Bite Back with Abbey Sharp - The DEVASTATING Disconnect Between Sk*nnyTok, Rapid Weight Loss & Ozempic Misuse and LONGEVITY

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

Here’s a run down of what we discussed in today’s episode: Why Bone Health Matters for Longevity Peak Bone Mass: Your Bone-Building Years The Silent Risks of Osteoporosis How SkinnyTok Is Changing Long-Term Health GLP-1s, Rapid Weight Loss & Bone Density 5 Ways Extreme Dieting Harms Your Bones Why Bone Loss Often Goes Undetected How to Protect Your Bones While Losing Weight The Most Important Nutrients for Bone Health Can You Recover Lost Bone Density? References: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33666707/ https://academic.oup.com/jbmr/article/38/11/1586/7610440 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(24)00203-7/fulltext https://academic.oup.com/jes/article/5/Supplement_1/A16/6240360 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6839076/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5188424/#sec4-nutrients-08-00769   Disclaimer: The content in this episode is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is never a substitute for medical advice. If you’re struggling with with your mental or physical health, please work one on one with a health care provider. If you have heard yourself in our discussion today, and are looking for support, contact the free NEDIC helpline at 1-866-NEDIC-20 or go to eatingdisorderhope.com. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •✨ Reach Your Weight & Health Goals — Without Dieting! Pre-order The Hunger Crushing Combo Method, Abbey’s revolutionary additive approach to eating well. Learn how to boost satiety, stabilize blood sugars, reduce disease risk, and improve your relationship with food — all while getting the best nutrient bang for your caloric buck. With 400+ research citations, cheat sheets, evidence-based actionable tips, meal plans, and adaptable recipes, The Hunger Crushing Combo Method is the only nutrition bible you’ll ever need. 👉 Pre-order today! 🛒 Where to Purchase:AmazonBarnes & NobleAmazon KindleApple BooksGoogle PlayKoboApple Books (Audiobook)Audibleabbeyskitchen.com/hunger-crushing-combo• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •✉️ Subscribe to My Newsletters:Abbey’s Kitchen Newsletter 📘 Check out my FREE E-Books:Hunger Crushing Combo™ E-BookProtein 101 E-Book👋 Follow me!Instagram: @abbeyskitchenTikTok: @abbeyskitchenYouTube: @AbbeysKitchenBlog: abbeyskitchen.comBook: The Mindful Glow Cookbook • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 🎧 Don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen — and leave us a review! It really helps support the show ❤️ 💬 If you liked this podcast, please like, follow, and leave a review — and let me know who you’d love to hear about next! ⭐ ⭐ ⭐⭐ ⭐ 

Low energy availability also disrupts key hormones that regulate bone. So it reduces estrogen, which prevents bone breakdown. It also reduces IGF1 or growth factors, which help with bone formation. And it can increase cortisol, which further promotes bone breakdown over time. It's really a perfect hormonal storm for losing bone. Welcome to another episode of Bite Back with Abby Sharp, where I Dismantle, Diet culture rules, call out the charlatans spinning the pseudoscience, and help you achieve food freedom for good. Today in 2026, thinness and weight loss have become increasingly more

accessible, transactional, and honestly, kind of expected. And I want to make it super clear that I am not anti-weight loss or gLP ones. I mean, there are so many folks for whom losing excess body fat, whether via lifestyle approaches or medication, can greatly improve quality of life. But in an age of Skinny Talk and GLP1 misuse and abuse, young people's bodies are now expected to shrink at a rapid clip. Size zero is the new size six, and not ever feeling hunger is seen as some kind of flex. Here on Biteback, my YouTube channel and across my social platforms, I have been ringing the alarm bells about the various psychological and physiological damages of rapid and extreme weight loss. But there is a terrifying long-term outcome that I don't think anyone is talking about yet.

That happens to be kind of ironic in this longevity-obsessed era we're currently in. And that is that we may now see an entire generation with early bone loss, impacting our longevity and independence far more than any peptide or substance. supplement stack. So on today's solo episode of Bite Back, we're going to be diving into the long term and potentially irreversible damage that this quote unquote skinny at any or all cost era that we're living in may be doing to our bones. And if you're a young millennial or Gen Z thinking, well, that's old people problems. I don't need to be worried about osteoporosis or bone loss. You are in for a shocking wake-up call. But before we get into,

it, I want to remind everyone that my best-selling book, The Hunger Crushing Combo Method, is now in stores and online, so please do check out the link in the show notes to order. And if you are enjoying Biteback, I would love if you would leave me a five-star review, shared with a friend, and subscribe to the pod so that you never miss an episode. All right, friends, let's get into it. So, first of all, to understand why your diet may be putting your longevity at risk, we need a wee little anatomy lesson. Bones are living tissues that are constantly remodeling with cells called osteoblasts, which build bones, and osteoclasts, which break down bones. Normally, these cells work in harmony, but when osteoclast activity outpaces the osteoblasts, we start to

lose precious bone and we see net breakdown. In early life, we are actively, quote unquote, putting bone in the bank by building up our bone to reach peak bone mass around 20 to 30 years old. After that, the best outcome is basically just to maintain what we got. That's why it's so much easier to heal a broken bone when you're 12 years old versus when you are 45. So the goal is to start adulthood with the most bone mass we possibly can, knowing that as we hit paramenopause and our bone protecting estrogen declines, it's kind of just downhill from there. And here's why this matters. With enough bone loss, we put ourselves at risk of osteoporosis, aka brittle and fragile bones. It's estimated that 33% of women and 20% of men will break a bone due to osteoporosis in their lifetime.

