Even before Jennifer Fessler shared her steamy memories of the late, great James Gandolfini on RHONJ, the Ozempic rumors were swirling.
In fact, she may have been ahead of the curve in using the life-saving diabetes medicine as a luxury weight-loss tool.
Recently, Fessler’s Ozempic use landed her in the hospital.
She’s out of the hospital. She’s doing better now. And she’s still on Ozempic.
Assuming that she’s still around, we’ll be interested to hear what Jennifer Fessler has to say on a prestigious documentary on Ozempic and similar semaglutide injections.
For now, though, she’s still making (controversial) use of the drug as an appetite suppressant.
Despite her recent hospitalization with an impacted bowel, she’s more than happy to boast about continuing to use it.
“I’m not afraid of Ozempic,” Fessler said this week, “and I will tell you I have had an experience that was not good — and I’m pretty positive it was about the semaglutide — where I had to go to the hospital for an impacted bowel.”
Fessler said this alongside cohost Jackie Goldschneider on their shared podcast, Two Jersey Js.
“I’m still not nervous about it,” she emphasized. “When it comes to things having to do with my physical appearance, somehow that goes out the window. For instance, I’m not afraid at all of going into surgery for anything cosmetic.”
Fessler shared that, in over a year, she has lost “maybe 22 pounds” total from Ozempic. Yet she blames herself for her hospitalization.
“I was drinking no water, eating no vegetables,” she claimed. “‘Cause something that happens, a new experience for me, is being able to eat what I want.”
Fessler went on: “Even when it’s not the most healthy choices and still lose weight. So maybe for the first time in my life, I’m losing weight on pizza and bagels and ice cream.”
“Having said that, I noticed there was constipation, I didn’t do anything about it. I wasn’t taking Miralax, that you take every morning, or any kind of stool softener,” Fessler admitted. “I hadn’t gone in a week, then it was a week and a half.”
Fessler did not immediately seek treatment, and says that she’s the one “to blame for ignoring [her side effects] and allowing them to escalate to the point where I became impacted.”
Now, she says, she’s “proactive” and drinking more water, taking laxatives, and more.
Notably, this same medication caused thyroid cancer in rodents during laboratory testing. Until very recently, only people who needed it to live took to the injections.
Since it became the weight loss drug of choice among the wealthy, Ozempic (and similar semaglutides) have had shortages on multiple continents. Which means real problems for people who need it.
So we’re talking about a weight loss drug with known risks, unknown potential long-term risks, and finite supply. Fessler still thinks that it’s worth the risk, and we’re hard-pressed to condemn her. Our culture does brutal things to women over the shapes of their bodies.