A close relation of mine is taking Ozempic. I shan’t name them or give anything else away other than to say this: they are set to ruin our Christmas lunch. They know it, and we know it. Welcome to British Yuletide 2025 – a country where more than 1.5 million people are estimated to be using GLP-1 agonists such as Ozempic, Mounjaro and Wegovy, with the vast majority (90 per cent) obtaining the drugs privately. NHS analysis of Ozempic hotspots reveals Leicester, Thurrock in Essex and the Wirral to be where users congregate. Clearly, they haven’t done an analysis of private users in Oxfordshire where I live.
This being so, we are locked in a curiously modern etiquette conundrum. Should we serve them up the full plate of bird, spuds, bread sauce, pigs in blankets and sprouts? Or should we just gingerly offer some smoked salmon on rye by the tree and bypass the main event altogether?
Opinions are divided. I, personally, believe that the plate should be offered nonetheless. Let the Ozempicist negotiate the choppy waters of public shame and surprise themselves; give ample space for them to make their own excuses as to why the potatoes remain untouched as the bread sauce congeals. Others in my household are of the opinion that offering a loaded plate would amount to a) acute embarrassment on all sides and b) gross waste. I know which predicament I find more objectionable. For my poor husband, the problem is even more acute: not only will there be medically assisted abstinence on the food front but, to add insult to injury, several members of our party (including myself) don’t drink. Have a holly jolly Christmas, darling.
The Royal Society for Public Health says that the average Briton consumes 6,000 calories on Christmas Day, around three times the recommended daily intake for women and more than twice the recommended amount for men. We hardly need a public health quango to tell us what we already know – namely that Christmas Day is the most almighty binge. But unlike the year-round enterprise of secret late-night solo scoffing, the festive iteration works because it is nationwide. In short, indulgence on this scale needs company.
As such, I like to start my Christmas Day diabetes-inducing pig-out when the children open their stockings at 5 a.m. At this point, my pancreas is unaware of what I am about to inflict on it and hardly registers the ten or so Quality Street I get through. By the time we are all dressed for the day, I have moved on to the mince pies with my husband, and sail to mass on a wave of sugar that could power the National Grid several times over. And so the day goes on: indulgence after indulgence but with a neverending stream of jolly allies. If one person – and it only takes one – ruins the communal binge, then I am quite sure it would ruin my celebration of Christ’s birth. You know who you are.
Should we serve them the full plate of bird, spuds, bread sauce, pigs in blankets and sprouts? Or should we just gingerly offer some smoked salmon by the tree and bypass the main event altogether?
Google ‘Ozempic Christmas’ and you will find a slew of Daily Mail articles advising Ozempic users what to eat when ‘on the pen’ and tips to deal with what they term the ‘eating period’ ahead. The London Obesity Clinic advises its clientele to ‘enjoy the holiday season safely’ before going on to state that Christmas lunch ‘may be triggering’ for GLP-1 users. But what none of these articles mentions is just how irritating it might be for the people tasked with tolerating Ozempic users, namely their families.
Time was, everyone knew the drill. Anyone on the Boomer diet of old – Ryvita, cottage cheese, fags and Diet Coke – took Christmas Day off before starving themselves until New Year’s Eve to get into the party dress. Deprived of potatoes, crisps and pudding for most of the year, the low-fat dieters embarked on Christmas lunch with initial restraint before going crackers and eating Christmas pudding in the kitchen out of a trough with an apron on. As a spectacle, it was jolly and anarchic, as all the best gatherings are.
But that was another time; we will not see its like again. This year, as the popularity of weight loss jabs continues to rocket (with promises of even more widespread use thanks to a forthcoming pill version next year), we had better get used to the Ozempic Christmas guest. Like the drunken uncle and the stressed-out mother, the Christmas Ozempic user will become a stock figure.
My advice? By all means allow them to come, but banish them from the dining room table altogether. Let them sit in the drawing room and eat a solitary nut where they will be happiest. I may be close to pancreatic breakdown in the other room, but I’ll be in good company at least.
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