Why Ozempic Isn't a Miracle Weight-Loss Drug with Amanda Martinez Beck

Mar 24, 2025

Amanda Martinez Beck, a fat activist and author of *More of You*, shares her insights on Ozempic, a diabetes medication often mistaken for a miracle weight-loss drug. She opens up about her personal battles with dieting and disordered eating, promoting body acceptance in a fatphobic society. Amanda discusses how chronic conditions have shaped her relationship with food and body image, making the case that diet culture is a modern religion. She challenges societal perceptions of wellness and encourages compassionate understanding of body diversity.

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Intro

00:00 • 3min

From Diet Culture to Body Liberation

03:12 • 12min

Challenging Stigma: Wellness and Body Image

15:27 • 10min

Navigating Ozempic: A Personal Journey

25:11 • 5min

Navigating Body Size and Identity with Ozempic

29:52 • 4min

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com

Author and activist Amanda Martinez Beck joins us to discuss her experience of taking Ozempic for diabetes while also working to accept her body and break down anti-fat bias in society. She shares her history of dieting and disordered eating, how chronic conditions including diabetes as well as fibromyalgia and post-Covid syndrome have impacted her relationship with food and her body, why she started taking Ozempic in the first place, how diet culture is a new form of religion, and how her actual religious faith has influenced her eating-disorder recovery. Behind the paywall, we get into the tricky landscape of Ozempic and eating disorders, how Ozempic has fallen short of what the ads and influencers promise, her take on all the GLP-1 hype, and more.

Paid subscribers can hear the full interview, and the first half is available to all listeners. To upgrade to paid, go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com.

Amanda Martinez Beck is a fat activist, educator, and the author of More of You: The Fat Girl's Field Guide to the Modern World. She runs the Instagram account @your_body_is_good, where she combines her love of hand lettering with her vision of fat liberation. Amanda lives with her husband and four kids in northeast Texas, and she writes a weekly Substack called The Fat Dispatch.

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Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.

If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.