Chrissy Teigen Says She Used Ozempic To Battle Grief And Post-Pregnancy Depression

Chrissy Teigen^[1] revealed on her podcast that she used Ozempic for about a year after her 2020 stillbirth, calling it a lifeline during her depression.

While the drug helped her lose pregnancy weight and break free from harmful diet habits, she struggled with its appetite-suppressing effects, describing it as “torturous.”

Chrissy Teigen also admitted to feeling shame over affordability and secrecy, but said it ultimately gave her freedom.

Teigen has opened up about her past experience with Ozempic, revealing how the “miracle drug” helped her cope during one of the darkest periods of her life.

Speaking on Thursday’s episode of her Self-Conscious^[2] podcast, the 39-year-old model shared that she began using semaglutide for about a year after losing her son Jack to stillbirth in 2020.

At first, she explained, the treatment didn’t seem to make a difference as she “noticed no results for three, four months, but eventually the weight she had carried since her pregnancy started to come off.

For Teigen, the impact was about more than just numbers on a scale. She admitted she was no longer “in this deep depression of seeing this pregnant belly with no baby in it,” adding that the physical shift helped ease the “deep depression” she had been battling.

Still, the results weren’t entirely positive. The “Bring the Funny” judge described the weight loss as so drastic she barely noticed it happening, something she now calls her “Ozempic blindness.”

“You end up losing such an incredible amount of weight, you don’t realize you’ve lost too much,” she said.

While Ozempic is often praised for curbing appetite, Teigen confessed that the side effect was “frustrating” and “almost torturous” for her.

“Not being hungry at all, for me, I f-cking hate that,” she confessed. “I love being hungry. I love eating food. I love desiring food.”

Teigen, who has always been open about her love of food, even joked that her husband, John Legend, caters to it by preparing her a “sleep sandwich” every night, a ritual snack she usually enjoys around 2 a.m.

But with Ozempic, even that simple pleasure was dulled. The “Chrissy’s Court” star explained that until she figured out the correct dosage, her hunger would vanish completely.

“I would take the shot. It would be three days of forcing myself to eat food. [Then] it would wear off a bit. Day four, day five, more food. Day six, the shot again,” she said.

Looking back, Teigen said she “felt bad about it because it’s not bad to be hungry,” but over time, she came to terms with it, realizing Ozempic was also helping her break free from harmful patterns around eating.

“I had such a bad path in the way [I] thought about good food,” she explained, adding that  taking the drug shifted her out of “insane” diet “rules.”

The former “Lip Sync Battle” host and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model said the shift felt like being “released from captivity.”

Teigen revealed she wrestled with shame, not only about being in a position to “actually afford” Ozempic, but also about feeling she wasn’t fully honest with her fans, many of whom were buying her cookbooks while she was secretly relying on the drug.

In a candid conversation with “The Magic Pill” author Johann Hari, Teigen also revisited her complicated history with eating.

“As a model, I ate sh-t food and threw up,” she admitted. “I didn’t consider it bulimia. I actually ate so much that I would get sick [for four years]. That’s not me forcing myself to throw up.”

Teigen’s candid admission drew a wave of reactions on Instagram, with many praising her for speaking so openly.

One supporter wrote, “You are brave, witty, relatable, honest…Thank you for ‘being real’ and sharing many of your experiences with the masses, regardless of judgment or backlash. The good you do is BIGGER than the critics, please always remember that.”

Others shared their own experiences with weight-loss medications. “I started zepbound right after I lost my second daughter in the second trimester. I needed to find myself again, and my obese body wasn’t it,” one follower revealed.

Another admitted they could relate to Teigen’s complicated relationship with food: “OMG. I feel this so deeply. I’m on tirzepitide, and I too miss the enjoyment of food! I miss that source of pleasure, though I do appreciate my pants fitting a little looser. Thank you for sharing! It’s definitely not all sunshine and rainbows on this journey.”

Still, not everyone was sympathetic. Some accused the interview of being “tone deaf,” with critics pointing out inconsistencies in her past statements. One person commented, “She originally said she lost the weight because she stopped drinking alcohol, but it’s actually Ozempic? Why the honesty now?”