Weight loss

Saturday

Charles Cornish-Dale

The peptides market is exploding – but are they safe?

Two weeks before the 2024 presidential election, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tweeted that “the FDA’s war on public health is about to end.” He then listed a host of treatments, all of which he claimed had been “aggressively suppressed” by a corrupt Big Pharma system. Two Ps – psychedelics and peptides – featured on that list of treatments, one more familiar than the other. You could be forgiven for thinking that peptides are a recent creation but they’re not. They’ve been around for a long time, but they’ve gained huge attention due to Wegovy and Ozempic.

peptides

Monday

Ani Wilcenski

The Mar-a-Lago face-off

In all the post election danger-to-democracy commentary, one unexpected new peril has emerged: the “nationwide surge of Mar-a-Lago face." Best exemplified by demented far-right activist Laura Loomer and former Fox News host-slash-former Donald Trump Jr. squeeze Kimberly Guilfoyle, Mar-a-Lago face is a cosmetic look characterized by immense volumes of cheek filler, heavy eye shadow and enough Botox to petrify the face. The male version could be seen when Florida congressman and attorney general-nominee-for-ten-seconds Matt Gaetz stepped out at the RNC with so much Botox and foundation that he instantly became a bipartisan meme. I’d argue that Mar-a-Lago face is not taking over America anytime soon. It’s barely taking over the Republican Party.

cosmetic

Monday

Tristan Justice

My 600-Lb. Life: the end result of ‘body positivity’

Imagine a movement of alcoholics wanting to glorify alcoholism. They’ll claim alcoholism is normal, even healthy. They’ll charge anyone who says otherwise as infected by a societally instilled form of methyphobia, the abject fear of alcohol. The movement will be sponsored by the alcohol industry, eager to gin up sales with the advent of “alcoholic positivity” promoting their addictive beverages. There will even be conferences around the country featuring activist alcoholics selling alcoholism as beautiful. The same movement is happening today with food.  TLC’s My 600-Lb Life returns with season twelve on Wednesday. Each episode offers a painful illustration of the consequences of extreme food addiction glorified today by activists for “body positivity.

my 600-lb. life

Thursday

Cockburn

Oprah ditches WeightWatchers after shedding pounds with drugs

After twenty-five years battling her weight before a studio audience, Oprah has finally dropped those pesky forty pounds... with the help of weight-loss drugs. Now the media mogul has dropped WeightWatchers too.  Earlier this week, Oprah announced that she would be leaving the company after nearly a decade on its board of directors and starring in commercials.   “I look forward to continuing to advise and collaborate with WeightWatchers and CEO Sima Sistani in elevating the conversation around recognizing obesity as a chronic condition, working to reduce stigma and advocating for health equity,” said Oprah, who apparently no longer needs the weight-loss program.

oprah winfrey weightwatchers

Wednesday

Cockburn

Lizzo doesn’t want anyone to out-fat her, dancers claim

Earlier this month, a lawsuit was filed against Lizzo, the plus-size flute-playing singing sensation. It was alleged that she created a “hostile work environment and engaged in sexual harassment.” Lizzo has denied the allegations. But one week later and lawyers representing three of Lizzo's former dancers say they've received new complaints. Ron Zambrano said that his firm, which specializes in employment law, is vetting new allegations from at least six people who said they toured with Lizzo, including other dancers and some who said they worked on her Amazon reality show, Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls. The allegations are of a “sexually charged environment” and failure to pay employees.

lizzo

Thursday

Cockburn

Is Christina Hendricks the latest Ozempic tragedy?

First, it was rumored, and denied, that the Kardashians were on it. Then its usage spread all the way to Elon Musk. But now, are we seeing the real, tragic consequences of Hollywood's favorite slimming drug, Ozempic? Cockburn is devastated to hear of speculation that Christina Hendricks, also known as Joan from Mad Men, has succumbed to the latest celebrity trend. Hendricks, arguably the epitome of Rubenesque beauty in Tinseltown, caused alarm among fans online after posting a photo to Instagram following a dinner earlier this month. https://www.instagram.com/p/CuQszp2u_-M/?

christina hendricks ozempic

Friday

Matt McDonald

Get in loser, we’re canceling Bluey

When I saw on Twitter that Bluey was the latest victim of cancel culture, naturally my first thought was "who did she say the N-word in front of?" For those not in the know, Bluey is an Australian cartoon dog who stars in an eponymous kids' TV show that airs on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC and, in the US, Disney+. She and her family go on a series of adventures that guide viewers through a healthy mix of toilet humor and confronting difficult emotions, in a tenor suitable for the under-tens.

