The Osbourne family has always been known for their openness, a trait that was prominently displayed during their time on the MTV reality show from 2002 to 2005. This transparency extends to their individual health journeys, including their struggles with weight loss and chronic conditions. This article delves into the weight loss journeys of Jack and his mother, Sharon Osbourne, exploring the methods they've used, the challenges they've faced, and the lessons they've learned along the way.
Sharon Osbourne's Weight Loss Journey: From Lap Band to Ozempic
Sharon Osbourne, the matriarch of the Osbourne family, has been candid about her lifelong battle with weight. Her journey has included various methods, each with its own set of challenges and successes.
Early Attempts: Gastric Band Surgery
In 1999, Sharon underwent gastric band surgery in an effort to lose weight. According to Us Weekly, this procedure helped her lose over 100 pounds. In a 2014 interview with Entertainment Tonight, she confessed, “I felt like such a cheat when I had that band on my stomach.” Sharon revealed her underlying issue with her eating habits. “We all have our own little addictions that we do not in moderation but too much, and mine is food,” she said in her ET interview.
The Atkins Diet and Maintaining Weight Loss
Upon realizing that she would need to adjust her relationship with food for sustainable weight loss, Osbourne began following the low-carb Atkins diet, even joining the company as a brand ambassador. “I’d be fibbing if I said I don’t cheat, because I do cheat,” she told the outlet. “I cheat a lot on my diet.” But rather than punishing herself for the occasional indulgence, Osbourne said, she tried to course-correct and continue to move forward.
The Ozempic Chapter
While Osbourne was seemingly able to maintain her weight loss for some time, she later turned to Ozempic to jump-start her efforts again. The 71-year-old has been open about her desperate bid to shed the pounds as she turned to the controversial drug Ozempic to achieve a slimmer frame. In August 2023, Osbourne explained her motivation to take Ozempic on Bill Maher’s “Club Random” podcast. "You have a weight problem, and you’ve tried everything, and then somebody says, 'Take this injection and you’re going to be skinny,'” she said.
Read also: Best Diet for Jack Russell Terriers
Sharon isn't ashamed of taking Ozempic. But during an April podcast with Howie Mandel, she explained why she wanted to be open about her weight loss journey in the first place. "It's not a sin to use Ozempic if you have a weight problem, so why not talk about it?" she said. And when Howie asked if the weight loss drug was a positive experience for her, Sharon was honest, replying, "Yes and no."
The Highs and Lows of Ozempic
In February, Sharon told The Guardian that she lost "three stone [42 pounds] in four months. (Ozempic is a type of semaglutide medication and is also approved to reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke, or death in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus and known heart disease, according to the FDA.)"I started on Ozempic last December, and I’ve been off it for a while now, but my warning is don’t give it to teenagers, it’s just too easy," she told the publication. "You can lose so much weight and it’s easy to become addicted to that, which is very dangerous."
The Osbournes alum went on to reveal to Maher that while she did notice reduced appetite, she also experienced gastrointestinal side effects such as nausea and vomiting while on Ozempic for the first few weeks. "You’re not hungry, but for me-it’s different for everybody-but for me, the first few weeks were fcking sht because you just throw up all the time and feel so nauseous," she said. "After a couple of weeks, it goes, and you’re just fine."
In September 2023, Osbourne told E! "In my life, the heaviest I was 230 pounds and I’m now under a hundred," she told the outlet. "And I want to maintain at about 105 because I’m too skinny. “I was injecting myself with Ozempic and I lost three stone in four months,” she said. “Too much. I now weigh seven stone and can’t put on weight.
The Aftermath: Addressing Being "Too Skinny"
Sharon recently admitted she’s gotten “too skinny” after using Ozempic to achieve a slimmed-down look. "I can't put on weight now, and I don't know what it's done to my metabolism, but I just can't seem to put any on, because I think I went too far," she said. Despite an expressed desire to see the scale climb slightly, Osbourne said she was unable to add weight.
Read also: Make a Jack and Coke
“I’m too gaunt, and I can’t put any weight on,” the former host of ‘The Talk’ admitted in 2023 after turning to the diabetes-turned-weight-loss drug. “I want to because I feel I’m too skinny." “I didn’t want to go this thin. It just happened,” Sharon also said on Piers Morgan Uncensored with husband Ozzy Osbourne, and two of their three children, Jack and Kelly Osbourne.
During a December 2023 appearance on the U.K. talk show Good Morning Britain, Sharon said, "I could do with putting on a few pounds, but at this point the way my body is, it's not listening. It's staying where it is." A month later, she reiterated this sentiment to the Loose Women hosts: "If I could, I’d put back another 10 pounds. [But] however much I eat, I stay the same weight." And while husband Ozzy has told Sharon that she looks like former First Lady Nancy Reagan, per The Guardian, she's become more self-confident since quitting Ozempic.
Embracing Acceptance and Moving Forward
In a 2024 interview with The Guardian, Osbourne said at age 72, she’s done chasing after unsustainable weight loss goals and going from one extreme to the other. “I’ve finally become more accepting of my body, my looks,” she told the outlet. “I’m just an ordinary person who got lucky and I didn’t take advantage of that,” Osbourne said on the U.K. talk show Loose Women.
While she doesn’t regret taking the medication, she now wants to focus on maintaining a healthy weight, instead of going from one extreme to the other."Everything with weight with me was 'I want it now,'" Sharon said on the U.K. talkshow Loose Women in January. She acknowledged that she always wanted to see results quickly, but knew that wasn't possible until she started taking weight loss injections."I never want to forget I am blessed and been really lucky in my life." Now, she wants to gain back 10 pounds.
