Kelly Osbourne showed off her dramatic weight loss as she surprised her mum Sharon during Tuesday’s episode of Celebrity Big Brother.
As the former X Factor judge left the house after her action-packed stint as a house lodger, she was greeted by her eldest daughter who gave her a tight hug, exclaiming: ‘I love you!’
Kelly, 39, flaunted her slimmed down figure as she wowed in a figure-hugging black dress with white polka dots.
The reality star showcased her ample cleavage in the low cut ensemble, while her signature lilac hair fell in natural waves over her shoulders.
Sharon was met with raucous applause from the outdoor audience as she left the house before she was welcomed to the outside world by hosts AJ Odudu and Will Best after her eight-day CBB stint which she ‘loved every minute’ of.
Kelly Osbourne, 39, showed off her dramatic weight loss in a stylish polka dot dress as she reunited with her mother Sharon Osbourne on Celebrity Big Brother on Tuesday
The reality star showcased her ample cleavage in the low cut ensemble, while her signature lilac hair fell in natural waves over her shoulders (pictured with hosts Will Best and AJ Odudu)
The mother and daughter looked delighted to be reunited as they posed for snaps together, beaming from ear to ear.
During her much-anticipated post-show interview, Sharon said: ‘I had the best time. I’ll never forget my time in there, it was an absolute blast.’
When asked who she thought the biggest gameplayer in the House was, she said Ibiza Weekender’s David Potts, but emphasised she didn’t hold it against him.
Both Kelly and Sharon have undergone dramatic weight loss in recent months, and despite Sharon’s bad experience on the weight-loss drug Ozempic, Kelly recently raved about the ‘amazing’ drug.
She made it clear that she’s a big fan of Ozempic and its competitors — despite previously admitting that she went ‘too far’ in her quest to lose her post-baby weight last year.
‘I think it’s amazing,’ she said of the drug on January 30 at Dolly Parton’s Pet Gala, according to E! News.
Her thumbs up for the medication was somewhat surprising, considering how public Sharon has been about her negative experience using it.
Part of the appeal to Kelly was that she found it less ‘boring’ than changing one’s diet and increasing exercise to lose weight.
Both Kelly and Sharon have undergone dramatic weight loss in recent months, and despite Sharon’s bad experience on the weight-loss drug Ozempic, Kelly recently raved about the ‘amazing’ drug (pictured in 2019 in West Hollywood)
As the former X Factor judge left the house after her action-packed stint as a house lodger, she was greeted by her eldest daughter who gave her a tight hug, exclaiming: ‘I love you!’
Sharon did not know her second child Kelly would be coming to meet her. She has two more children: Aimee Osbourne, 40, and Jack Osbourne, 38
‘There are a million ways to lose weight, why not do it through something [that] isn’t as boring as working out?’ she continued.
The daughter of Ozzy Osbourne went further, accusing critics of the medication and similar drugs of being jealous or deceitful.
‘People hate on it because they want to do it,’ she claimed. ‘And the people who hate on it the most are the people who are secretly doing it or pissed off that they can’t afford it.’
However, she thought some of those complaints might evaporate in the near future.
‘Unfortunately, right now it’s something that is very expensive but it eventually won’t be because it actually works,’ Kelly added.
During a September 2023 appearance on Scheana Shay’s Scheananigans podcast, she admitted that she went ‘too far’ trying to lose her baby weight after welcoming her son Sidney 10 months earlier with her partner, the Slipknot member Sid Wilson.
‘[I was] on a mission after having the baby to lose all [my] baby weight,’ she said.
‘Then I was like, “Well, I lost all the baby weight. Let’s see how far I can go with it.” And then went a little too far,’ she added, before praising Rihanna for expanding the public’s conceptions about what outfits are appropriate for pregnant people to wear.
Prior to that, Kelly admitted in 2020 that she had undergone gastric sleeve surgery to help her lose 85 pounds.
The truth behind new diet drug craze – Hollywood is hooked on it, and social media is fanning demand for the latest weight-loss ‘miracle’
Over the summer I was lucky enough to be invited to a 60th birthday at which the after-dinner entertainment was a private performance by one of the UK’s leading male pop stars. More eye-popping than the actual show, though, was how incredible said star looked. He was a mere shadow of his former self, prancing around the stage in a silver catsuit. His secret? Semaglutide, or Ozempic as it is branded, a new diet drug that everybody – but everybody, darling, including one of the world’s most famous supermodels – is apparently taking.
Originally developed to treat type 2 diabetes, it is used off-label (for a purpose other than that for which it was licensed) in both the US and the UK to treat obesity. In research conducted by its billionaire manufacturer, the Danish-based pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, patients lost an average of 17 per cent of their overall body weight over 68 weeks. This compares with five to nine per cent for ‘oldschool’ anti-obesity drugs such as Metformin.
