Fitness
What do weight loss drugs mean for a diet industry built on eating less and exercising more?
NEW YORK –
Ever since college, Brad Jobling struggled with his weight, fluctuating between a low of 155 pounds when he was in his 30s to as high as 220. He spent a decade tracking calories on WeightWatchers, but the pounds he dropped always crept back onto his 5-foot-5-inch frame.
A little over a year ago, the 58-year-old Manhattan resident went on a new weight loss drug called Wegovy. He’s lost 30 pounds, and has started eating healthier food and exercising — the habits behind many commercial diet plans and decades of conventional wisdom on sustainable weight loss.
Yet Jobling’s experience also has altered his perspective on dieting. He now sees obesity as a disease that requires medical intervention, not just behavioural changes. In fact, he thinks he will need to stay on a drug like Wegovy for the rest of his life even though it has taken some of the joy out of eating.
“I don’t see how you can maintain (the weight) without medication,” Jobling said. “Obviously, it’s all about self-control. But I think it’s less of a struggle to really maintain healthy eating when you got that assistance.”
Like the lives of the people taking them, recent injected drugs like Wegovy and its predecessor, the diabetes medication Ozempic, are reshaping the U.S. health and fitness industries. They have proven successful in eliminating unwanted pounds more quickly and easily than consuming fewer and burning more calories alone. Such is their disruptive power that even established diet companies like WeightWatchers and brands like Lean Cuisine are getting makeovers.
Although celebrities like Oprah Winfrey have spoken publicly of the drugs as revolutionary, some health experts worry that businesses without any expertise will start dispensing the prescription medications along with bad advice and unproven therapies.
A demand too big to ignore
At least 3 million prescriptions for the class of medications known as GLP-1 agonists were issued each month in the U.S. during the 12 months that ended in March, according to data from health technology company IQVIA. They include semaglutide, the drug in Ozempic and Wegovy, and tirzepatide, the drug in Mounjaro and Zepbound. Morgan Stanley research analysts have estimated that 24 million people, or 7% of the U.S. population, will be using GLPT-1 drugs by 2035.
The world’s leading diet programs have taken note of such statistics and incorporated the popular drugs into their existing subscription plans.
WeightWatchers, which was founded in 1963, last year acquired telehealth provider Sequence, enabling members to get prescriptions for weight loss drugs. WeightWatchers is sticking with its focus on behaviour change as the cornerstone of weight reduction but launched virtual clinics that provide customized exercise and nutrition plans, as well as prescription care, for individuals who want to lose 20% of their body weight on average.
“The weight loss space will be led by the acknowledgement that weight loss is a matter of health care,” WeightWatchers CEO Sima Sistani told analysts earlier this year. “This is a paradigm shift because weight loss has been and, unfortunately, often still is viewed as a vanity issue.”
The Mayo Clinic, which first offered a weight management plan in book form in 1949, has published an updated version of the longtime bestseller, titled “The Mayo Clinic Diet: Weight-Loss Medications Edition.”
The Mayo Clinic Diet program also has expanded to include access to weight loss drugs and advice on managing any side effects, according to Digital Wellness CEO Scott Penn, whose company developed an online platform for the original program.
The new drugs have made being very overweight “feel more medical as a condition,” he said.
Gyms and diet food companies look to muscle in
Luxury athletic club operator Life Time launched a membership program last year that offers comprehensive medical testing, personalized training and a host of alternative therapies like cryotherapy. Members of the Miora program also can get Ozempic and other weight loss drugs through the medical staff of a clinic that opened in Minneapolis last year.
Jeff Zwiefel, executive director of Life Time Miora, called the new drugs a “game changer” for the fitness industry.
“We have an opportunity and an obligation and a responsibility to help people achieve results in conjunction with medical providers and make sure that that’s the way to go,” he said.
Fitness chains are banking on the idea people on the drugs will lose enough weight to overcome any self-consciousness or physical limits that kept them from exercising. The gym franchise Equinox started a new personal training program in January for prescription-holders who want to preserve or build muscle mass as they shed unwanted pounds.
The world of drug-assisted weight loss also is altering the ambitions of food companies. Sales of SlimFast, a line of meal replacement shakes and snacks sold at supermarkets, have dropped as people turn to weight loss drugs and retailers cut shelf space for diet products, the brand’s parent company, Glanbia, told investors in February.
Since the drugs suppress the appetites of people taking them, Glanbia and other companies are marketing their products as a source of adequate nutrients for people taking GLP-1s. Swiss multinational Nestle SA thinks it can benefit from the drugs’ popularity and is expanding its Lean Cuisine frozen meals and OPTIFAST protein shakes.
