Navigating the Ozempic Craze in Eating Disorder Recovery
By: Alison Ross, LMFT, CEDS
If you or someone you care about is in recovery from an eating disorder, this might be an incredibly triggering time with so many people enthusiastically sharing their semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy, etc.) weight loss stories. The buzz surrounding it might trigger the temptation to jump on the bandwagon, which could jeopardize your recovery.
But what you should know is that what you're seeing now is phase one of a weight losing cycle for a lot of people. We already have research showing that most people who lose weight on these drugs regain it once they stop taking them. And I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but for a lot of these people, phase two, the weight-gaining phase, is right around the corner.
You see, human evolution, was done mostly in an environment of food scarcity, which wired our brains to vigilantly protect it's stored energy. So, when you quickly lose weight, the brain responds by slowing metabolism and increases hunger to get the weight back on. It's called a yoyo dieting cycle - and these medications seem to be drawing a lot of people into that cycle. Unfortunately, the more yo-yo dieting cycles you experience, the more likely they are to devastate your metabolism, causing more intense eating, weight, and body image struggles and eating disorder patterns in the future.
So you might think, "Well, I'll just go on that medication, and stay on it forever," but, stay tuned, that might not work out the way you imagine. I'm going to talk about that next time. For now, check out some informaiton on weight rebounding with semaglutide medications Ozempic and Wegovy:
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