Originally published via Armageddon Prose Substack:
Documenting the meatiest, juiciest cuts of “fat acceptance” propaganda from corporate and social media.
Ozempic — along with all other GLP-1 agonists, including Wegovy, former diabetes drugs remarketed as weight loss drugs — is a classic case of “the cure worse than the [fake] disease.”
The ‘obesity is a disease’ narrative pivot
If you hearken Public Health™ propaganda, you may have noticed a recurring narrative popping up in the corporate media and pop-science rags of late — parroted by non-doctor and doctor celebrities alike — rebranding obesity as a “disease.”
Here is Oprah Winfrey to explain, via The Washington Post:
“’Winfrey, 69, said that after knee surgery in 2021, she ‘worked so damn hard’ to control her weight with exercise and counting points on WeightWatchers. Winfrey has a stake in the wellness company, known as WW, and also is a board member.
She added a weight-loss medication to her holistic health and fitness regimen after a panel discussion with health-care experts in July, she told People.
Winfrey said she realized then that ‘she has a predisposition’ to putting on weight “that no amount of willpower is going to control.”
“Obesity is a disease,” she said. ‘It’s not about willpower — it’s about the brain.’”
Oprah did not spontaneously come up with this talking point on her own; indeed, it’s evident that she doesn’t know much regarding anything related to physiology or epidemiology, her ignorance having been on full display for decades now.
Obesity-as-disease is a savvy, cynical marketing ploy by the pharmaceutical industry, laundered through allegedly trustworthy celebrities’ mouths, as in the case of their Oprah puppet.
Someone put those words into her and she spat them out like she was primed to.
Here’s one such someone, celebrity Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, so-called “obesity doctor” and weight loss drug evangelist:
So, if obesity is a “disease” and not the result of modifiable lifestyle practices, the obvious implication is that the only solution is a medical one.
Well, slap my ass and call me Sally!
What a coincidence we have here: GLP-1 agonists Ozempic and Wegovy — the brand names for semaglutide sold in the U.S., originally used exclusively for treating type II diabetes but approved by the FDA in 2021 for weight loss based on a dubious New England Journal of Medicine study I have previously debunked — locked and loaded, with manufacturing infrastructure and supply lines already in place, ready for distribution to the fats with disposable income from coast to coast!
Related: Surprise, Surprise, Right in Your Eyes: ‘Miracle’ Weight Loss Drug Not So Miraculous
Ozempic: The motherload of pharmaceutical side effects
I never went to medical school.
Instead, my academic credentials are:
- a relatively worthless liberal arts bachelor’s degree from a mid-size state university, and;
- a much more recent master’s of arts in international relations that I’m prouder of but that might be equally economically unviable.
However, I didn’t have to study human anatomy in an institutional setting for half of a decade like doctors do in order to put these puzzle pieces together: artificially spiking a single hormone (GLP-1) — the mechanism of action for Ozempic — with no due consideration to the complex interplay between all 50+ hormones in the body, the balance of which being necessary for homeostasis, is a recipe for disaster.
It’s been promoted in various corporate media outlets — under the auspices of “news” but in reality as undisclosed informercials — alternately as a “game changer,” “miracle,” “breakthrough,” etc.
What these infomercials promoting medical misinformation — funny that Vox still has its social media accounts, “medical misinformation” being verboten, no? — fail to disclose to the viewer is the slew of side effects, a small sampling of which include:
- Pathogenic muscle loss
- Severe kidney injury
- Anesthesia complications (inhaling air and food into the lungs during surgery)
- Suicidal ideation
- Thyroid cancer
How’s that for “safe and effective”? Branch COVIDian, eat your heart out!
And, yet, even after suffering through all of that expense and the cornucopia of side effects, some potentially lethal, patients taking semaglutide gain most of the weight back just as soon as they cease taking it.
Via Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism:
“One year after withdrawal of once-weekly subcutaneous semaglutide 2.4 mg and lifestyle intervention, participants regained two-thirds of their prior weight loss, with similar changes in cardiometabolic variables. Findings confirm the chronicity of obesity and suggest ongoing treatment is required to maintain improvements in weight and health.”
Real solutions for obesity?
In virtually all cases — with due allowance for exceptions that require specialized attention, like type 1 diabetes (so if that applies to you, ignore this advice and seek out a qualified endocrinologist) — the solution to obesity for individuals with a body fat percentage above 30% is as follows:
- Turn the television off. It lies to you for money and social control and robs you of your agency. I don’t know if Satan is real, but if he is, as Bill Hick suggested, he would have invented pharmaceutical advertising.
- Acknowledge that you are fat. No matter what the #bodypositive propagandists say, this is not normal; it’s not healthy; it’s not empowering.
- It might not necessarily be entirely your fault that you are fat if you weren’t equipped with the knowledge, self-discipline, and a clean environment that are all prerequisites for healthy metabolic function.
If so, forgive yourself, then come to terms with the fact that, regardless of how you found yourself in this state of affairs or whom you could find to blame if you spent your energy on that fruitless exercise, it’s your problem to sort out now. - Get your fat ass moving
- Get your fat ass into or near ketosis. You can learn how to do this easily and quickly and you can cheaply test your ketogenic state with keto strips. I’ve never been fat but I have spent many months in a state of interrupted ketosis; it’s really not that bad once you body adjusts.
Avoid the “keto flu” with electrolyte supplementation (potassium, magnesium, salt)
Ketosis isn’t a permanent sentence to a carb-free life. In fact, the long-term relative benefits and risks of staying in ketosis for extended periods of time are debated. What is not debated is that it can re-sensitive your body to insulin and get it metabolically flexible so that it can easily burn fat for fuel instead of relying on blood sugar — both great things. - Ditch all processed food — all of it. Don’t let your inner fatass talk you out of this commitment. Toss the vegetable oil (soy, rapeseed, canola, sunflower, etc.) in the trash and replace it with olive, coconut, ghee, or old-fashioned butter (definitely not margarine).
- Tell your primary care doctor to fuck himself and find a new one if he isn’t instructing you on any of the above but is instead preoccupied with prescribing drugs and anodyne advice of the sort you’d get from the American Diabetes Association.
If he/she is funded by Medicare, Medicaid, or some other government program, chances are he/she is ignorant, lying, or both.
All apologies to whatever competent or forthright doctors might have slipped through the cracks, but government-funded medicine is the bottom of the barrel. You’re better off relying on people like Mark Hyman Google and common sense.
I would, a caveat in fat propaganda articles I’ve offered before, never mock an obese person who is committed to a sincere effort to change.
If you’re one of the tens (maybe hundreds) of millions of them in the U.S. alone and you’re reading this, God bless and you can change your metabolic destiny.
Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
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