Jackson would be lighter than almost every starting quarterback in recent decades, and none that played that low ran as much as Jackson. But Jackson has never fretted about his durability.

"We sacrifice our body each and every game [and] practices," he said. "I believe it really doesn't matter about the weight."

Ravens Strength & Conditioning Coordinator Scott Elliott said at the start of the offseason program that the Ravens intend to "add lean muscle" on top of his frame, but that Jackson is in "great shape."

Head Coach John Harbaugh echoed those sentiments Wednesday, saying the Ravens don't have a target weight for Jackson.

"I mean, it's fine. I think that's Lamar. He's a pro. He knows what he's doing. He knows where he wants to be with that," Harbaugh said. "My concern is that he's in shape, best shape of his life, and he's working toward that. He's ready football-wise, all the details that go with that mentally, physically, spiritually ready to go. That's kind of what I think about. I know he talks to the strength and conditioning people. He's got his own people. He talks to [director of sports nutrition] Sarah [Snyder] all the time. He's a pro. He knows what he's doing."

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Lamar Jackson Shares His Reason for Offseason Weight Loss - BaltimoreRavens.com

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