The New Beauty Regimen

Jeniffer Brown wanted the Ozempic body. She just didn’t want “Ozempic face.”

She got both, dropping 20 pounds in the first four months after she started taking the blockbuster injectable drug, which is intended to treat diabetes but has become better known for triggering dramatic weight loss fast.

By last May, Brown was down 40 pounds in a year without changing her diet or exercise routine. She had reached her goal weight of 125 pounds and was no longer prediabetic, but the swift and substantial reduction in fat left her with looser skin, more pronounced wrinkles and sunken cheeks — side effects that have been dubbed Ozempic face, although other parts of the body are also susceptible.“My breasts definitely got saggier, but it was more the pockets for my implants got too big at that point and my implant was flipping. That breast fat was gone,” Brown, 47, said. “My face has been what I’ve spent the most time on. It’s like a melted candle.”To restore volume and soften facial creases, she began getting dermal fillers in her cheeks, jowls and jawline. In September, she returned to her plastic surgeon for an arm lift to reshape her upper arms and a breast lift that also secured the shifting implants.“It is a dream weight until you spend $25,000 on plastic surgery, and you go every three months to your injector because you’ve got to just continuously pump Sculptra and fillers trying to keep that skin on your skull,” said Brown, a hairstylist from Owensboro, Ky.

Other patients are using semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, to slim down ahead of planned tummy tucks and other tightening procedures, said Dr. Kelly Killeen, a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon.

“Because a tummy tuck looks great,” she said, “but a tummy tuck on a patient who has also lost 20 pounds may be even greater.”“I’ve had patients put their surgeries off — they were scheduled with me for surgery and were a totally normal, healthy weight. And then they were like, ‘You know what, I’m on Ozempic now — let’s see how much weight I can lose,’” she continued.In 2018, a patient named Jennifer came in for a consultation with Killeen hoping to get rid of the “wrinkly stomach pouch” left over from having twins a decade earlier and to repair a hernia. At 200 pounds and 5 feet, 4 inches, she was encouraged to get down to 170 before undergoing the procedure for optimal results.But Jennifer, who declined to provide her last name to protect her privacy, struggled for years to lose the weight, exercising and eating healthy to no avail and putting on a few more pounds during the pandemic. As a Type 2 diabetic with a high BMI, she was a prime candidate for Ozempic and began taking the drug last year.In late January, 40 pounds lighter, she finally got her tummy tuck.“I’m so glad I did it — I wish I’d done it sooner,” the 64-year-old piano teacher from Santa Monica said during a post-op checkup this month, her exam gown pulled open to reveal a nicely healing scar across her abdomen. After having low self-esteem about her body for so many years, Ozempic was “life-changing,” she said.

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