A matter of weight

Obesity is not a moral failure, says a user-guide on GLP-1 drugs

- SOMA DAS

OBESITY A disease or a moral failure, a sheer laziness to work on your will to reduce weight? Those who thought being fat is being lazy are still living in the 'dark ages of obesity management', claims obesity specialist Dr Alexandra Sowa, in her new book The Ozempic Revolution. The new generation of weight-loss drugs, Ozempic (from the Danish firm Novo Nordisk) and its cousins (the likes of Wegovy, Zepbound, Maunjaro, drugs that are Glucagon like peptide-1 receptor agonists or GLP-1 drug) are helping Dr Sowa's patients melt their fat and simultaneously correct underlying metabolic disorders like never before. No wonder she calls them her 'power tools'.

For most people suffering obesity, diets and exercises cannot do it alone, no matter how hard they try, because obesity is a 'chronic, complex and progressive' disease, the underlying causes of which we are still figuring out, she says. GLP-1 drugs are giving heavy-set people a chance at a healthier life they never had, but drugs alone won't sustain the miracle of weight loss forever for them unless they combine it with healthy habits, food-choices and behavioural shifts in the long-term. That's the core message of this new work—bookish offering on weight-loss drugs in the self-help genre, that liberally dispenses with tips on habits you need to cultivate (she dubs it habit foundations), diet changes you need to make (food foundations), and alterations in thoughts and attitude you need to make (mental foundations) for the life-long GLP drug regime to work in your favour to keep your weight down, and your health profile up.