Former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) shared his journey using the weight loss drug Ozempic and slammed the “glorifying” of obesity as being “dangerous and reckless.”
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Santos shared he started using the weight loss drug in January 2022 after visiting a doctor who placed him “on a Ozempic regiment.”
Between the time he began and November 2022, Santos shared that he ended weighing in at “248lbs” signifying having lost 110 lbs from his initial weight of 358 lbs.
“The insane culture of glorifying obesity is dangerous and reckless,” Santos wrote.
Pulling back the curtain on my Ozempic experience:
— George Santos (@MrSantosNY) January 16, 2024
January of 2022 I weighed in at 358lbs
I decided I needed to change my life and engaged a Dr who put me on a Ozempic regiment. By Election Day November 2022 I weighed in at 248lbs marking a 110lbs weight loss.
My journey… pic.twitter.com/kiAWKC4QNO
Santos warned that at the beginning of his weight loss journey, he felt “mild nausea” which he helped to control by taking Zofran, a drug used to control nausea and vomiting, primarily for cancer patients or people recovering after surgery.
In 2023, Santos ended up suspending taking Ozempic, adding that he “gained 30 lbs.”
“Taking in consideration my personal stuff it was a real shit show of a year,” said Santos, who was expelled from the House by a 311-114 vote in early December.
Santos’ expulsion came after a House Ethics Committee report accused the Republican representative of seeking to “fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit.”
Prior to his expulsion from the House, Santos had been under fire since the year before after admitting that he had fabricated large parts of his resume.
“The cool part here is, I’m no longer pre diabetic and I’m back on the drug since last week and have already dropped 70lbs,” Santos revealed. “I encourage everyone to consider changing your life and taking control of your health and say NO to obesity once and for all.”
Between 2017 and March 2020, obesity in the United States was at 41.9%, an increase from 30.5% between 1999-2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A September 2023 report by the Trust for America’s Health, a non-profit organization promoting “optimal health” for each person and community, found that out of the 41.9% of adults who were obese, adults in the Black and Latino communities had the highest obesity rates at 49.9% and 45.6%, respectively.
Meanwhile, people in rural communities reportedly had higher rates of obesity than those living in more urban or suburban areas.
The organization also found that obesity rates were on the rise among children ages 2-19, with almost 20% of children in the U.S. reportedly having obesity between 2017 and 2020.