Coming clean. Dolores Catania has nothing to hide when it comes to her decision to use Ozempic.
The Real Housewives of New Jersey star, 52, revealed during the Tuesday, April 4, episode of Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen that she has been taking semaglutide for weight loss for the past six weeks.
“I wasn’t going to come to the reunion looking any bigger than anyone else, so I got on the bandwagon,” Catania explained, referring to the upcoming season 13 taping.
After host Andy Cohen asked whether the Bravo star was experiencing any side effects from the prescription medication, she replied, “[I’m] just not hungry.”
Catania noted that she is “actually [taking] Mounjaro,” which she described as being “another part” of the Ozempic umbrella. “The reunion is in two weeks. I do have a trainer,” she clarified before noting that she wanted to “tell the truth” about her experience.
The New Jersey native’s insight comes nearly two months after her costar Jackie Goldschneider slammed people who are taking the FDA-approved medication for weight loss rather than its intended purpose. (Ozempic is used to help diabetes patients with weight management.)
“I can talk about Ozempic all day. It gets me so fired up,” the attorney, 46, said during a February episode of Page Six‘s “Virtual Reali-Tea” podcast. “I’m horrified by it. I’m not so much horrified by people wanting to lose weight — that has always been a universal thing — but I’m very, very scared of what will happen if and when people have to go off this drug.”
Goldschneider continued: “It’s just going to be a massive number of people who gain a huge amount of weight and suddenly don’t know what to do with themselves. I’m just afraid of that day. There’s going to be a lot of people with eating disorders. You start dropping massive amounts of weight. That’s so addicting. That’s how I spiraled into anorexia. You get addicted to this new body and to the attention that comes with it.”
The TV personality, who has opened up about her struggle with anorexia, explained how her recovery has been affected by the Ozempic craze.
“From a selfish standpoint, I wanted to come back into a world where everyone around me was eating and loving food and enjoying life,” she said. “I wanted to come back to that and I didn’t because a lot of people in the Housewives world are on Ozempic. A lot of my friends are in the Housewives world, so it was tough for me to come back and suddenly no one’s eating when we go out to dinner.”
Meanwhile, plastic surgeon Dr. Thomas Su broke down why celebrities have been vocal about trying the drug during an exclusive interview with Us Weekly.
“It’s an easy method to lose weight. It doesn’t require a lot of thinking or a lot of effort,” Su claimed in March. “You give yourself an injection, and your appetite is suppressed and you’re not suffering from it. So you naturally just eat less. You’re not having to struggle through cravings or going to the gym and working out hard, so it’s taking off weight in an easy fashion.”
The Florida-based specialist also explained the side effects that come with taking the medication in a more casual way than patients typically need.
“This medication does slow down the absorption and emptying of the gut so it can cause nausea, vomiting and constipation.” he continued. “Those type of side effects are usually noticed mostly at the beginning, maybe in the first few weeks of someone using it. … Most people would see that those side effects are going away and if not, some doctors are spacing out the injections a little bit further or reducing the dose.”
