A number of people I know have started using Ozempic. This is the drug, otherwise known as Wegovy, beloved by the likes of Elon Musk and Jeremy Clarkson, that suppresses your appetite, so enabling you to lose weight. Not only does it suppress your appetite, it actually turns you off food.
I’ve been overweight in the past. I get how hard it is to shed pounds. It takes a lot of time, effort and persistence. It can be deeply demoralising, and you can become quite desperate, so I get why many are taking the apparently easier Ozempic route.
But I worry about it.
We don’t yet know for sure what the side effects are, but I’d wager that in a few years time, as so often is the way, we are going to discover all sorts of nasty unintended consequences. What is more, on the company’s own site it reads:
Ozempic® may cause serious side effects, including:
Possible thyroid tumors, including cancer. Tell your health care provider if you get a lump or swelling in your neck, hoarseness, trouble swallowing, or shortness of breath. These may be symptoms of thyroid cancer. In studies with rodents, Ozempic® and medicines that work like Ozempic® caused thyroid tumors, including thyroid cancer.
Read that last sentence again. In studies with rats, Ozempic caused thyroid tumours.
What’s more, as soon as you stop taking Ozempic, you are going to put all the weight back on that you’ve lost, and probably more. Ozempic can only be a temporary solution.
Lastly, people who’ve taken Ozempic and lost weight, don’t look that good. They look weird.
Why take the risk when there is a much more healthy and natural alternative? An alternative that is also much cheaper. But nobody is pushing it, because there are not big pharma bucks with patents behind it. That alternative is cider vin egar.
If you are considering Ozempic, please give cider vinegar a week’s trial. It’ll save you money and it may well save your health as well.
In September 2021 I went the wrong side 90kg (over 14 stone or 200lb). (I should really use stones and pounds on point of principle, especially having given this lecture, but my scales default to metric).
Metric or Imperial, this was too much for a man of my 5ft9 frame. None of the diets I tried were working, so I went back to a diet that had worked in the past - intermittent fasting, specifically the 5:2 - and I set myself a goal of 75kg (11 stone 8, or 165 pounds). I set that goal without ever thinking I would reach it.
But about 14 months later, last November, I hit 77kg. I explain the diet here. But sod’s law being what it is, I ended up putting on about 4kg after writing that article and then plateauing. I then got a trapped nerve in my neck which was agony and that stopped me exercising.
However, lo and behold, in the last three or four weeks, I suddenly shed a load more weight and hit my target. 75kg. 11 stone 8.
The magic bullet, in my opinion, was cider vinegar. I upped my intake. from once to three times a day. Like Ozempic, it makes you eat less.
I take two dessert spoons in a glass of water twice or three times a day (about an hour before I would usually eat seems to work best). I then skip meals wherever possible, which is easy as cider vinegar reduces your appetite. I exercise a fair bit and the weight falls off.
Some days I don’t take it at all, other days I take it three times a day.
Cider vinegar is said to have numerous other benefits:
It lowers blood sugar
It lowers cholesterol
It lowers blood pressure
It’s good for your complexion
It kills bacteria, fungi and germs
It eases eczema
It eases acid reflux (don’t overdo it first thing in the morning)
It can help your body be more alkaline (which itself has been said to ward off cancer)
It’s even supposed to improve hair health
But because there is no Big Cider Vinegar, nobody is marketing it. It reminds me of animal fats, tallow and lard, which we have eaten for centuries, suddenly being superseded by heavily marketed and patented industrial oils, rebranded as vegetable oils, with horrific consequences to obesity rates. You now can’t even buy tallow in your local store, while there is shelf upon shelf of seed oil.
Nothing is perfect. Cider vinegar is not great for your teeth, so be sure to rinse your mouth out after consuming.
Cider vinegar is dirt cheap.
You can take it every day for the rest of your life, should you so wish.
There are no nasty side effects.
Please give it a go before you try Ozempic. And make sure you buy one with “the mother” (meaning it has naturally occurring probiotics, that ordinary cider vineger does not contain).
And if you are interested in reading about how I managed to get my weight down, you can do that here:
Finally, if you should happen to be in the Scottish neck of the woods this August, I am doing one of my lectures with funny bits at the Edinburgh Fringe this year.
This one is about gold. It has got Greek gods, heists, interstellar collisions and Nazis. What more you could want in a show? Except possibly Vikings, I’m not sure.
It’s from August 4th to 20th at 2pm - some highbrow mind food with which to start your day. Please come if you are in town- you can get tickets here.
Plus it’s in the room in which Adam Smith completed Wealth of Nations.
Here’s the blurb:
Older than the solar system itself, gold has captivated humans since the Stone Age and driven them to do the most extraordinary things. But does it have any future in this digital age?
A lecture with funny bits by financial writer / comedian, Dominic Frisby about the amazing metal that is gold.
The Times say Dominic is 'outstanding'. The Telegraph says he’s 'excellent'. The Spectator says he is 'mercurially witty'. Even The Guardian admits he 'can be entertaining'.
Hopefully, I will see you there.
The Power of Cider Vinegar