Show Notes
What are we supposed to think about weight in 2026?
A Matter of Fat is a new podcast for anyone who has no idea what they think about weight, bodies and the rapidly changing conversation around them.
Hosted by journalist Rose Stokes, who brings 30 years of lived experience with weight and obesity, and Dr Giles Yeo, a University of Cambridge scientist who has spent three decades studying the genetics of body weight, this podcast brings together lived experience and science without pretending to have all the answers.
In our first episode, we confront the elephant in the room: Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wegovy and the arrival of GLP-1 weight-loss medications.
We cover:
• What GLP-1 medications actually do inside the body • Why weight and appetite are not simply a matter of willpower • Rose and Giles’ own experiences of taking weight-loss medication • Why Giles kept his Wegovy use secret and felt like a fraud • Whether weight-loss drugs really cause muscle loss • Why weight stigma can make losing weight harder, not easier • Plus, we fact-check “nature’s Ozempic” and revisit Rose’s disastrous experience with Orlistat
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RESOURCES:
Pennington Biomedical Research Center: Food noise study https://www.pbrc.edu/news/media/2026/food-noise-eco.aspx
The Food Noise Questionnaire https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.24216
UCL and BMC Medicine: 1.6 million UK adults used weight-loss drugs in the past year https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1111695
Major, Rathbone, Blodorn and Hunger: The Countervailing Effects of Weight Stigma on Weight-Loss Motivation and Perceived Capacity for Weight Control https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167220903184
Sutin and Terracciano: Perceived Weight Discrimination and Obesity https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0070048
TRANSPARENCY:
Professor Giles Yeo consults and speaks for Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly and Amgen, and has received research grant funding from Novo Nordisk and Amgen. He is joining Amgen's cardiometabolic scientific advisory board, and also consults for Voy. Industry funds most obesity research and these relationships are typical for senior researchers in the field.
Rose Stokes has taken GLP-1 medication and writes about weight and the pharmaceutical industry as a freelance journalist.
FIND US 👇 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amatteroffatpod/ Rose Stokes: https://www.instagram.com/rosestokes/ Giles Yeo: https://www.instagram.com/gilesyeo/
Questions, thoughts, constructive criticism or a story you want to share?
Email us: [email protected] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from A Matter of Fat
If health is the goal, how do we know when to stop losing weight? And how do we decide what’s enough in a society that keeps rewarding us for being smaller?
If you can now change your body, do you still have to love it? And can wanting to lose weight coexist with body acceptance?
Big Food helped create the obesity crisis. Should the same industry be allowed to profit from the solution?
Who gets to be healthy when nutritious food, time, exercise and weight-loss medication all cost money?
Episode 3: GLP-1 medications might quieten food noise, but has the noise around weight-loss jabs become impossible to escape?