“Diets are cool again,” Nestle SA CEO Ulf Mark Schneider told analysts in February. “It’s something that people used to do quietly on the side, uncertain about their outcomes.”
Promising results and a wealth of unknowns
Research has shown that about a third of people lose 5% or more of their body weight with diet and exercise alone, according to Dr. Louis Aronne, director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Center at Weill Cornell Medical School. In comparison, the medicine in the diabetes drug Mounjaro helped people with obesity or who are overweight lose at least a quarter of their weight when combined with restricted calories and exercise, a new study showed.
But some experts worry about businesses marketing the drugs or serving as fitness coaches for patients on the medications. Dr. Cian Wade, a health care consultant for the global strategy and management firm Kearney, said he’s concerned about a proliferation of clinics that don’t have as much experience with obesity and related health conditions.
“There’s a potential worry that for some patients, (the clinics) will not have the right expertise at hand to be able to appropriately manage the side effects, nutrition-related issues,” he said.
Since GLP-1 medications are so new, it’s unclear how many patients will stick with their drug regimens, which produce intolerable side effects for some people. Another reason patients may drop the drugs is cost. A month’s supply of Wegovy costs US$1,300, and Zepbound is priced at $1,000.
‘The new version of me’
Lisa Donahey, 54, an actress and singer who lives in Los Angeles, started Mounjaro under a doctor’s care a year ago to address her Type 2 diabetes. At the time, Donahey, who is 5-foot-7-inches tall, weighed 260 pounds and was a veteran of diet plans like Jenny Craig, WeightWatchers and Nutrisystem.
Her weight has since dropped to a little less than 190 pounds. She goes to a gym. After always being cast as a character actor, she’s looking for new roles. Having used the medication to give her “a kick-start,” Donahey said she plans to wean herself off Mounjaro once she loses another 40 pounds.
“I had a sense of hopelessness that I was destined to be this way and just could not do it by myself,” she said. “Now, with my weight being managed and the new version of ‘me’ is emerging, I just feel so empowered, excited and hopeful.”
A small study of university students in Spain found that better cardiorespiratory fitness is associated with better cognitive processing speed and a smaller volume of the cingulate cortex of the brain. However, brain volume differences did not explain the links between cardiorespiratory fitness and cognition. The paper was published in Physiology & Behavior.
Cardiovascular fitness is the ability of a person’s heart, lungs, and blood vessels to supply oxygen-rich blood to muscles during sustained physical activity. A person with good cardiovascular fitness can walk fast, run, cycle, swim, or do other continuous activities for longer periods without becoming exhausted quickly. It is often called aerobic fitness because it depends heavily on oxygen-based energy production, and it is an important component of overall physical fitness.
A common scientific measure of cardiorespiratory fitness is VO₂ max, which estimates the maximum amount of oxygen the body can use during intense exercise. Cardiorespiratory fitness can be improved through regular aerobic activities such as brisk walking, jogging, cycling, swimming, dancing, or rowing.
Better cardiorespiratory fitness is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and early death. It can also improve everyday functioning, mood, sleep, and general energy levels. Low cardiorespiratory fitness means the body has more difficulty sustaining activity that requires a continuous oxygen supply.
Study author Neus Camins-Vila and her colleagues note that neuroimaging studies indicate that certain physical fitness components, primarily cardiorespiratory fitness and muscular strength, are associated with larger volumes in specific brain structures.
For example, among young adults, previous studies found that higher cardiorespiratory fitness is associated with larger volumes in several regions of the brain. The researchers conducted a study examining the associations between cardiorespiratory fitness, strength, flexibility, and balance in relation to the volumes of specific brain regions and the participants’ overall neuropsychological profiles. They also sought to determine if sex differences moderated any of these relationships.
Study participants were 94 undergraduate and graduate university students from Barcelona, Spain, and its surroundings, recruited through social media and posters. To be included, participants were required to be between 18 and 25 years of age, to be sufficiently proficient in either Spanish or Catalan to follow instructions, and to have self-reported a regular level of physical activity over the past six months. There was also a list of medical conditions that would exclude prospective participants from the study.
After joining the study, participants first completed an online questionnaire covering demographics and medical history. This was followed by three face-to-face sessions involving a cognitive assessment, an evaluation of physical fitness, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain.
The cognitive assessment lasted 60 to 90 minutes. During this time, participants took a series of neuropsychological tests covering attention and cognitive processing speed (i.e., attention-speed), executive functioning, memory, and visuospatial function. The physical fitness assessment focused on cardiorespiratory fitness, strength, flexibility, and balance.