Hip fractures are the most dangerous outcomes of bone loss, where approximately 20 to 24% of people die within the first year of a hip fracture and elevated mortality risk can persist for at least five years after that. Function loss is also huge. After a hip fracture, about 40% of folks cannot walk independently, 60% need assistance for one year later, and 33% are totally dependent or in a nursing home within the year. The scary part is, you can't necessarily feel bone loss or osteoporosis. Most of us will never get a dexas scan to test our bone density until we are over the age of 65 when the damage has long been done. Considering our current obsession with longevity, this is definitely not what we want. Now obviously some bone loss

in older age is more or less part of our normal life trajectory, particularly for women post-menopause, But something is happening right now that is completely changing the game. We are in the midst of a starve to shrink epidemic. 800 calorie diets are all over your feed. OZempic misuse and abuse are status quo. And nutrient deficiencies are absolutely on the rise. And this is going to have massive repercussions for an entire generation. We have decades of data on women who have experienced rapid or extreme weight.

loss via disordered eating, suggesting a significantly increased risk of osteopena, osteoporosis, and fractures even at very young ages. And this is particularly a problem during adolescence and young adulthood when you're supposed to be putting bone in the bank because you're unlikely to ever be able to catch up. Remember, your teens, 20s, and early 30s are the key times in your life to build as much bone as possible. And once you start heading in the wrong direction, it can be really, really hard to stop that train. More recently, we've started to see some emerging research on GLP1 users that echo these same concerns. With one 2024 clinical trial suggesting that OZEPIC users had higher bone breakdown markers and lower measured bone

density compared to a placebo after 52 weeks. Now, it's not because the drug, drug itself causes bone loss, at least not to our current knowledge, but it's due to the same risk factors that we see with under eating and extreme weight loss in EDs. So let's go over some of those factors to help you understand the grave risk that the body trend du jour may be doing long term. Number one, non-discriminatory tissue loss. Our body isn't great at losing just one type of body tissue when we're in a calorie deficit. And especially when weight loss is rapid as it often is with these protocols, it doesn't just dig into fat, but it also breaks down lean mass, including muscle, bone, and other critical organs. So we know, for example, that as much as 40%

of the weight loss on GLP-1s like OZMPIC can be from lean mass, which includes that muscle and bone. Number two is the risk of legitimate nutrient deficiencies. I don't know who needs to hear this, but you cannot meet your basic nutrient needs on a 1,000 calorie diet. Bones need a combination of nutrients like calcium, vitamin D, vitamin K2, protein, magnesium, and more to support structure and mineralization. So whether you are underconsuming calories and nutrients because you're on a GLP1 medication that severely suppresses your aptite, or you're following some restrictive and disordered advice from influencers online, your body is just going to need to pull from its stores when inputs are low.

So the causes may vary, but the outcome will be the same. The third reason why rapid weight loss effects are bones is that it reduces osteoblast activity. When we're in a state of low energy availability where the calories we're taking in are significantly lower than the calories we are putting out, our body goes into energy. conservation mode and cuts off anything that it doesn't need to survive. So it's going to prioritize things like the brain, heart, and lungs, while down regulating non-essential processes like reproduction, growth, and bone building. In a state of low energy availability, our osteoblasts, aka the bone building cells, slow down to save energy, which then results

in reduced bone density and osteoporosis over time. This brings me to the fourth point, which is the hormonal cascade. Low energy availability also disrupts key hormones that regulate bone. So it reduces estrogen, which prevents bone breakdown. It also reduces IGF1 or growth factors, which help with bone formation. And it can increase cortisol, which further promotes bone breakdown over time. It's really a perfect hormonal storm for losing bone. And finally, there is a reduction in mechanical load.

