Number of Americans Using Weight Loss Drugs Leaps to Record High

The number of Americans who say they are using GLP-1 weight loss drugs has more than tripled in the past two years, a new survey finds, with a record 11 percent of adults surveyed saying they are currently taking one and 15 percent reporting using the medicine at some point.Gallup now asks about GLP-1 usage as part of an ongoing assessment of the American population. “Obesity is obviously a huge issue. It’s a big issue in Europe. It’s an even bigger issue in the U.S. and worsened over Covid,” the research director of the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index, Dan Witters, told the Sun.The Food and Drug Administration approved Wegovy for weight loss in 2021. Obesity rates in America peaked at a record high of 39.9 percent the following year. Since then, Zepbound has also launched and sales of pill forms of the drugs has expanded the user base.Now, the obesity numbers are slightly reversing. Gallup reports that the obesity rate dropped to 36.4 percent thus far in 2026 in what it calls a statistically meaningful decline.Gallup calculates obesity using the federal standard of having a body mass index of 30 or higher. The index uses height and weight as a measure of body fat but does not take muscle mass, bone density, or body composition into account.“Since the GLP-1 usage has gone up, the obesity rate has slowly come down. I think it’s a big story because, for a long time, the obesity rate kind of only went one direction. It just slowly went up,” Mr. Witters said.The drop in obesity is having other positive health effects. The percentage of Americans who have been diagnosed with diabetes has remained steady since 2023 at 13.5 percent of the population. It had been rising for 15 years. People who are obese are four times more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes. Mr. Witters says since diabetes is not reversable, the numbers don’t directly track with dropping obesity levels but show fewer new cases. “Once you’ve been diagnosed with diabetes, of course, you’ll be diabetic your whole life. You might be able to manage it to the point where you don’t need insulin but you’re still diabetic,” Mr. Witters said.The survey also found that brand-name GLP-1 are more commonly used over compounded versions, but the compounded mixes appear to be gaining momentum among weight loss drug users. One-third of compounded GLP-1 users switched from more expensive brand name versions.“About one out of five people are now using non-brand name versions,” Mr. Witters said. “And the other part that surprised me a little bit was that users of the compound versions of the GLP-1s actually report slightly better effectiveness.”The FDA allowed compounders to make alternate versions of semaglutide or tirzepatide drugs when there were supply shortages for the brand-name versions when they first became available for use. The compounded versions do not go through the same safety and effectiveness reviews as FDA-approved drugs.When the brand name versions of the drugs became more widely available the FDA told compounders to stop mass-producing their versions but they remain widely available. Many insurance companies will not cover weight loss drugs and the compounded versions generally cost less, even as prices of the brand-name versions have dropped considerably in the past two years.

Number of Americans Using Weight Loss Drugs Leaps to Record High

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