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Ozempic and other weight loss drugs have truly become mainstream as the once-considered celebrity-exclusive trick to shed the pounds fast is now available for the everyday individual across the United States.
These drugs, otherwise known as GLP-1 inhibitors, work by 'tricking' your body into removing the feeling of hunger, as it slows down the digestion rate of food in your stomach and lowers your blood sugar levels.
Simulations showing the effects of these weight loss drugs on your body are gruesome, yet the results are hard to deny as many people have taken to social media to share the life-changing experience they've had while taking Ozempic, Mounjaro, or Wegovy.
You might still have to deal with some troubling side effects like nausea, bad breath, and dental issues, and the long-term effects of taking these drugs still concerns some doctors, yet the numbers show a material improvement on obesity rates in America since they hit the market.
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As reported by NPR, survey data collected and released by the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index reveals that obesity rates have declined over the last couple of years, and an inverse increase in the number of people taking weight loss injectables has been shown as well.
While there was a record high obesity rate of 39.9% in 2022, new figures shown in the survey data indicate that this has now reduced to 37% in 2025, although that remains still quite a bit higher than the 33.4% recorded in 2020.
Gallup indicates that this represents a decrease of around 7.6 million adults with obesity compared to 2022, although the rate of diabetes has roughly stayed the same at 13.8%.
Concurrently, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of people taking injections for weight loss purposes, comparing data from Q1, 2024 with Q2 and Q3, 2025.
For all adults across the United States this number has jumped from just 5.8% to 12.4%, increasing by 114%. For adult men this has increased from 4.7% to 9.7%, whereas for adult women it's jumped all the way from 6.9% to 15.2% in such a short amount of time.
Intriguingly, the obesity rate for women has dropped at a higher percentage than men, indicating that these weight loss drugs are playing a key role, as men saw a 2.3% drop between 2022 and 2025, whereas women observed a 3.5% decrease in the same time period.
These obesity rate decreases also appear to specifically affect older individuals, with individuals aged 50 to 64 seeing a 5% decrease, and those 40 to 49 seeing a 4.3% drop. Comparatively, the youngest Americans included in the survey were essentially unchanged in their obesity rates.
