Life After Ozempic

When you stop taking the miracle weight-loss drug, the cravings return—for food, yes, but also for something more.

View in Browser  Wednesday, September 30, 2026 There’s been a spate of stories lately about how GLP-1 drugs are a big problem for Big Food and Big Clothes and Big Other Industries that might struggle among a trimmer population with more moderate appetites. But there’s a whole other set of industries picking up the slack by targeting people who achieve their goals and get off of GLP-1s. Writer Joshua Hunt wrote for Esquire about navigating the world after eleven months on Ozempic. It’s a great read. –Kevin Dupzyk, features director Plus: The Apple Watch deals to shop during October Prime Day Our 15 favorite vanilla colognes for men Samsung’s frame pro TV is $800 off ahead of October Prime Day Life After Ozempic When you stop taking the miracle weight-loss drug, the cravings return—for food, yes, but also for something more. When I started on Ozempic, in April 2025, my appetite was by definition abnormal: I ate too much, too often, with little regard for anything besides quieting whatever compulsion drove me to this sort of behavior. A weekly dose of the GLP-1 agonist semaglutide, which is sold under brand names like Ozempic and Wegovy, transformed me. It diminished both my hunger and my cravings for processed sugar and fried foods; it made me into the sort of person who eats when hungry and at no other time, which is something I hadn’t experienced for at least a decade.   We tend to talk more about the way these drugs reshape our bodies than the effect they have on our thinking. There is real psychological power in feeling, at long last, like you are in control of the appetites that once controlled you. Semaglutide slows the digestive process so that one meal keeps a person feeling fuller for longer, while also curbing cravings, so that all calories become more or less equal. Fried foods and processed sugar are no more appealing than a salad or some chicken breast, making it easier to tell yourself: No, I’m not going to eat a doughnut or some pizza. Instead I’ll have a protein bar or an apple or maybe nothing at all.   In my case, Ozempic lived up to its burgeoning reputation as a miracle drug. The weight came off so quickly at first that I found myself with questions about the effects this might have. Was it possible to get all the macronutrients I needed while eating so little? Would my fats and proteins spin out of balance? Was my skin ready for the body it contained to shrink so quickly? These questions were not always easy to answer. READ THE STORY A new version of Dracula will chill you to the bone. Eric Francisco shares an exclusive clip from Audible's star-studded adaptation of the gothic classic. >> Ring-wing "intellectuals" want us to live in a corporate hellscape. Charles P. Pierce highlights the assault on public commons by a shady, pro-business lobbying group. >> Ted Lasso Is Giving Me Stockholm Syndrome Even a cynical jerk like me can feel something sometimes. All season long, Ted Lasso has oscillated between its worst eye-roll-inducing habits (what belabored simile did Ted make now?) and genuine emotional highs reminiscent of when it was an Emmys darling. The newest episode, “Mae Rides the Bus,” isn’t free from more Lasso-isms, but the sudden exit of one of its longest supporting characters is disarmingly graceful and restrained. Maybe this is the Stockholm syndrome talking—I’ve had to tune in every week and muster enough energy to write about it since June—but Ted Lasso finally, really got me this time.   In episode 9 of Ted Lasso season 4, “Mae Rides the Bus,” the characters spin their wheels until it’s time to head to Bristol City for an important game that could decide Richmond’s standings and, more or less, its future as a team. But it’s not just football players whose futures are decided. Keeley (Juno Temple) and Roy (Brett Goldstein) have only just gotten back together, and already Keeley is grappling with a massive change: pregnancy. By Eric Francisco READ THE STORY The Lost Art of Picking Up the Check, Always Anytime my wife and I eat or drink out, I pay. When she says it’s time to go, I flag down the service staff, take the check, and squint while I pretend to itemize the bill. She checks her phone or looks around the room as I hand off the card and make small talk with the server. When it comes back, I pass the receipt across the table. My wife is vastly more capable than I am at simple arithmetic, so she handles the tip and keeps a copy.   On paper, none of this dance matters. We’re married. We share 100 percent of our finances. Neither of us can really “buy” the other dinner at this point. But both of us see it as nonnegotiable that I put down the card. It’s the same reason I open car doors for her or pick her up from the airport. None of it is necessary, but it’s one of the million little things that quietly add up to being a man—the things that, if I didn’t do, especially early on in our relationship, she’d find someone else to do for her. By Luke Guillory READ THE STORY Follow Us Unsubscribe | Manage Preferences | Privacy Notice | CA Notice at Collection Esquire is a publication of Hearst Magazines. ©2026 Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This email was sent by Hearst Magazines, 300 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019-3779

The Shocking Esquire Story Behind ‘Primetime’

NBC's 'To Catch a Predator' arrived in Murphy, Texas, to conduct a sting operation. The only honest thing that followed was the gunshot.

