New weight loss drug can ruin your favorite foods

In a stomach-churning turn, patients say Wegovy, a new weight loss drug, can ruin your favorite foods, like coffee, french fries, and even candy.

Wegovy patients are getting great results but this new weight loss drug can ruin your favorite foods.

Staci Rice, 40, lost 50 pounds using Wegovy. Unfortunately, she also lost her taste for her favorite cheat foods like fried-chicken sandwiches from Chic-fil-A, and Kit-Kats. Even her breakfast cup of joe started tasting funny.

“Every morning, I would try to make coffee, thinking that one day it would just taste good to me again,” Rice told Insider.

She had no such luck.

How the new weight loss drug Wegovy works

This side effect is troubling for foodies, but it’s also a sign the drug is going to work.

Wegovy is the brand name for the drug semaglutide, which was recently found to be effective in teenagers too.

No matter your age Wegovy requires one shot a week. The drug replicates hormones that tell your brain you are full.

Patients in this Reddit forum, however, say the drug goes way beyond inducing extra satiety. They claim their favorite foods now actively taste bad.

This condition is called dysgeusia. It’s a change in the brain’s interpretation of what is going on in your mouth. Suddenly a Snickers bar could be acrid and sour. Or worse, you can’t taste the rainbow in a handful of Skittles.

This is a bummer on cheat day, but on the plus side, disdain for foods you normally crave, and overeat, will definitely help with weight loss.

Celebrities are using the new weight loss drug Wegovy too

Elon Musk credited fasting for his dramatic weight loss in 2022 but admitted Wegovy helped him too. Influencer queen Kim Kardashian is even rumored to be taking the drug, according to the Daily Mail, along with many other celebrities.

Wegovy is so effective in part because along with curbing cravings, it slows digestion, which helps you feel full longer.

Semaglutide also increases insulin production in the pancreas. Understandably, Wegovy was initially a diabetes drug, called Ozempic. When diabetes patients started losing weight, the Danish drug maker, Novo Nordisk, reformulated the generic samaglutide, as Wegovy.

The most common side effects of Wegovy are nausea and upset stomach, but losing love for your favorite foods should be added to that list, says one Tiktok user, Kait Morris. And this side-effect will follow you around every day, at every meal.

“I miss eating. I miss going out to restaurants. I miss ordering a normal plate of food … I don’t crave food, period.”

Kait Morris, Tiktok

Is this new weight loss drug worth ruining your favorite foods?

The problem with semaglutide, or Wegovy, or Ozempic, or whatever we’re calling this new weight loss drug, is familiar. Wegovy is proven to work, but it comes with a cost.

Every dieter ponders this paradox. Sure, dropping weight will probably lengthen my life, but missing out on delicious food will definitely make it feel longer.

The only way to decide if Wegovy is right for you, therefore, is by weighing risk versus reward.

When to use a drug for weight loss like Wegovy

You may have noticed an influx of influencers selling claims about health at any weight. And sometimes, this can be true, sort of — as long as you’re very young, and have zero confounding conditions.

For the vast majority of people, however, the reality is that even moderate obesity is dangerous and will shorten your life.

Maybe worse, excess weight destroys your quality of life. It ruins your sleep, often your confidence, and there goes your overall physical and mental health.

Weight gain is like a chain reaction of bodily disruptions, from hormonal changes, to insulin resistance to simple wear and tear on your joints.

There’s a reason your doctor plops you on a scale on every visit and is blunt about the results. General practitioners see thousands of patients. Weight loss is the one free thing they can recommend that reliably improves health in every way — from blood pressure to back pain to basic brain function.

If you only have a few pounds to shed, letting Wegovy make your favorite dish taste like a 9-volt battery probably isn’t worth it.

But if you are significantly overweight, and nothing else has worked, Wegovy’s taste-distorting side-effect could be worth more than the joys of brunch.