bluey

Monday

Kara Kennedy

The new war on weight

We’re getting fatter. We even have a whole day dedicated to it now, World Obesity Day. We are reminded about our expanding waistbands and inflated cheeks every time we walk down the street, or look at an XXL model stuck onto a magazine cover to make the rest of us chubsters feel empowered. I don’t feel empowered at all. I feel alarmed — and confused. In a time when such advanced medicine is at our fingertips, the obesity problem is worse than ever. In America, one person dies from cardiovascular disease every thirty-four seconds, making it the biggest killer in the country. Globally, the World Health Organization estimates that obesity is responsible for 2.8 million deaths each year. But what if there were a simple way to stop us from eating ourselves to death?

weight

Sunday

Matt Purple

The merry old land of Dr. Oz

The long preen through the institutions continues. The latest celebrity to decide his presence is desperately needed on the political stage is Mehmet Oz, the famous TV doctor, who is running for Senate as a Republican in Pennsylvania. Dr. Oz's candidacy is expected to be less a tonic for what ails us than a ginseng extract supplement paired with an omega-3 multivitamin. Oz's detractors have accused him of using his popular daytime TV show to peddle junk cures, a charge that's certain to be front and center if he makes it out of the GOP primary. Oz has promoted "miracle" weight loss solutions, including claiming that green coffee extract can burn off the pounds. He's touted a tropical fruit called the garcinia cambogia as a great way to slim down.

Tuesday

Chadwick Moore

In defense of fat-shaming

Your business may have closed, your kids still aren’t in school, nana hasn’t had a hug in 18 months, and your uncle drank himself to death from the crippling isolation — but the real tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic is that the luckless fats are feeling stigmatized again. Over the weekend the Los Angeles Times detailed the tearful struggle of being grotesquely obese in the age of COVID-19. ‘Chrystal Bougon cried after the needle went into her arm. Not because her first dose of the Moderna vaccine hurt. But because, finally, being fat actually paid off,’ the article begins. ‘Her experience with medical providers has been one incident of size stigma after another, she said, like the time she went in with a scratched cornea and was told to lose weight.

fat america

Thursday

Chadwick Moore

Why can’t we celebrate Adele’s dramatic weight loss?

Well, hello! Adele is a singer who identifies herself with numbers. Her first three albums are titled 19, 21, and 25. But after the British pop star caused a raucous on lady-Twitter Wednesday when she posted a photo on her 32nd birthday revealing dramatic weight loss, the only number that matters now is: what do we think she is out of 10? https://www.instagram.com/p/B_1VGc5AsoZ/ Obviously we would never rate a treasure of Adele’s talents merely on her appearance. That said we must acknowledge the many factors to be taken into account when evaluating the sexual market value of the formerly portly crooner, who is almost completely unrecognizable after her transformation. Does being a millionaire add points?

adele

Tuesday

Amber Duke

Actually, the husband in the Peloton commercial is a hero

Exercise company Peloton found itself at the center of the Twitter outrage machine this week after they dropped a new Christmas advertisement, 'The Gift that Gives Back.' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pShKu2icEYw&feature=emb_title The commercial kicks off when a husband gifts his young, attractive (and thin!) wife with a Peloton bike on Christmas morning. The wife proceeds to take videos of her workouts over the next year, finally surprising her husband with a progress video the following Christmas to thank him for the Peloton.Critics slammed the ad as sexist, declaring that a man should never give his wife exercise equipment as a gift because it implies she needs to lose weight.But don’t be fooled by the outrage mob.

peloton

Monday

Matt McDonald

Being mistaken for James Corden motivated my weight loss

Late night host James Corden had a viral moment over the weekend when he clapped back at Bill Maher for his comments about fatness. 'If making fun of fat people made them lose weight, there’d be no fat kids in schools,’ Corden said. 'And I’d have a six-pack right now.’ Well James, I’m here to tell you you're wrong. Fat-shaming can work. And I know. Because I was once mistaken for you. I was leaving an extremely busy pool hall in Manhattan's West Village with some friends one Saturday in early December last year. It was the kind of place where you had to collect a ticket from the bar in order to wait your turn for a table — and we had been waiting for over an hour.

james corden