View in Browser  Tuesday, September 29, 2026 A24's Primetime is finally in theaters. It stars a darkly hilarious Robert Pattinson as former To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen, and it's firmly one of the year's best films. As the end credits will tell you, it's also based on an essential Esquire story—and you can read it below.—Brady Langmann, senior entertainment editor Plus: Sebago celebrates 80 years with made-in-America boat shoes The 10 best watch deals from October Prime Day I wanted to love Digger, but it's a total mess Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die NBC's To Catch a Predator arrived in Murphy, Texas, to conduct a sting operation. The only honest thing that followed was the gunshot. A cop guards the open gateway that leads from the house's driveway to the side yard, in case the man inside attempts to flee. At first the camera is static and the shot is simple: the cop, the gateway, vertical red fence planks, a right foreground portion of green bush. After a few minutes of this, the cameraman starts playing with the composition. The screen fills almost entirely with the bush, and then the view pans left from the bush to the cop, who is big and bald and has three upside-down blue V's—sergeant stripes—on the sleeve of his shirt. The cameraman zooms in past the cop to the patio area beyond, to a lattice of firewood and the blur of something green. The camera stills, focuses. The blur becomes a wheelbarrow. A green wheelbarrow leaning belly-exposed against a red wall.   It is past 3:00 p.m. and Chris Hansen, the host of "To Catch a Predator," a recurring series on NBC's Dateline television news program, arrived here at 8:30 this morning, having gotten hardly any sleep the night before. He never gets much sleep on these shoots. Although aspects of his show are tightly choreographed, Hansen and the rest of his production team must always remain loose limbed, ready to adapt to changing circumstances and unpredictable hours. The show's protagonists, after all, are recruited on the fly, and everything depends on them. They drive the plot, and Hansen never knows exactly where that plot is going to take him. Before the unexpected series of events that began yesterday afternoon, for example, Hansen had no intention of ever being here, outside this house, waiting for a SWAT team on an overcast Sunday afternoon. READ THE STORY An obnoxious line of questioning left the former special counsel, Jack Smith, looking dazed and confused. Charles P. Pierce thinks Senator Eric Scmitt should trade his senate seat for clown school. >> Peter Krause can’t believe he’s the grown-up now. The Line of Fire star opens up to Anthony Breznican on volatile sons, regretfully rejecting Aaron Sorkin, and the vital things he learned from Carol Burnett. >> The 5 Essentials You Need to Dress Like a Nice, Normal (and Stylish!) Guy This Fall If you’ve been keeping a close eye on your social feeds—and your social feeds are dominated, like mine, by people who think way too much about the way guys get dressed—you might have noticed a theme emerging recently. Menswear is experiencing a recalibration. The “anything goes” mentality is retreating into the background, replaced by an impulse to gear up in clothes that are nice. Normal. The sort of stuff that you can mix and match, wear and not worry about.   Some folks posit that this is a consequence of the resurgence of preppy style. I’m not so sure. More and more men are indeed looking at the wardrobes their fathers and grandfathers cultivated and thinking, Hey, maybe that could work for me. However, I don’t think that the preppy thing was the instigator for this reevaluation; it was the other way around.   Exhausted by the churn of social media, the questions about what shoes or pants or what-have-yous are cool right now, men first started to think about a return to normalcy. So the cause was actually the desire to invest in and wear clothes that make our lives easier. The effect? Embracing an archetype built on long-lasting staples and versatile pieces that can pair with pretty much anything in your wardrobe. By Jonathan Evans READ THE STORY Vacheron Constantin Just Made One of Its Best Watches Even Better (with a Striking Blue Dial) There are complicated watches, and then there are complicated watches that somehow manage not to look like complicated watches.   Vacheron Constantin’s latest Overseas belongs firmly in the second bucket. Created to mark the collection’s 30th anniversary, the new Overseas Perpetual Calendar Ultra-Thin combines a white-gold case with an azure dial. Just 200 will be made.   There is an awful lot going on beneath that rather handsome blue face. Its self-winding caliber 1120 QP/1 measures just 4.05mm thick, yet it manages to keep track of the date, day, month, leap years, and phases of the moon. Assuming you’re still around to worry about it, the calendar won’t require correcting until 2100. Even more impressively, the entire watch is only 8.1mm thick. By Johnny Davis READ THE STORY Follow Us Unsubscribe | Manage Preferences | Privacy Notice | CA Notice at Collection Esquire is a publication of Hearst Magazines. ©2026 Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This email was sent by Hearst Magazines, 300 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019-3779