Does Ozempic Ruin Friendships?

While there have been many reports of friendships falling apart due to the decision to take weight loss medication, Kenen says it only strengthened his friendships. He says: “Everyone is very happy for me because they see how happy I am. “I feel like I was able to do more with them. Last year, I went to a music festival and I had all these health problems… to slow the band down.” But at a music festival with his friends this year, Kenen’s experience was different: “I could really go on, I could have fun with my friends, I could be a little active and run around the party and I became more patient.”

While Kenen’s and her friends’ experiences were ultimately positive, a common criticism of the proliferation of weight-loss drugs is that they have exacerbated anti-fat bias. Fatphobia, whether internalized or directed at others, can cause tension between friends. “When people are really bought into beauty and this idea that size is a sign of health, and they may spend their lives married to that idea, it can be hard to shake,” says Maddie Friedman, MA, LCSW, a therapist at Equip. “When you see conflicting philosophies in a relationship, it can be very difficult to eat together or go shopping or talk about what’s going on in pop culture if there are a lot of comments about body shape and size or mixing up the shape of the body and size and health.

“We’ve had a swinging pendulum in our broader culture about body acceptance. And now with the readily available nature of GLP-1 and the people who seem to be declining in pop culture, I think that Many people who would work for body acceptance or body neutrality lose that community or lose a greater sense of acceptance in their lives, because people have been changed by this myth. control when it comes to body size.”

But going through major life changes provides an opportunity to strengthen relationships. Slater, who had previously avoided talking about his experience with obesity and weight-loss drugs, began writing about it on social media, which connected him with hundreds of people – even and thousands – more than the same thing. “Some of my closest friends are people I’ve met through posting on TikTok,” she says. “It’s an incredibly supportive group and they just understand you on a deep level because they lived their lives in poverty. There are a lot of things involved.”

If your relationship has changed because of weight loss drugs and you’re not sure how to deal with it, Friedman recommends talking to a professional — any kind of change, including change weight, it can be difficult to handle on your own. “For many people who are going through changes in body shapes and sizes, regardless of where or why they are, it may be helpful to talk to a mental health professional about what how that happens and how that affects their self-esteem, sense of self, independence and relationship with others,” he says.

On the other hand, if you’re friends with someone who’s taking weight loss drugs and want to make the most of it or be there for them, Friedman says to ask yourself what the situation is getting you. If you need to set a firm boundary, then you can do so in a respectful way. “Discussions about weight, shape and size can be uncomfortable and upsetting, especially for people who have experience with eating disorders,” she says. are happy at some point in their lives, I think it’s okay to say, ‘Well, talking about this doesn’t make sense to me’ or ‘Can we talk about something else? ‘ or drawing more directly [boundary].”

Nina and her friend are healthy – they have made a choice not to discuss food or exercise anymore. “The whole conversation happened at once and we haven’t talked about it again.

Holly thinks that GLP-1s have changed her friendship with her two friends forever. He says: “I thought they were both perfect and beautiful the way they were. The friends are now off their meds, and Holly notices her relationship with them has healed. “We don’t really talk much about weight loss and diet and image-related things,” she says. “It feels like things are back to normal with us.”