Podcaster Claudia Oshry got emotional when she told her listeners she’s been taking Ozempic for the past year.
“The reason I’m nervous about sharing [how much I’ve lost] is because I’m ashamed of myself that I got to a place where I had 70 pounds to lose,” she said on Wednesday’s episode of “The Toast” on Patreon.
“I could cry I’m so mad at myself,” Oshry went on, breaking down in tears.
The comedian, known for her Instagram handle @girlwithnojob, joked that she never thought she was “that big” because she’s “so delusional.”
“Now I look back at pictures and see myself through this new lens and it makes me feel sad. I have very mixed emotions,” she said.
“To be a fat woman is one of the hardest things to do in this world. [But] I feel like I handled it as good as I could have and I’m proud of the fact I was able to have a full life [before losing weight].”
During the hour-long conversation with her sister, Jackie Oshry, the influencer slammed celebrities like Andy Cohen for promoting “fat-phobic and harmful” rhetoric around the drug semaglutide — sold under the brand name Ozempic — which was approved for weight loss by the FDA.
Cohen previously made light of the fact that several stars from the “Real Housewives” franchise were taking the drug, while Jimmy Kimmel joked about Ozempic in his 2023 Oscars monologue. Reality star Tamra Judge also called the drug a “shortcut.”
“I think the way influencers, podcasters, Andy Cohen, the way they talk about it is so fat-phobic and so harmful because it’s created this layer of shame,” Claudia said.
“So many people are speaking about Ozempic and fatness from a level of inexperience. There’s so much misinformation and a general lack of understanding of what it’s like to be fat … it’s damaging,” she continued.
“Everyone’s like, ‘Just stop eating,’ like, ‘Oh, I should stop eating? That never occurred to me,'” she added sarcastically.
“For some people it’s impossible. The number one cause of obesity is genetics, you’re either predisposed to being fat or you’re not. If you don’t have that gene you don’t know what it’s like.”
In an exclusive statement to Page Six, Claudia reiterated her belief that public figures shouldn’t be “berated” into revealing their medical details.
“This trend in media and pop culture where people’s private medical information is suddenly required to be discussed is bizarre to me,” she told us Thursday.
“I chose to share my health journey in my own time — not because anyone is entitled to know — but in an effort to destigmatize this drug that has somehow become shameful to take.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Terry Dubrow recently offered a warning about the dangers of shaming people for taking the drug.
“We have to stop the Ozempic shaming,” he told Page Six exclusively last month.
“If somebody’s on Ozempic because they wanna lose weight, [we should] celebrate that we have a breakthrough for obesity.”
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Elsewhere in the episode, Claudia told her listeners that she decided to overhaul her lifestyle in May 2022 and started taking the drug, which is often prescribed to diabetes patients, last September.
“There’s so many reasons I decided to do it: overall health was the number one, but of course [being able] to have kids,” the Spritz Society founder, who is married to fellow podcaster Ben Soffer, explained.
“I was a 25-year-old who was out of breath all the time [and] couldn’t sustain my own weight.”
She credits the medication with helping her make significant health changes and said she wasn’t “ashamed” to be using it.
“It changed my f—king life,” she said.
“I couldn’t have done the weight loss without it. I’ve changed a lot of things in my life, but I don’t think I would have physically or mentally been able to had it not been for Ozempic.”
