For years, people have quipped that there’s no shortcut to losing weight. You have to burn more calories than you consume every day, full stop – and that’s not even always true once extenuating circumstances are considered.

Now, though, a drug called Ozempic is turning the tables and letting people lose weight without really trying at all.

From the perspective of Jens Juul Holst, a Danish biomedical researcher who worked with the initial delivery methods for the drug, the effects seem very profound.

“What happens is that you lose your appetite and also the pleasure of eating, and so I think there’s a price to be paid when you do that. If you like food, then that pleasure is gone. The craving for food for some people is taken away when they take GLP-1 drugs.”

For some people, he believes this could be depriving them of one of the greatest pleasures in life.

“Once you’ve been on this for a year or two, life is so miserably boring that you can’t stand it any longer and you have to go back to your old life.”

Holst says this isn’t a new issue, either, as the drugs have been around for nearly 20 years.

“GLP-1s have been on the market since 2005. Do people stay on them? No, they don’t.”

In truth, the science is still out on whether or not semaglutide-based drugs lead to positive health outcomes aside from weight loss at all.

There is some early evidence that patients show improved blood pressure, blood glucose, cholesterol, etc, but the jury is out on whether or not those results will hold up in longer and larger studies.

There is no way to tell what long-term use of the drug will mean until people have been on them for a long time. Some animal research has linked long-term use with cancers, but the connections have not been proven.

Almost all previous weight loss drugs have been removed from the market for one reason or another – most due to causing more health problems than they solve – so many are wondering whether or not Ozempic might truly be an exception.

Holst is refraining from official judgement, though he certainly has his opinions.

“I don’t see that a huge part of the population will be put on Wegovy and will stay on Wegovy for the rest of their lives. I simply don’t see that picture.”

As for me, I suspect we will learn down the road that we should yet again have been suspicious of hard things that suddenly come easy.