The landscape of health and body image in India underwent a significant shift in 2025, driven by the increasing accessibility and popularity of pharmaceutical weight-loss solutions. What began as an elite privilege has now permeated broader markets, fundamentally altering perceptions of wellness, fitness, and personal agency.
The Price Drop and The New Aspirational Health
For the past couple of years, these injectable drugs created a distinct class divide among those managing obesity and diabetes. However, 2025 marked a turning point as manufacturers strategically lowered prices, aggressively tapping into India's booming diabetes and obesity care market. This move made the drugs more accessible but also intensified their influence on defining health benchmarks. The narrative, heavily supported by industry-sponsored trials highlighting cascading benefits for heart and kidney health, has prompted a critical question: Has the medicalisation of obesity hijacked our collective understanding of a healthy body image?
The convenience of a once-a-week injection has been marketed as a near-miraculous solution, often overshadowing the value of disciplined human effort. Despite medical clarifications that the drug's efficacy is co-dependent on diet, lifestyle corrections, and baseline fitness, it has been popularly received as a heavenly manna that melts fat without the need to leave the couch. This perception risks completely disempowering individuals, bargaining away their will to take physical charge of their own health.
Societal Shift: From Body Positivity to Pharmaceutical Conformity
The societal impact has been profound. These drugs have effectively "healthified" thinness over genuine fitness. The year 2025 saw celebrities on red carpets showcasing age-defying, slender figures in translucent dresses, even as some faced visible side effects like facial drooping, deeper wrinkles, and a loss of facial volume. The appetite-suppressing nature of these drugs also robbed many of simple sensory joys.
This trend was powerfully exemplified when tennis legend Serena Williams became a brand ambassador for a healthcare company promoting a weight-loss injectable. While her choice may have been informed and personal, it inadvertently propagated a myth that even a world-class athlete with a robust build might need a pharmaceutical aid to feel better about herself. This blurring of lines between the cosmetic and the clinical has significantly undone the hard-won progress of the body positivity movement, which advocated for self-acceptance over self-abhorrence.
The fallout is tangible in daily life. Plus-size sections in physical brand outlets are disappearing rapidly, with customers politely directed to online portals for larger sizes. The clinical construct of BMI is increasingly reinforced as the sole tool for a acceptable self-image, inadvertently tossing diverse body types into an "unhealthy" basket and creating immense pressure to conform.
The Hidden Costs and Legal Challenges
Beyond the social cost, significant practical and medical concerns persist. The high price of these drugs remains a major demotivator, with reports from markets like the US of midlifers abandoning medication due to the financial burden. The dark side includes lawsuits against manufacturers for insufficient warnings about severe side effects such as gastrointestinal issues, pronounced muscle wasting, and vision problems.
In India, the situation has attracted legal scrutiny. A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Delhi High Court has raised alarms about licenses being granted for certain weight-loss drug combinations without conducting India-specific clinical trials. This oversight potentially ignores crucial regional health profiles and genetic factors that could affect drug safety and efficacy for the Indian population.
For a significant segment of sedentary Indians with the "thin-fat" phenotype—normal weight but excess belly fat—the use of these drugs could lead to severe muscle wasting, which may later be replaced by more fat, worsening metabolic health. Furthermore, some users report psychological side effects like mood changes, increased anxiety, or anhedonia (loss of pleasure), possibly linked to the brain's adjustment to lower calorie intake or changes in the dopamine system.
Ultimately, the core issue remains. Traditional fitness implied strength and overall well-being achieved through activity. Weight-loss drugs primarily target fat mass, which does not directly equate to functional health or physical fitness. The growing obsession with these pharmaceutical solutions threatens to strip away the fundamental human agency we all possess over our own health journeys. The writer, Rinku Ghosh, is a senior associate editor at The Indian Express.
