Wellingtonian Finlay Thompson has lost 30kg since taking part in a US trial of the drug Ozempic. Photo / Mark Mitchell
At the beginning of last year Finlay Thompson was obese.
At 138kg, the Wellington company director was gaining weight and struggling to tie his shoes in the morning.
After trying “everything under the sun” to lose weight he began getting “quite depressed”. Then he bumped into an old high school friend in Australia.
“I was shocked when I met her, I hardly recognised her.”
The friend had been using diabetes drug Ozempic for weight loss and Thompson became determined to get his hands on it. The only problem, Ozempic isn’t available in New Zealand for weight loss.
The drug, which is designed for treatment of type 2 diabetes in adults, has become popularised in recent years for its weight loss properties. The expensive and highly sought-after injectable gained traction on social media after celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk, Rebel Wilson and Boris Johnson used it.
But while Ozempic is approved by Medsafe for treatment of diabetes in New Zealand, it’s not approved for weight loss and Novo Nordisk, the company behind the drug, has not yet launched it on our shores.
Other medications such as Saxenda which have similar effects are available, with clinics struggling to keep up with public demand.
It wasn’t until Thompson’s wife saw an advertisement on Facebook for a US clinical drug trial that he found a way to access the medication.
“I thought shit, I can get it for free’” he told the Herald.
The 52-year-old enrolled in the trial and soon became one of the only Kiwis using Ozempic for weight loss, injecting himself in the abdomen weekly, and quickly seeing the results.
“It is immediate, there’s no messing about, you start losing weight straight away, it’s kind of astonishing how quickly it has an effect.”
Thompson began losing half a kilogram per week consistently for nine months until his weight “stabilised” at about 108kg.
Ozempic works, in part, as an appetite suppressant, with the active ingredient semaglutide producing hormones to mimic the feeling of being full.
“For the first time in my life I felt full [...] I would be eating dinner with the family and there would still be food left on my plate, but I couldn’t finish it. I actually couldn’t finish it.
“That sense of being full, I had never experienced that in my life, it was completely new.”
Thomspon said it has also had an effect on how much he drinks.
“I would go out and have some beers and instead of being the first to finish my beer and having to wait for everybody else before having the next round, I would be halfway through my first beer and they would be onto their second. I wasn’t choosing to drink slower, I just was.”
He says before taking the medication, his diet was typical of his peers, eating “normal” food including home cooked meals, and often buying meals like sushi and curry during the work day. He said he was never keen on sweet things like cakes or biscuits and didn’t eat a lot of takeaways.
Despite this, Thompson says he did overeat.
“I had no off button” he said, and believes his body was pre-disposed to being overweight.
Thompson is one of three directors of Wellington data science company Dragonfly.
Being a data scientist and mathematician, he’s meticulously tracked and logged his weight like clockwork for years. When he noticed a worrying trend of gaining around 2kg each year consistently he thought “what the f*** am I going to do about this?”.
Thompson had tried fasting and other “crash diets” to no avail. While dieting had seen him lose a few kilos at a time, he said he would always gain it back and found it “really unpleasant”.
Now, he thinks he’s found the permanent solution in Ozempic.
“It’s unquestionably life-changing, I think I was getting quite depressed actually, I was watching my weight continue to increase.”
While he initially faced side effects such as minor cramping, diarrhoea, and constipation, the discomfort was nothing in comparison to the everyday struggles of being overweight, he said
“When you’re carrying around that extra weight, life is quite hard, it’s not fun, every day is a problem.”
Thompson said being overweight comes with many social, as well as health challenges that people may not realise. He said he often struggled with unsolicited advice from well-meaning friends who would recommend diets and weight loss techniques.
“Especially when you’re quite overweight people feel very comfortable giving advice.”
He said he’d also gone to the doctor a few times seeking help for his obesity and was repeatedly told “diet and exercise” was the answer.
“And I’m like... dude I’ve been trying that for like 20 years. It’s kind of upsetting because you’re being told to do something that you have in fact been doing and it’s not having any effect.”
Thompson said he now has more energy, and no longer struggles with “the little things” like getting dressed, climbing into the driver’s seat of his car, and buying clothing.
“I can go to the shops and just buy clothes, I don’t have to get things made,” he said.
Thompson’s drug trial, however, has a catch; next month he has to stop taking Ozempic and begin a new medication. Designed to complement Ozempic use, it claims to retain muscle mass which sometimes can be lost when using Ozempic.
“I’ve got one more month. I’m quite interested to see what happens but I’m also a bit concerned about it.”
While Thompson worries going off the medication may cause him to regain some weight, he said he’s confident the past year would’ve had a permanent effect on his eating habits.
He’s also noticed an unexpected consequence of becoming slimmer; people have become friendlier. He now finds more people make conversation with him at events and functions.
“When you’re very heavy, you become invisible.”
There’s a subconscious hostility towards overweight people he said, which women especially encounter.
“It has a social impact, and a consequent mental health aspect, as well as a purely physical one.”
While acknowledging not everyone on the clinical trial has had the same results, he said his is a success story, losing 30kg, as well as orthopaedic benefits and improved blood test results.
Thompson thinks his experience with obesity is not uncommon, and following his experience with Ozempic wants to see the drug more freely available.
He said while it would still need to be tightly controlled, the drug should be made available in New Zealand for weight loss, and be Government funded.
“It will pay for itself in terms of reduced medical costs.
“From a public health perspective, making it more freely available and better funded will have worlds of benefits for the population,” he said.
Auckland University molecular medicine professor Peter Shepherd studies obesity and diabetes and says Ozempic does indeed live up to its “miracle drug” reputation.
The active ingredient Semaglutide “mimics a natural hormone called GLP-1″, which controls metabolism and appetite, with the ability to have “dramatic effects on weight loss”.
“We have a huge problem, we are in the top 10 countries for obesity in the world, it’s a massive drain on our health system.”
Shepherd said obesity is “one of the major drivers for things that reduce people’s quality of life”.
“Not just full-on obesity but even a little bit of excess weight can have serious implications to your health.”
He said from a public health perspective, it would make sense to increase the accessibility of Ozempic and is also calling for government funding.
”The Government should seriously look at this [...] I think cost-benefit analysis will start to show that it’s really, really worth it for the Government to be funding these [drugs].”
Dr Samantha Murton, president of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners, was more cautious, saying while some people have had positive experiences with weight loss medications such as Ozempic it’s not necessarily a silver bullet.
Murton said obesity is caused by a multitude of factors, and weight loss drugs can often seem like a tempting prospect but “any one thing is not a solution”.
While difficult to measure, she said GPs have observed more people inquiring about Ozempic and similar medications over the past year.
“It’s very anecdotal, but people are asking for medication for weight loss, probably a little more than they used to,” she said.
“New Zealand has quite a high obesity rate, we see every day issues that have been caused by obesity”
She says while Ozempic is currently approved for diabetes in New Zealand, it’s too soon to say whether it should be made more accessible for weight loss.
”It needs to be studied hard before it becomes the norm, we need to make sure there are no significant side effects or problems for people who are taking it and we don’t know that.”
Ethan Manera is a multimedia journalist based in Wellington. He joined NZME in 2023 and is interested in politics, local issues and the public service. Ethan is always on the lookout for a story and can be emailed at ethan.manera@nzme.co.nz or messaged on X (formerly Twitter) @ethanjmanera
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