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Louise Thomas
Editor
Macy Gray is the latest person to open up about her experience taking Ozempic.
The I Try singer recently appeared on The Surreal Life: Villa of Secrets with Kim Zolciak and Johnny Weir, where she explained why exactly she was taking the Type 2 diabetes drug for weight loss and how her body responded to it.
“Oh, boy my stomach hurts,” she said. “I took Ozempic. I can’t go to the bathroom, and I was up all night.”
However, Zolciak mentioned that these were normal side effects for the drug as she responded: “Ozempic does that.”
Gray then revealed why she started taking Ozempic, describing herself as a “vain person.”
“Quietly, I’m kind of a vain person,” the singer said. “I’ve gained a lot of weight over the past couple years, and this is right about the time when everybody starts talking about this Ozempic.”
She admitted that prior to taking Ozempic she did attempt to lose the weight naturally through diet and exercise. “I was actually trying to take it off before the show because I didn’t want to be super fat on TV, but here we are,” Gray said.
“So, I thought, okay, I’m not taking it off the right way, let me see if I can get one of these Ozempic.”
Throughout the last few years, Ozempic and other prescription medications that result in weight loss have become increasingly popular. Oprah Winfrey recently resigned from her position on the board of WeightWatchers to be able to authentically speak in her television special “An Oprah Special: Shame, Blame and the Weight Loss Revolution” about her experience with such medication.
“I decided that, because this special was really important to me and I wanted to be able to talk about whatever I want to talk about, and WeightWatchers is now in the business of being a weight health company that also administers drug medications for weight,” Winfrey said during an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live. “I did not want to have the appearance of any conflict of interest.”
“In my lifetime I never dreamed we would be talking about medicines that would be providing hope to people, like me, who have struggled for years with being overweight or with obesity,” Winfrey revealed during the March special.
“I come to this conversation with the hope that we can start releasing the stigma and the shame and the judgment – to stop shaming other people for being overweight or how they choose to lose or not lose weight – and more importantly to stop shaming ourselves.”
Winfrey had previously admitted in an interview with People in December 2023 that she’d taken weight loss medication, which was why she wanted to distance herself from the negative stigma surrounding it.
“The fact that there’s a medically approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier, in my lifetime, feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift, and not something to hide behind and once again be ridiculed for,” she told the outlet at the time despite not naming which medication she took. “I’m absolutely done with the shaming from other people and particularly myself.”