Results showed that students with higher cardiorespiratory fitness tended to have better processing speed and a smaller volume in the cingulate cortex region of the brain. The researchers theorize that a smaller cingulate cortex in this age group may actually be a sign of advanced, healthy brain maturation rather than a negative outcome, as the brain naturally prunes connections to become more efficient during early adulthood.
When analyzing the data by sex, different patterns emerged. In men, flexibility (the ability of joints and muscles to move through their full range of motion without pain or excessive stiffness) was associated with higher processing speed. In contrast, higher flexibility was associated with lower processing speed in women. The researchers suggest that very high flexibility in women may be linked to joint hypermobility, a condition that can cause pain or fatigue, which could negatively impact cognitive test speeds.
In women, better visual memory was associated with higher strength, and better verbal memory was associated with better cardiorespiratory fitness. Furthermore, lower volume of the hippocampus region of the brain in women was associated with higher flexibility but worse balance.
“Different physical fitness components were associated with cognitive functions and brain volumes in young adults, and some associations—particularly those involving physical flexibility and attention/processing speed—varied by sex at birth. Brain volumes did not explain the observed fitness–cognition associations,” the study authors concluded.
The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the links between cognitive abilities and physical fitness. However, it should be noted that the study authors carried out a large number of statistical tests, but only a few of them returned statistically significant results. They did this without applying any correction for multiple comparisons—procedures routinely used in research studies to mitigate the risk that statistical tests might return statistically significant results purely due to chance. This means that many of the reported findings might simply be products of random variations in the data, rather than real systematic associations between the observed characteristics.
The paper, “Associations between fitness components and brain health in young adults: A cognitive and brain volume MRI study exploring sex differences. The YoungFit study,” was authored by Neus Camins-Vila, Adrià Bermudo-Gallaguet, Samira Rostami, Rosalia Dacosta-Aguayo, Judit Escarré-Grifell, Blai Ferrer-Uris, Albert Busquets, Louis Bherer, and Maria Mataró.
Fitness
How Jeremy Clarkson Reset His Health and Fitness at 66 – Walking, Pilates and Trying ‘Not to Die’
Rewind a decade or so, and Jeremy Clarkson had a particular disdain for exercise, healthy eating and denying himself life’s pleasures. He never worked out, smoked 40 cigarettes a day and, in his own words, drank four pints of wine daily. Now, at 65, his entire outlook on health and longevity has shifted.
At the heart of Clarkson’s desire to change are his young grandchildren.
‘I’m not going to dwell on the joys of being a grandparent because what can be said about it has already been said. But I have decided that it is so wonderful that I want it to go on for as long as is humanly possible. Which means I must do everything in my power not to die,’ he wrote in his column forThe Times.
And the British TV personality has certainly had a couple of wake-up calls.
After being admitted to hospital with pneumonia in 2017, Clarkson then suffered what he described as ‘really bad coronary artery problems’ at the end of 2024. Documented in the latest series of Clarkson’s Farm, he experienced a ‘sudden deterioration’ in his health and needed a stent fitted to restore proper blood flow.
Why Clarkson Finally Started Taking His Health Seriously
Since then, he has taken up reformer Pilates, had a pickleball court installed at his Oxfordshire home and started going for walks when the weather is just right.
‘Eventually, I decided that organised, indoor exercise was not for me and decided instead to do walking. Not when it’s raining obviously. Or if it’s too cold, or hot. And not if I’m busy. But on a reasonably temperate Sunday morning, I’d get out there and pootle along,’ he wrote.
‘So far I’ve relied on luck to keep me alive. But I’m in sniper’s alley right now and I have to work at dodging the bullets. Two years ago, I saw old age as a wearisome tangle of tubes and knee-replacement surgery. Now though, thanks to my grandchildren, I’m actively looking forward to it.’
Clarkson’s comments highlight just how much his attitude to ageing has changed.
‘I’m buying time. It hurts and it’s expensive. But it’s better than wasting your money on a new watch.’
The Diet Changes Behind Clarkson’s 3-Stone Weight Loss
Diet has also become a key part of his health overhaul.
He now eats burgers wrapped in lettuce rather than buns and opts for alcohol-free versions of his Hawkstone beer. Underpinning much of that change has been a microdose of the GLP-1 medication Mounjaro, which Clarkson credits with helping him lose more than three stone in six months by suppressing his appetite – although he admits he doesn’t particularly enjoy the experience.
‘When you are on Muntjac [his name for Mounjaro] you can come down in the morning and idly help yourself to a small handful of sunflower seeds,’ Clarkson said. ‘And it’ll feel like you’ve just finished a massive Christmas lunch. You’re stuffed.
‘So you find yourself living a minibar existence. Tiny packets of milk, sachets with only three grains of sugar in them, vodka in thimbles. That’s not living, though. That’s existing.’