Only available in the UK on the NHS if you have type 2 diabetes, Ozempic can be obtained through a private doctor, and if you are willing to take it without medical supervision – not recommended by doctors (see panel) – you can get it online through various weight-loss programmes. It is sometimes taken in tablet form but more commonly as an injection.
Originally developed to treat type 2 diabetes, Semaglutide is used off-label. It has been branded as a new diet drug that everybody is apparently taking
Predictably, Hollywood has been aware of Ozempic for a lot longer than us – Variety magazine recently quipped that the drug deserved its own thank-you speech at the Emmys, as so many stars on the podium had obviously been taking it. Elon Musk raved about its more powerful sister drug, Wegovy, on Twitter; Kim Kardashian, it is hotly rumoured, used semaglutide to lose 16lb in order to fit into Marilyn Monroe’s dress for the Met Ball. On TikTok the hashtag #ozempic has had more than 285 million views.
Thanks to the hype, there has been a surge in demand, causing shortages on both sides of the Atlantic, with a backlash against influencers and celebrities hogging supplies ahead of desperate diabetes sufferers. Predictably, Big Pharma has come up with an alternative – tirzepatide (brand name Mounjaro), manufactured by Eli Lilly – but it has yet to be approved by the US Food & Drug Administration for weight loss.
Novo Nordisk has issued a statement to say its supplies will be replenished by the end of the year, but it hasn’t quelled anxiety. At least two middle-aged male friends of mine who started using it in September are getting themselves in a twist about being caught short before the holidays. As one private London GP remarked to me: ‘It’s like the H RT panic last spring.’
So what exactly is this drug? Semaglutide belongs to a class called GLP-1 agonists, which not only regulate blood sugar but, as was discovered about a decade ago, also mimic the gut hormones that regulate our appetites – the ones that tell the brain when we are hungry or full. There are, of course, side effects: acid reflux, nausea, exacerbation of IBS symptoms and fatigue (but much less so than in earlier GLP-1 agonists such as Saxenda), as well as pancreatitis, gallstones and, in very high doses, it has caused thyroid tumours in rats. Meanwhile, when you stop using it the effect wears off immediately and in some cases it won’t work at all.
‘I would describe semaglutide as an example of very smart science,’ says leading consultant endocrinologist Dr Efthimia Karra from her private practice off London’s Harley Street. ‘But it is not a panacea for everyone. Around a fifth of users do not respond to it. This is because the human body favours weight gain, thus when you lose weight the body will do anything to revert to its highest BMI. The heavier you are the harder it is to lose weight. If a patient has made no progress in three months, I will take them off it.’
Banker’s wife Laura, a native New Yorker in her mid-50s who had hovered between decades, started using it in January. ‘The Paleo diet, 5:2, CBT, NLP, bootcamp, diet delivery services – I’ve tried them all,’ she says from the family home in Hampshire, ‘and I’ve always yo-yoed right back. After my last annual checkup I seriously contemplated giving up. Then my doctor suggested semaglutide.’
After only a month she noticed her clothes had become looser. From then on, the weight started dropping off. ‘The strange thing was, I wasn’t eating anything different. I just couldn’t physically have seconds any more, and the idea of pudding after a full meal had lost its allure.’ Three months on, she is two stone lighter ‒ though occasionally she suffers heartburn if she eats too late at night or drinks alcohol ‒ and when we spoke in autumn, she was looking forward to losing another stone by Christmas.
‘There is a niggling voice that tells me it is both risky and lazy to take a drug to lose weight, and I worry that it will all pile on again if I stop taking it. But if it does, I will seriously consider taking it indefinitely.’
Private London GP Dr Martin Galy has been prescribing semaglutide for about a year to clients who cannot lose the weight they gained in menopause. He has seen it have a transformational effect, too, on much younger women who suffer polycystic ovary syndrome. ‘PCOS sufferers are difficult to treat, and you can imagine how body image plays a very important part when it comes to self-esteem.’
But according to Tom Sanders, professor of nutrition and dietetics at King’s College London, it is not a magic bullet. Commenting on a study on semaglutide published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2021, he says, ‘The challenge post-weight loss is to prevent a regain in weight,’ he wrote. It may prove to be useful in the short term, but ‘public health measures that encourage behavioural changes such as regular physical activity and moderating dietary energy intake are still needed’.
That said, given our rising national obesity statistics and the escalation in accompanying health issues such as heart failure, cancer and obstructive sleep apnoea clogging up hospital beds, we’re going to need something. Semaglutide may be the rich person’s drug today, but might it be approved for more widespread use? Only time will tell.