Jack Osbourne's Health Journey: Addiction, Weight Loss, and Multiple Sclerosis
Jack Osbourne, like his mother, has faced his own set of health challenges. His journey includes overcoming addiction, achieving significant weight loss, and managing multiple sclerosis (MS).
Read also: Behind the Scenes: Redferrin's Viral Song
Overcoming Addiction and Embracing a Healthier Lifestyle
Jack Osbourne lost a whopping 70 pounds seven years prior when he sought help for his addiction battle and adopted a healthier lifestyle.
Diagnosis with Multiple Sclerosis
Jack Osbourne was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 2012, at age 26, just three weeks after the birth of his oldest daughter, Pearl. After losing vision in his right eye, which he later learned was due to optic neuritis, Osbourne went to an eye doctor for advice. That was the beginning of a series of trips to specialists.
“The eye doctor sent me to the ER, and the ER was like, 'We need an MRI,' and then spinal taps and blood work and talking with neurologists,” Osbourne says. “Come to find out, that wasn't my first exacerbation. About 18 months prior, my legs had gone numb, and it was all connected to the same thing.”
Choosing to Speak Out About MS
While many celebrities and non-celebrities alike choose to keep a diagnosis of MS private, Osbourne decided to go public about it very soon afterward. “I felt a weird obligation,” says Osbourne. “I’m in the public eye, and I thought it would really benefit people” if multiple sclerosis was talked about a bit more.
After all, he continues, “MS is very common and a lot more common than people think,” but “a lot of people who are younger are nervous to let people know about it because of the stigma that comes along with it. I know a few people who keep it on the DL.”
Understanding the Uniqueness of MS
In reflecting on what he’s learned in his decade-plus of living with MS, Osbourne says, “The thing that stands out to me the most is how quickly things are progressing, in the sense of what they told me the first day I got diagnosed to where we are now. It’s almost a different landscape.” Included among the things that have changed are diet and exercise. “I was told there’s no real value to diet change, and now we know that there is,” Osbourne says. “I was told there’s no significant benefit to exerting yourself through exercise, and now a lot of people will say the opposite, that having an exercise routine is really beneficial.”
But in spite of the advances that scientists are making in understanding how best to treat MS, public perception of the disease remains mired in old ideas. “The most common misconception is that people think you’re not so able-bodied when you have MS,” says Osbourne. “Either that, or they’ll assume you’re fine because you’re not in a wheelchair."
“I like to say that MS is as unique to the individual as their own fingerprint,” he notes, adding, “The biggest thing is: Don’t just lump everyone under the umbrella of ‘This is MS’ because it really is so different for everyone.”
Experimentation and Finding a New Baseline
One of the television appearances for which Osbourne is remembered is his turn on Dancing With the Stars in 2013. Although he’d never danced previously, he and partner Cheryl Burke managed to place third. The effort came at a cost, however. “I actually got really pretty symptomatic during Dancing With the Stars,” he says. “I hid it well, but I was having really bad problems with fatigue and balance, and I started tingling up my arms and legs.” Still, it gave him a chance to show the people who said he couldn’t do it - and there were some - that he could.
These days, for Osbourne, “most days are good.” He is able to do high-intensity CrossFit workouts, “and for me it works and makes me feel good.” Fatigue is his biggest enemy. “There have been times I’ve had to pull my car over and take a nap in a parking lot. And I still get the occasional tingling in my arms and legs. But by and large I’m doing okay,” he says.
Based on his own experience, Osbourne offers this advice to those more recently diagnosed: “You’ve got to experiment to find out what your new baseline is. There’s going to be trial and error at first. It’s going to take a bit of time to figure out what you can do and what you can’t do, and to determine how to do the things you want to do.” As of July 2024, Osbourne is taking supplementations and isn’t using traditional MS medication.
Mental Health and the Challenges of Living with MS
Although Osbourne is doing well physically, he is not immune to the anxiety that often accompanies living with MS. “A lot of the challenge of living with MS is fear, the mental health aspect of it - worrying if a symptom is being caused by MS,” he says. He shares this example: “I had this thing the other day where I lost a bit of hearing in my ear for three days. It turns out I just slept funny, but I was completely sweating it, wondering, Is MS affecting the nerves in my ear now? Am I going to lose my hearing? What is this going to mean?”
Osbourne adds, “The most commonly shared symptom of MS is depression; that is the through line of most people living with the disease.
Kelly Osbourne's Journey: Surgery and Self-Acceptance
Kelly Osbourne has also been in the public eye for her weight loss journey.
Gastric Sleeve Surgery
“I know everybody thinks I took Ozempic,” Kelly told Extra in April. “I did not take Ozempic. I don’t know where that came from. “I had surgery; I don’t give a f-k what anyone has to say,” Kelly said on the “Hollywood Raw” podcast in 2022. “I did it, I’m proud of it… I did the gastric sleeve. All it does is change the shape of your stomach. I got that almost two years ago. I will never ever ever lie about it ever.
“The kind of surgery I had… if you don’t work out and you don’t eat right, you gain weight. All it does is move you in the right direction,” she added. “It doesn’t solve all your problems.
Prioritizing Mental Health
“The number one thing I had to do was get happy,” she said. “I had to fix my head before I could fix my body. Reflecting on her past, Kelly recounted an experience from her childhood on a March episode of “The Osbournes” podcast. “He… gave me a whole speech about how I was too fat for TV and I needed to lose weight, and that if I lost weight, I would look better,” Kelly said at the time.