Aisling McCarthy has been called the ‘poster child of Ozempic’ – but her dramatic transformation didn’t come easy.
The mother-of-one had long struggled with her weight, and endured constant pain throughout her body due to fibromyalgia, a nerve condition, and arthritis, which resulted in mobility issues.
Coupled with her pregnancy, her health conditions led her to ‘eat my feelings,’ and she reached 245lbs, regularly snacking on toffee popcorn, chocolate bars, muffins and ice cream.
McCarthy, who was forced to quit her job in 2018 as her pain worsened, exhausted every diet ‘under the sun’ to get rid of the extra fat, from Slimming World, which focuses on low-calorie, filling foods, to Slimfast, a diet consisting of shakes.
But nothing worked, and she was constantly starving.
Her saving grace, however, came in May 2022 when her doctor prescribed Ozempic, a last resort after all other weight loss strategies had failed. In just one year, she dropped 80lbs, then shed another 20lbs within a year of quitting the ‘fat loss shot.’
Now, more than two years since her last jab, she has maintained her weight of 149lbs – an incredibly ‘rare’ feat.
‘My doctor, he actually calls me the ‘poster child of Ozempic’,’ McCarthy, 43, told Daily Mail.
‘Even online, I am a very rare case. People say they have never seen anyone that kept the weight off for as long as I have.’
Research has shown that many people who stop taking semaglutide, the key ingredient in weight loss drugs like Ozempic, regained much of the weight they lost.
A 2022 study of 327 people on the medication found that participants regained two-thirds of their prior weight loss a year after stopping the drug.
McCarthy, from Cork, Ireland, started on Ozempic in May 2022, taking 0.25 milligrams (mg) every week, before upping the dose to 0.5mg in June and July and then eventually taking 1mg.
While some insurances in the US cover the cost of the drugs for weight loss, that is not in the case in Ireland – and McCarthy was shelling out $163 per Ozempic pen.
But she initially did the drug ‘all wrong’, she admitted, not eating nearly enough food and, as a result, felt tired and moody due to her low energy.
Switching to a high-protein diet, however, would be the key to sustain her weight loss even after quitting the drug.
For breakfast, she would eat boiled eggs and toast, lunch consisted of a a toasted sandwich with bacon, egg and avocado, and a typical dinner involved chicken sausages and bacon with beans.
On the weekends, she would allow herself to eat takeout with the family, but would opt for a small pizza instead of the 12-inch pie she once normally ordered.
Doctors recommend lifestyle changes in tandem with taking Ozempic, such as eating a protein-heavy diet and prioritizing exercise.
Strength training in particular is advised in order to maintain muscle mass while promoting fat loss to avoid the sagging and sunken look some people experience when losing weight too quickly.
While McCarthy’s fibromyalgia and arthritis made it difficult for her to do much exercise, she said, she did start to be more active as her weight decreased.
McCarthy lost about 0.5lbs to 1lb per week, which was not as dramatic as other drug users who lost 2lbs per week, but she said she was content with the pace of her transformation.
When she first started taking Ozempic, she suffered from nausea and had foul-smelling burps and flatulence, both commonly reported side effects.
Studies suggest about one in five people who take a 1mg dose of Ozempic experience nausea, while many patients have anecdotally described experiencing ‘sulfur burps’ while on the drug.
In February 2023, 10 months into taking the weight loss jabs, McCarthy had lost 80lbs – and wanted to come off the drug.
While she was finally happy with her new body, she was stressed about the looming semaglutide shortage. At the time, she said, Ozempic was like ‘liquid gold’ – unavailable almost everywhere.
McCarthy said: ‘When you’re put on these medications, you’re seeing a lot of people go down to like a size eight or six, and you feel like you need to be that way for people to see the medication working.
‘I’m a curvy 14, which is healthy, and I’m happy with that’.
In Ireland, a size six to eight is equivalent to a US size two to four, while a size 14 is equivalent to a US size 10.
Upon quitting Ozempic, she vowed to keep her diet the same, confident that she would be able to easily follow it without the weekly jab.
But she couldn’t just stop cold.
She gradually tapered off her Ozempic dose, reducing her weekly dose to 0.5mg in April 2023, and decreasing it to 0.25mg the following month before quitting the medication for good.
‘I didn’t want to quit cold turkey,’ she said. ‘[Because otherwise] when the appetite starts coming back… all of a sudden you have these cravings for food you didn’t have before.’
And it worked – her appetite ‘felt no different’ and she didn’t feel a sudden surge of old cravings. While her weight fluctuates now, it is only approximately the 20lbs she lost in the year after coming off the drug, she said.
The scale has not rebounded to where it was pre-Ozempic, she added, and she is not concerned about regaining what she’s lost.
While on the drug, she had also been through counseling to determine her triggers for eating food and how to manage them, resulting in healthier eating habits that helped keep the weight off post-Ozempic.
For McCarthy, she found one of her triggers was family stress and her refusal to use a cane, which left her immobile from pain and spending most of her time at home eating.
‘If you are emotional eating the way I was, if you don’t sort your mind out, then why do this?’ said McCarthy.
‘You’re just going to sabotage yourself as soon as you come off the drug.’
