inc.com Science Says People Who Lose Weight on GLP-1 Drugs Face More Stigma Than People Who Stay Overweight. That’s Just Weird Bill Murphy Jr. 4–6 minutes
Recently, I wrote about a major new study linking GLP-1 drugs to significant reductions in depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders — and I mentioned that I’ve been taking one myself for about a year and a half.
Today I want to talk about a separate study that came out last week, because it genuinely surprised me — and, I’ll admit, got my Irish up a little.
Researchers at Rice University, publishing in the International Journal of Obesity, studied how people perceive those who lose weight using GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic or Wegovy.
Their finding: people who lose weight on these medications face more social stigma than people who lose the same weight through diet and exercise. In some cases, more than people who don’t lose weight at all. The explanation the researchers point to: a widespread perception that GLP-1 drugs are “the easy way out.”
I have thoughts. Thank you for the compliment
Allow me to offer a metaphor.
I have a full head of thick hair in my mid-50s, and I didn’t do anything to earn it — genetics, luck, whatever.
But I also don’t have strong feelings about men who are losing their hair. I’m glad they’re trying to explore medical options to address it.
Rogaine exists. Finasteride exists. People make their own choices about their own bodies, and I genuinely couldn’t care less what those choices are.
See what I mean?
The idea that someone who is biologically predisposed to carry more weight should be judged more harshly for using a medical tool to address it than for simply staying overweight strikes me as really weird.
I wouldn’t hesitate to tell you I took a drug for high blood pressure or high cholesterol.
I’d tell you about a knee surgery or a course of antibiotics.
I don’t get why a medication that happens to affect weight and metabolism would be treated differently — or why losing weight with its help would make someone more of a target for judgment than not losing weight at all. ‘The easy way out’
The Rice researchers ran a series of experiments in which participants evaluated people who had lost weight via GLP-1 drugs, via diet and exercise, or not at all.
Across the board, GLP-1 users were rated more negatively.
The stigma compounds if someone stops the medication and regains weight — which is common, because these drugs work while you take them, and stopping them often reverses the effects.
In that scenario, the researchers found, the judgment gets even harsher.
“There’s a narrative that using these medications is ‘taking the easy way out,'” said lead researcher Erin Standen. “And that belief seems to shape how people are judged.”
Caveats: this is experimental research using study participants rating hypothetical scenarios, not a longitudinal study of real-world social outcomes. You do you
The researchers flag something practical: Stigma around these drugs may be contributing to the spread of misinformation about their risks.
If people are motivated to believe GLP-1 users are doing something wrong, they may be more receptive to exaggerated claims about side effects.
There’s also a more direct consequence.
If someone is on the fence about a medication that a growing body of research suggests can meaningfully improve physical and mental health — and they’re hesitating partly because of what other people might think — that’s a real cost.
I told my doctor when she first prescribed the drug that even without insurance coverage I’d consider paying out of pocket, because I felt like I was buying myself extra years of healthy life expectancy.
She said she wished everyone had that attitude. Heck, I think she was about to hug me, except for things like propriety, and patient-doctor relationships and all of that.
But we hugged in spirit.
As always — or at least as often — I’m not telling anyone what to do.
Using these drugs is a personal decision that involves doctors, insurance, individual health histories, and a lot of factors I’m not qualified to weigh in on.
But if you’ve been thinking about it and the “easy way out” framing has been any part of what’s holding you back — I’d encourage you to set that aside.
The people making that judgment probably haven’t thought very hard about what it actually means.
See you at the gym and the ski slopes, I hope.
Bigotry towards fat people is based on some Joe Rogan levels of insight into the basis of human character. They think of fat people as lazy, ignorant, gluttonous. Losing weight the hard way shows improvement of character, it shows they've broken free from their lazy ignorant fattosity, the weight-loss itself is almost secondary. Losing weight with a drug is just further 'evidence' that they have no character and are lazing their way through life. If they have such poor willpower and shallowness of character, they can't be trusted in other areas of life either. They're broken, defective people.
That's been my experience, anyway. I was thin and athletic-looking up until my mid-20s, but my younger brother was always overweight. He was more active than me, there isn't a sport you could name that he wasn't doing on the regular. Even boxing, which is extremely intensive in the training. I spent my childhood eating cake and playing video games. There's simply no fucking possibility that he and I were dealt the same metabolic hand. But people would often ask me how I managed to stay thin while my brother was fat. "Managed" being the operative word. I didn't manage shit. But my brother faced nonstop bullying for his size, and I obviously didn't. People really do have a 1 IQ understanding of this shit. You're fat = you eat too much and laze around, so you're a weak person deserving of scorn and rejection. If you take a drug to correct it, then you're a liar who found a lazy loophole to avoid your much-deserved derision.
It seems people never outgrow that imbecilic idea, if that study is anything to go by. The irony, of course, is that the people who hate others over this sort of thing are gigantic hypocrites who have huge yawning chasms where their own character ought to be. Cunts, in other words. If their failings were visible to everyone, they'd likely resemble that fella in RoboCop when the tank of acid empties over him.