Laura is joined by journalist and Reuters Associate Editor Aimee Donnellan, whose new book Off the Scales: The Inside Story of Ozempic and the Race to Cure Obesity looks at far more than the science of weight-loss drugs. At its heart, it’s a book about how generations of women learned to think about food and what it might take to unlearn that. 

A Pattern That Keeps Repeating 

Through interviews with women across the world, Aimee kept finding the same story wearing different faces. A trip to the dietitian around the age of seven. A mother quietly carrying her own history with dieting, passing it on without ever meaning to through Weight Watchers meetings, rice cakes in the cupboard, or an offhand comment like “don’t think cute clothes mean you can come off your diet.” 

It’s the kind of detail that sounds small on its own. Put enough of them together, though, and you start to see how deeply food and body image get woven into a woman’s sense of self, often before she’s old enough to question it. 

When the Food Noise Goes Quiet 

For some of the women Aimee spoke to, GLP-1 medications like Wegovy and Mounjaro have done something they didn’t expect: quietened the constant background noise around food, sometimes for the first time in their lives. But the more complicated realisation, for many, has been noticing how differently the world treats them once their body changes. It raises an uncomfortable question about how much of that relief is tied to other people’s approval. 

It’s Not Just About Women 

Aimee’s research also revealed that men’s relationship with body image often follows a different pattern. Alongside that, she and Laura talk about the rising rate of childhood obesity and the shame that so often comes with it, and how little the food industry itself has adjusted to a world where appetite is shifting under GLP-1s. 

Body Image, Menopause and the Weight Women Carry 

The conversation widens out from there into body positivity, menopause, and the particular pressure women seem to carry at every stage of life, whether they’re aware of it or not. It’s a thread that runs through the whole episode: how much of what we feel about our bodies was never really ours to begin with. 

They close on something much simpler than any of it: Aimee’s own take on what the meaning of life comes down to. It’s a lovely, grounding note to end on, and honestly worth hearing in her own words rather than a summary. 

If you’ve ever caught yourself repeating something your mother once said about food or noticed how differently you’re treated depending on your size, this one will likely sit with you for a while after it ends. Give it a listen when you have a quiet moment. It’s a conversation that deserves your full attention, not background noise.