If there’s one thing Kori Sampson knows, it’s how to optimise your body composition for performance. To tap into his knowledge as an elite athlete and coach, we asked him to create a 4-week plan to help you move faster, recover quicker and keep pushing when the fatigue sets in – all while improving your muscle-to-fat ratio.
Ready to build muscle, burn fat and come out the other side looking, feeling and performing better? Click here to get 14 days of free access to the plan via the Men’s Health app.
Ryan is a Senior Writer at Men’s Health UK with a passion for storytelling, health and fitness. Having graduated from Cardiff University in 2020, and later obtaining his NCTJ qualification, Ryan started his career as a Trainee News Writer for sports titles Golf Monthly, Cycling Weekly and Rugby World before progressing to Staff Writer and subsequently Senior Writer with football magazine FourFourTwo.
During his two-and-a-half years there he wrote news stories for the website and features for the magazine, while he also interviewed names such as Les Ferdinand, Ally McCoist, Jamie Redknapp and Antonio Rudiger, among many others. His standout memory, though, came when getting the opportunity to speak to then-Plymouth Argyle manager Steven Schumacher as the club won League One in 2023.
Having grown up a keen footballer and playing for his boyhood side until the age of 16, Ryan got the opportunity to represent Northern Ireland national futsal team eight times, scoring three goals against England, Scotland and Gibraltar. Now past his peak, Ryan prefers to mix weightlifting with running – he achieved a marathon PB of 3:31:49 at Manchester in April 2025, but credits the heat for failing to get below the coveted 3:30 mark…
You can follow Ryan on Instagram or on X
Fitness
Fitness coach debunks 8 ‘crazy’ exercise myths women still believe: From periods and workouts to weightlifting
Despite growing awareness around fitness and women’s health, several outdated exercise myths continue to persist. From misconceptions about strength training to beliefs surrounding periods, pregnancy and weight loss, many women still receive advice that isn’t backed by science. These myths can not only slow progress but also discourage women from prioritising their health and fitness. (Also read: Can eating too much protein be harmful? Experts explain why excess intake may do more harm than good )
Fitness coach Zoe recently addressed some of the most common misconceptions women continue to hear in a June 12 Instagram post titled, “craziest exercise myths women still hear.” Here’s what she had to say:
1. Periods mean complete bed rest
According to Zoe, menstruation does not mean you need to stop exercising altogether. “No. You can train. Just adjust intensity if needed,” she wrote, explaining that while energy levels may fluctuate during different phases of the menstrual cycle, movement and exercise can still be beneficial.
2. After marriage or kids, fitness is not important
Many women are often made to feel that fitness should take a back seat after major life changes such as marriage or motherhood. Zoe strongly disagrees. “That is exactly when it becomes more important,” she said, highlighting the need to maintain strength, mobility and overall health while navigating increased responsibilities.
3. A C-section means your core is gone forever
Recovering from a Caesarean delivery can be challenging, but Zoe says it doesn’t mean women should give up on rebuilding strength. “Wrong. It means you need rebuilding, not giving up,” she wrote, emphasising that gradual rehabilitation and proper training can help restore core function.
4. Walking around the house is enough exercise
While daily movement is important, Zoe points out that it isn’t the same as a structured workout. “No. That is movement, not full training,” she explained, noting that a balanced fitness routine should include strength, mobility and cardiovascular exercises.
5. Sweating more means more fat loss
Many people associate excessive sweating with effective fat burning, but Zoe says that’s a common misunderstanding. “No. It means you are hot,” she wrote. Sweat is the body’s cooling mechanism and does not necessarily reflect the number of calories burned or fat lost.
6. Running will ruin your uterus, boobs or joints
This long-standing myth often discourages women from running or high-impact activities. “No. Poor preparation and weak support is the issue,” Zoe said, stressing the importance of proper training, supportive gear and gradually building endurance.
7. Women should only do yoga, not weights
Strength training is still viewed by some as a male-dominated form of exercise, but Zoe believes women benefit greatly from lifting weights. “Women need strength too,” she wrote, highlighting how resistance training supports muscle mass, bone health, metabolism and overall fitness.
8. Carbs at night make you fat
Carbohydrates often get unfairly blamed for weight gain, especially when eaten in the evening. “No. Overeating does,” Zoe explained, pointing out that overall calorie intake and dietary patterns matter far more than the timing of carbohydrate consumption.
Note to readers: This article is for informational purposes only and not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek the advice of your doctor with any questions about a medical condition.
This report is based on user-generated content from social media. HT.com has not independently verified the claims and does not endorse them.
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