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Remi Bader shares what happened to her when she stopped taking Ozempic

Ozempic, a drug used to treat Type 2 diabetes, has become a new weight loss trend.
/ Source: TODAY

TikToker and model Remi Bader shared her experience when she stopped taking Ozempic, a drug used to treat Type 2 diabetes that has quickly become one of the latest weight loss trends.

Bader, 27, said in an episode of Dear Media's "Not Skinny But Not Fat" podcast with Amanda Hirsch aired on Jan. 10 she was prescribed Ozempic for "before it was trendy."

"I'm like, almost annoyed that it's this trendy thing now when I went on it for actual issues," she said.

Bader said her doctor had recommended the drug shortly after it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2020 to help with pre-diabetic insulin issues and weight gain.

"They said I need this. And I had a lot of mixed feelings," she said.

But Bader explained her binge eating disorder almost immediately returned once she stopped taking the medication.

"I saw a doctor, and they were like, it’s 100% because I went on Ozempic," she said. "It was making me think I wasn’t hungry for so long, I lost some weight. I didn’t want to be obsessed with being on it long term. I was like, 'I bet the second I got off I’m going to get starving again.' I did, and my binging got so much worse. So then I kind of blamed Ozempic. I gained double the weight back after."

Dr. Beverly Tchang, an endocrinologist and obesity medicine physician at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine, previously told TODAY.com that patients have to stay on drugs like Ozempic for them to keep working.

Tchang added that regulating weight requires a patient to "to keep your foot on the gas pedal" with diet, exercise and medications that should be taken for as long as they’re helping with weight loss or weight maintenance.

Ozempic, a Type 2 diabetes treatment, is taken by injection and is similar to Wegovy, a treatment for chronic weight management. The medications can induce weight loss, and Ozempic in particular has been trending on social media after some celebrities have been rumored to be taking the drug to lose weight, even though they do not have diabetes or are not obese.

Side effects of Ozempic include headaches, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, pancreatitis and kidney failure, TODAY previously reported. Side effects of Wegovy are similar, including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, pancreatitis, gallbladder problems, kidney problems and increased heart rate, according to doctors and the manufacturer.

The interest in and demand for the drugs have caused a shortage, according to the FDA, and Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceutical company that produces the drugs, had asked doctors to stop starting new patients on the treatment, TODAY previously reported.

Novo Nordisk previously told TODAY in a statement that it “cannot and will not promote, suggest or encourage off-label use of our medicines.” Although Wegovy and Ozempic both have the active ingredient semaglutide, they are not interchangeable, the company noted.

Ozempic is more likely to be covered by insurance than Wegovy if the patient has Type 2 diabetes, Dr. Ania Jastreboff, director of weight management and obesity prevention at the Yale Stress Center in New Haven, Connecticut, previously told TODAY.com.

Jastreboff added that she and her colleagues have been lobbying for insurance companies to cover both drugs for obesity treatment.

"Obesity is not a choice. It is a disease," she said. "There’s clear physiology that that leads to obesity, (but) there’s a bias that it’s not treated as a disease."