Lizzo admits she tried Ozempic after months of denials

Lizzo said she tried Ozempic and other GLP-1 medications before deciding the approach was not the most effective one for her, in a June 19 episode of the Just Trish podcast hosted by Trisha Paytas ^[2]. The singer, 37, has been publicly documenting a weight loss transformation since 2023 ^[2].

"I tried everything," Lizzo told Paytas, explaining why she stopped using GLP-1 medications early in the process ^[2]. "Ozempic works because you eat less food, yeah? So if you eat right, it makes you feel full. But if you can just do that on your own and get mind over matter, it's the same thing" ^[2].

She credited a change in her diet, rather than medication, with the results she wanted. "What did it for me is, it was not being vegan," she said. "Because when I was vegan, I was consuming a lot of fake meats, I was eating a lot of bread, I was eating a lot of rice and I had to eat a lot of it to stay full" ^[2]. Adding beef, chicken and fish back to her diet, she said, left her "actually full and not expanding my stomach by putting a lot of fake things in there that wasn't actually filling me up" ^[2].

Lizzo also pushed back on the idea that people who use the drugs are taking a shortcut. "It's not easy," she said. "It's a drug to help somebody with something they're struggling with" ^[2]. She added: "I think people — it's their way of being fat phobic when you're telling someone they're cheating" ^[2].

The available sources do not say which specific drugs she used, at what doses, for how long, or whether she was under a doctor's care. They also do not include her earlier public statements about weight loss methods, so the exact timeline of what she said before this interview is not documented here.

The wider celebrity pattern

Lizzo's comments landed in a stretch when many public figures were discussing GLP-1 use, sometimes after initially staying quiet. Oprah Winfrey disclosed in December 2023 that she was using a weight loss medication and later said she had been "an anomaly in that I was willing to say it" ^[2]. Serena Williams said she lost 31 pounds with a GLP-1 medication and rejected the idea that it was a "shortcut," saying that "as an athlete and as someone that has done everything, I just couldn't get my weight to where I needed to be at a healthy place" ^[2].

Others have described stopping. Model Brooks Nader told Us Weekly in December 2024 that she took "a little bit when it first came out," that it "made me really nauseous," and that she stopped while competing on Dancing With the Stars because she "lost a little bit of the motivation and the strength to work out" ^[2]. Kendra Wilkinson wrote in April 2025 that she took a single weight loss shot and quit: "Only did one. Nevermind. Throwing away!!" ^[2]

Why it matters for patients

Celebrity accounts move faster than evidence, and they are not clinical data. One person's experience of stopping a medication says nothing about how it will work for someone else, and the sources here contain no information about Lizzo's medical history, starting point, or reasons for stopping beyond her own description.

The framing matters too. Lizzo's "mind over matter" comparison suggests willpower can substitute for the drugs' appetite effects ^[2]. Winfrey described the opposite realization after starting a GLP-1 — that thinner people were "not even thinking about it. They're only eating when they're hungry and they're stopping when they're full" ^[2]. Those are two public figures describing the same class of drugs in conflicting terms.

It is also worth keeping the brands straight. GLP-1 drugs are used primarily for type 2 diabetes and obesity ^[2]. Semaglutide is sold as Ozempic and Wegovy ^[2]; tirzepatide is sold as Mounjaro and Zepbound. Public figures often name Ozempic generically even when discussing weight loss, which can blur which product and which approved use is actually involved.

For readers weighing these drugs, the practical takeaway from episodes like this is that public reversals and endorsements are marketing-adjacent conversation, not evidence about safety, durability or who benefits. Those questions are decided in trials and in conversations with a clinician.