The Ozempic personality, or how extreme thinness kills pleasure: ‘It robbed me of my usual optimism’

“Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” was a phrase popularized by Kate Moss. In a 2009 interview, she recounted how she kept the sentence written on a note above the refrigerator in the house she shared with her friend – the hairdresser James Brown – as motivation to resist the temptation of eating cookies. It was also a slogan that several brands, including one for children and teenagers, tried to market on T-shirts.

Something similar happened at Berlin Fashion Week back in 2024, when the clothing brand Namilia launched a controversial T-shirt bearing the phrase “I love Ozempic.”

Today, extreme thinness is back in fashion. And, thanks to the use of this medication, which was originally authorized to treat adults with type 2 diabetes, being thin is easier to achieve and far more accessible. And, while some claim that these drugs work better than Moss’s phrase when it comes to stopping “food noise” —the repetitive thoughts that make a person think about their next meal nonstop – for many, it has robbed them of the pleasure of everything else in life. This condition has become known as “Ozemplic personality” (not to be confused with “Ozempic face,” which has the same origin, but more visible results).

“The sunshine? Didn’t care. Sunsets become meh. Even admiring your newly skinny body in the mirror is just a bit dull. It robbed me of my usual Pollyannaishness (optimism),” wrote the journalist Katie Glass, when she recounted her experience with Ozempic this past April for The Times. “Yes, I lost a couple of stone in a few months but I also lost my social life,” she lamented.

“When you stop eating,” Glass explained, “you quickly realise that 90 per cent of socializing is eating. What is the appeal of going out to watch other people graze over three courses when after a starter you’re full? In the end you start wondering if it’s even worth leaving the house.”

Ozempic personality disorder isn’t depression per se, according to several testimonials. On the contrary: it’s as if those who have it experience no emotions at all. They suffer from anhedonia – the inability to feel pleasure or interest in activities that were once rewarding. This is associated with alterations in the brain’s reward system.

“It’s like feeling meh,” said dietitian Summer Kessel on her TikTok account, while discussing her experience with a GLP-1 medication. “You lose a bit of the spark in life. You don’t feel excited about anything. You lose the excitement that comes from eating healthy, going to the gym, doing the activities you love,” she explained, in her description about anhedonia. “I feel meh about exercise, [even though] it’s my biggest passion in the world. I’m skipping my morning workouts more than usual,” she sighed.

However, in the video, she acknowledges that she no longer eats very much: she tends to settle for a small bowl of cereal with milk, when, in the past, she enjoyed eating her portions of chicken and vegetables.

On platforms like Reddit, hundreds of people have commented on this effect. “I have minimal passion for anything, [I’m] very monotone [with] no enthusiasm. I hear good news [and I] respond with ‘okay.’ Things I enjoy [now] seem to be a chore, including relationships, sports, work, family time, etc. [Has] anyone’s personality changed?” one user asks the others on the social network. Among the comments are hundreds of stories from people who have started taking Ozempic: they’ve broken up with their partners, they’ve stopped seeing their friends, they’ve stopped reading books and watching their favorite TV series… the list goes on. Some Reddit users write that they can’t even meet a friend for coffee, because after one sip, they don’t want any more.

“I feel like a zombie, I feel irritated… [it’s] sad, it’s like [the drug] took away any dopamine or serotonin. I keep looking this up and I guess there isn’t enough research. Some say it increases dopamine and some say [it doesn’t]. I have no motivation for anything, I have to force myself to even cook dinner. After work, I stay in bed. It’s affecting my life. I also have no desire to be around anyone. Ugh,” one Reddit user laments.

“Activities and experiences that used to have meaning and fulfillment now seem pointless,” someone else wrote on Reddit. “Now, even the activities that I once enjoyed – food, exercise, socializing, sex, hobbies, video games – don’t give me enough of a reward to keep doing them. The problem isn’t just that food no longer brings us pleasure [when we’re on this medication]; it affects our enjoyment of almost everything. This isn’t alarmism or a criticism of medication in general; I’ve lost a lot of weight with few side effects, just heartburn. But the psychological cost, the ‘blankness,’ or the lack of emotional satisfaction is significant and real. We have to acknowledge it and talk about it openly,” they explain.

One theory about this side effect of the drug (which is still being studied) is that, just as it helps reduce “food noise,” it also reduces the desire to do other activities that evoke the same kind of pleasure derived from eating. There are even people who claim that drugs like Mounjaro, for the same reason, have surprisingly helped them curb addictions to alcohol, drugs, pornography, or gambling.

“We can divide people into two very simple groups: some eat to live – food isn’t that important to them, but they know they need calories to get through the day – and others live to eat, because eating is social [and] pleasurable. It excites them. And many of us are somewhere in between,” explained Daniel Drucker, the father of Ozempic, in an interview with EL PAÍS last year.

He added: “If you have 10 friends and you’re going out for dinner on a Friday, some will say, ‘I’m not very hungry, but [I’ll eat] because we’re going out.’ Others will say, ‘That restaurant has my favorite paella, I can’t wait to try it again!’ So, clearly, there’s a hedonic pleasure in food. We all have favorite foods that excite us. And addictions also have that pleasure component. Why do we smoke? Why do we use cannabis, alcohol, or narcotics? Because using those substances activates a reward system in the brain.”

“What GLP-1 seems to do, whether [we’re talking about] someone who loves paella or someone who smokes, drinks alcohol, or consumes cannabis, is reduce the level of pleasure derived from it. It makes people say, ‘I’m not so interested in dessert anymore,’ or ‘I don’t need that extra cigarette or that extra beer.’ It’s like there’s nothing exciting about it anymore. Before, there was enthusiasm, brain activation, desire… and now, not so much,” the Canadian endocrinologist explained. However, he cautioned that there still isn’t enough scientific evidence to support this theory.

While some people claim that it’s not worth feeling this way just to be very thin (and have subsequently stopped taking the medication), others are content, so long as they continue to lose weight. But sociologists and feminist authors believe that this obsession with physical appearance isn’t merely a personal desire. As American author Naomi Wolf writes in her book, The Beauty Myth (1990): “A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.”

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