osteoblasts respond to physical stress, strain, and load. And even though skinny may be, quote, quote, in, it's just not good for our bones long term. Smaller, lighter, frailer bodies produce less force on bones to stimulate osteoblasts to build bone to support that stress, especially if we are not compensating with strength training and building lean muscle. Over time, bone just adapts to less stress by becoming less dense. dense, which then increases the risk of osteopena and osteoporosis. So as you can see, there is a complex interplay of bone affecting risk factors that arise from the extreme diet

restriction and weight loss that we're seeing become normalized and celebrated. And like I said before, bone loss is silent. You will not feel it happening and you won't know that you never reached your full peak bone mass potential because you were chronically under eating until years later when you end up with a stress fracture in your 30s or osteopenia before you even hit menopause. So taken together, I worry that our current skinny at any cost obsession is creating a perfect storm for a generation that will have less physical independence in older age than our parents have. All that said, this is in no way a suggestion that losing weight is inherently a bad thing. Every choice we make for a health will come down to a risk benefit analysis. And there are

countless reasons why weight loss, either via lifestyle alone or with the support of medication, would be the healthiest choice for you. However, if true longevity and sustainability is on your wish list, and it really, really should be, we need to think about protecting our lean mass like our muscle and bone while in a weight loss phase. So here's what you need to know to minimize the risk while meeting your goals. Number one, eat enough. I know it's very tempting to ride a low appetite and see the scale rapidly drop by eating as little as possible. But remember, we want to lose fat, not lean tissue. And that requires a slower, steadier pace. So work with your doctor or dietitian to keep your weight loss pace below two pounds per week, which for a lot of folks

might be around a 300 to 500 calorie deficit. And I have a whole chapter in my book, The Hunger Cushing combo method on maximizing nutrient intake and satiety while staying in a calorie deficit. So please do check that out if you need some guidance. Number two, pay attention to your cycle if you menstruate. While normal cycle lengths can differ, if you are losing weight and and you notice that your cycles start getting longer, or you're skipping periods, or missing them altogether, it could be a sign of hormonal dysregulation and under-fueling. Amenanuria is defined as not getting your period by age 15

or missing periods for more than three months. So if that sounds like you, it is definitely time to speak to a healthcare professional ASAP because it is a sign that your estrogen levels have tanked, which can then severely affect your bone. Number three, prioritize bone-specific nutrients. The big ones are protein, calcium, and vitamin D3, along with others like magnesium, phosphorus, and vitamin K2.

Dairy, fatty fish and bones, fortified tofu, egg yolks, and legumes are all really great food sources. And for my vegan friends, it's important to consider that calcium and plant-based foods tends to be less bioavailable. So in some cases, you may need to eat larger volumes. So, for example, you would need to eat around 100 grams or between 70 to 90 almonds to get 260 milligrams of calcium where you could get the same amount from one cup of cow's milk. So look for fortified non-dairy alternatives to get the best nutrient bang for your caloric buck. And number four, work in weekly strength training.

All forms of exercise have benefits, but for bones specifically, strength training, pliometrics. and heavy lifting are key to provide that mechanical load. Now, I'm not a personal trainer or a physiotherapist, but I highly encourage working with one to put together a routine specific to increasing bone mineral density. Now, I've said it before, and I'm going to say it again, I am not against intentional weight loss. But if your healthy lifestyle is costing you your hormones, energy, and long-term independence, it is the farthest thing from true health. Now before we end the podcast,

I wanted to speak to my friends who are struggling with skinny talk, disordered eating, or rapid unintentional weight loss. You might be listening to this thinking that it's too late or that you've done some irreparable damage. Maybe you've had a Dexas scan already showing low bone density and you're feeling regret with yourself or fear for what the future may hold. I want you to first just give your hearing. some grace. Yes, some of your choices may have contributed to your health outcomes. But at the end of the

day, we are all victims of diet culture and we are living in a world that idolizes thinness. Please do try your best to release any guilt or shame for your journey up until now. As an elder millennial who also struggled with an eating disorder and recovery, I can tell you that no one teaches you these things. Not enough people know about the effects of under-eating on bone health, and it's something that health care professionals and dietitians are trying to raise more awareness about right now. But the good news is, it's never too late to slow down that decline. Yes, we know that your teens' 20s and early 30s are peak bone-building periods. But that doesn't mean it is impossible to build and recover bone

density after that. It just requires a little more effort. Take an extreme case of anorexia, for example, and trigger warning for ED talk. In this one case study, they looked at a 27-year-old woman who had suffered from anorexia since the age of 10 and was diagnosed with osteoporosis at age 14. Super scary stuff. But through a mix of weight gain, medications, hormonal treatment, and strength training, she was able to recover her bone density into a normal range for her age. We also have a 2026 systematic review that looked at adolescents with Anorexia. It showed that weight gain and weight restoration resulted in bone density stabilization in a year with longer follow-up periods showing greater gains in bone density.

So there absolutely is hope with the first steps being to achieve a healthy body weight and to recover your period. I also recommend speaking to your doctor about getting a baseline dexas scan and then establishing a follow-up period to assess your progress. But folks, that's where we're going to end it off today. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of Byteback. You know, my goal with this podcast has always been to dismantle diet culture and call out the unsaid dangers of trends like skinny talk and rapid weight loss.

So if you found this helpful or want to continue spreading the word, please do rate this podcast five stars. Leave me a comment or share with a friend. And a quick heads up that I will be taking a week off so that I can spend some quality time with my kids who will be finishing up school. And we will be back on Tuesday, June 23rd with another great episode. But signing off with Science and Sass, I'm Abby Sharp. Thanks for listening.