Sumita Mukhopadhyay
Appearances
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
You know, I entered the fashion industry at a really unique moment where there was a an increased interest in plus fashion. And so when I got the job at Teen Vogue, I started having all these fashion brands reaching out to me to be like, wow, we're so excited. We're launching a plus collection. We'd love to talk to you about it. We'd love to send it to you.
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
How does it feel to be a fat fashion editor? And at the time I had kind of newly gained the weight. And so I wasn't totally embracing it. It didn't feel empowering. It almost felt like something that was happening to me where I was like, oh, wait, I'm fat? You know, where I had to kind of get over that first step before being like, I'm fabulous. I love being fat.
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
While I was at Teen Vogue and kind of as I was leaving Teen Vogue, I had had a series of stressful family-related things happen. My father passed away of diabetes-related complications. My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had this really hectic job and I was managing all of it. And my stress response was eating. And it was not just eating.
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
It was like really not taking care of myself ultimately, right? It was taking Ubers. It was getting takeout. It was kind of not really having a lot of time for myself. And that did lead to some unwanted weight gain on my part. And I was having
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
some mobility issues i was having trouble kind of i i just thought it was because i was exhausted because i had never had these experiences but i was having trouble getting up and down the stairs on the subway and i would just chalk it up to like oh i'm just so busy you know like i have to take ubers because i'm like busy and i'm exhausted um and i was having trouble keeping up on walks and i was having trouble sleeping i wasn't feeling well
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
And, you know, on top of that, my clothes weren't fitting. And so I went to the doctor and, you know, this is after I had left Teen Vogue and like kind of after the pandemic, I decided to start the process of, you know, figuring out. If I was OK and also, you know what I could do, because I knew and I understood that diets don't work right.
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
Like I knew I could restrict what I was eating, but eventually I'd gain the weight back. And I really wanted something. I really wanted a strategy that would be more effective. And so. I went in and got my blood work done and, you know, pretty much every indicator was elevated. So I had become pre-diabetic. My cholesterol was elevated. And so those scared me, right?
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
Like I had just lost my father to exactly the things that I'm now looking at in my blood report. And so I was like, you know, I think it's finally time for me to really take this seriously and figure out, you know, a strategy to move forward. And she suggested Manjaro. It is a injectable that you take weekly. It slows your digestion, basically, is how it works.
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
And in doing so, it reduces the rate at which you can eat and how hungry you get. And so, you know, I decided to go on it.
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, emotionally, it was really hard to make the decision to go on it. I saw it as two things. I saw it as a betrayal to the kind of body positivity and feminism that I had ascribed to of loving yourself at any size and not trusting pharmaceutical interventions. And also there was another voice inside me that was like, this is how bad it's gotten, girl.
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
Like you couldn't control this and now you have to take a drug. That's how not well you are. And so a lot of self-judgment, a lot of shame came out with the decision to go on the medication. Physically, it is a bumpy road. It was for me. For me, I struggled with very intense nausea. So one of the ways that it works is since it slows your digestion, if you overeat, you feel very sick.
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
And then a lot of digestive issues. It is very hard to go to the bathroom when you're on it. You have to take all kinds of laxatives. They now have additional prescriptions they put people on that are taking it to help support with regular bowel movements. And so it was not the best physical experience. And then at a certain point, I got used to it.
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
But I think it was more that I just got used to managing the side effects. They never really went away for me.
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
It does something, and I think it's physiological, and a doctor can speak more eloquently to this, but it does trigger something in your brain, a hormone that suggests that you're satiated, right? And so it started to help me feel satisfied with less.
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
One of my behaviors is I tend to compulsively eat in the evening, whether it's stress or just fun or boredom or binge watching TV, whatever it might be. I will sit down with like an array of snacks and kind of eat mindlessly, not always keeping track of how much I'm eating, not necessarily food that had good nutritional value.
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
When I was on Manjaro, I would finish dinner and I pretty much would not physically be hungry in the evening and I just wouldn't have space to eat anything else. And if I got the munchies, I started to reach for healthier snacks because I noticed that I digested them easier.
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
And so if I just like ate an apple or some grapes, you know, like I ate so many freaking grapes or, you know, a handful of carrots or whatever that might be. And all the things we tell ourselves, we were like, this is the healthy choice. Let's make the healthy choice. The healthy choice all of a sudden became easier.
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
And so that was part of why I stayed on it, that it really gave me this release from this yearning that I always had where I was like, And it wasn't a challenging decision. I didn't feel a lot of strain around it. Whereas historically, when I would beat myself up for eating at night, I never felt like I could stop. And with the kind of pharmaceutical intervention, I was able to stop.
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
I guess when Manjaro hit the market, they had given a manufacturer's coupon to early people, to people that had first started taking the drug. And, you know, I don't read the fine print, Noelle. Like, I don't know. No one does, girl. I thought that was my insurance covering it. Like, I didn't understand that, like, the reason it cost that much was a coupon and not...
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
my insurance and so the coupon is rescinded and overnight the drug becomes six to eight hundred dollars a month i think it was like i think it was 800 and they were like we can do this other coupon that will get you to like 600 like i'm kind of like these aren't the exact numbers but all i'm saying is like it was an insane amount of money that i was like what like i live in new york city you can't just take on another payment like that that's crazy yeah exactly exactly
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
I think the combination of the cost and the side effects and I had lost a lot of weight. Like I think I lost 50 pounds about. Oh, wow. And I was feeling great and I was like, you know, let me just try without it. Let me phase out of it. And so I came off the drug at the end of 2023 and, you know, I will say like maintained the loss for quite a bit of time.
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
I probably gained like 10 to 15 pounds within like two or three months and And that was definitely not a great mental experience. Like I definitely came back to that feeling of control of like, oh my God, I'm losing control. I'm losing control. And, you know, but I was excited because I had made some lifestyle changes that I was maintaining and that felt like a really positive intervention.
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
Now, this is like the first interview I'm doing about this in like six months. And so I will say the last six months have been really stressful for me. I launched a book, I got married. Congrats. Thank you. Nothing like gaining weight for your wedding. But I started, you know, some of the things that I had been committing to like cooking and
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
getting enough, you know, my steps every day and all of that like fell to the wayside a little bit. And so the weight started to creep on and creep on and creep on. And now I've probably gained back like 60 or 70% of what I lost, which has been really hard.
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
You know, it's hard and it's also feels like it's forcing me to really face my relationship with my health and my own body and to like, it's like I understand the options that are out there, but the options are limited. I wouldn't even say that I would necessarily go back on it because when I think about it, I just get sick to my stomach.
Today, Explained
Life after Ozempic
I'm just like, oh, I just don't know if I can go through that again. But, you know, it's been a roller coaster, emotional roller coaster, having the kind of high of like, oh, like the weight came off and then to like be feel like I'm back to square one, even though I know in my mind and my heart and my spirit, I am not.