Weight-loss drugs change shopping habits GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy are booming among consumers. That means Americans are downsizing in fitting rooms and grocery aisles.
Amanda Hartman said she lost nearly 50 pounds on Wegovy.
Sarah Lowenthal has slashed her spending on junk food. Kait Handler snagged a pair of non-plus-size jeans that fit.
“I was never a shopper, probably because I couldn’t be,” said Handler, 40. “Those jeans were an indicator, a possibility, of what could be. They were a bellwether.” Get a curated selection of 10 of our best stories in your inbox every weekend.
All three have changed their shopping habits after slimming down on glucagon-like peptide-1, or GLP-1, medications such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound. Industry experts expect many more Americans will do the same as those drugs’ explosive popularity, fueled by their ability to help people lose weight, reverberates across the retail sector.
One in eight U.S. adults have tried a GLP-1 medication and about 6 percent — or 15 million — currently have a prescription, according to a May survey by KFF. Although drugs such as Ozempic originally were developed to treat chronic conditions such as diabetes, about 40 percent of the KFF respondents tried the drugs to lose weight. By 2030, JP Morgan Research forecasts that such weight-loss treatments will grow into a $100 billion market serving 30 million Americans.
That means Americans are starting to downsize in fitting rooms and grocery aisles. While the trend is still in its infancy, retailers in every category are already contending with how to adapt to slimmer, less hungry and often more fashion-forward shoppers.
“It’s really hard to deny that as greater GLP-1 usage has been happening, there are a lot of very sizable, very tangible ripple effects on retail,” said Mansur Khamitov, an assistant professor at Indiana University’s business school. “It’s a real opportunity. It’s just a matter of who’s going to capitalize on it and leverage it.”
Luxury clothing retailers were quickest to jump on the downsizing trend. Early adopters of weight-loss drugs have tended to be wealthy because insurers have been slow to cover Ozempic’s out-of-pocket price of about $1,000 a month. That presented an opportunity for high-fashion brands to court thinner shoppers, according to Nora Kleinewillinghoefer, a partner at Kearney who focuses on luxury and fashion.
Purchases of size “small” women’s clothing increased 5 percent between 2022 and 2024 on New York’s Upper East Side — an affluent area with a high percentage of non-diabetic weight-loss drug prescriptions, according to research from Impact Analytics, which helps retailers manage their inventory and sizing.
The firm looked at sales from retailers’ flagship stores on Madison Avenue between 2022 and 2024 and found the size curve in women’s clothing — particularly long-sleeve button-up shirts — has been trending smaller. Sales of those shirts in sizes XXS, XS and S have increased by 12 percent since 2022 while sales of L, XL and XXL have decreased by nearly 11 percent. Men’s clothing has also experienced a detectable but less pronounced shift toward smaller sizes, the report said.
“Most brands are actively observing, reacting to and jumping on these trends,” Kleinewillinghoefer said. “They’re thinking about different product ranges. They’re thinking about inventory management, how to shift the size curve downward.”
Before Handler lost 50 pounds on Zepbound, the mall felt like a trap. The 40-year-old from Amityville, N.Y., said she has struggled with her weight for most of her life and often compromised on style, fit and comfort with clothes. But on a recent shopping trip, she found herself inside Madewell — a clothing store she would have never entered before she lost weight.
She meandered around the store and stumbled upon a pair of jeans, holding them up to her waist as a salesperson approached her. “Do you want to try those on?” she recalled the worker asking. “Yes, definitely!” she replied, although she was really thinking, “This is going to be embarrassing,” she told The Washington Post.
Instead of pretending to try the pants on — her usual go-to when coaxed into a fitting room by a well-meaning retail worker — she gave it a shot. To her surprise, the size 33 waist fit. And even better: they were on sale.
So for the first time in years, she bought jeans that fit from a store that doesn’t specialize in plus sizes. “This has been both an uncomfortable and sensational experience for me,” Handler said. “What do you mean I can walk into a store and buy an article of clothing? Emergency dress? No problem. Stain on your pants before a big work meeting? Head to the shops. Lost luggage? Just go into a store and buy something wherever you are.”
After losing nearly 50 pounds on Wegovy, Hartman ditched the “matronly” look of many plus-size clothes and started wearing tighter and corseted styles. The Chicago resident purchased from sustainable and secondhand brands and spent more than $1,000 on a few items from a SoHo boutique during a trip to New York.
“I had sort of prepared for this moment and put savings aside to be able to say ‘Okay, these are my staple, really nice pieces,’” said Hartman, 25. “It makes more sense to invest in more timeless pieces that are not going to go out of style, that are higher quality, that are a little bit more expensive.”
The downsizing trend could also erode a decade of size inclusivity progress in retail. Representation for bigger sizes among luxury brands has recently declined, according to the Vogue Business Spring/Summer 2025 menswear size inclusivity report, which found that only three of the 65 brands on the runway this season had at least one plus-size model, compared with eight out of 69 just four seasons earlier. Non-luxury brands such as Loft and Old Navy have also pulled back on their plus-size offerings in recent years.
Retailers that carry plus-size offerings, including Torrid, Eloquii, Maurice’s and Universal Standard, told The Post they haven’t seen a shift in demand so far. But some of them said they were open to expanding their smaller-size offerings.
“You have to wonder, is it another trend? Is it something that really is here to stay?” said Julie Carnevale, the co-founder of Eloquii. “Never say never. We’re here to serve this customer and give her fashion, and if we start to see this in our numbers, we absolutely would be open to serving her at a size 12 or a size 10. … The reality is that we’re just not seeing that in the numbers quite yet.”
Others decried the shift away from body inclusivity. Size trends are reverting back to “more antiquated, unrealistic standards,” which unfairly erases plus-size shoppers from fashion conversations they deserve to be included in, said Polina Veksler, the co-founder and CEO of Universal Standard.
Even some people who have changed their shopping habits have found it jarring to ditch plus-size clothing. Lowenthal, 29, spent more than a decade putting together a plus-size wardrobe that made her feel confident. Now the Tallahassee resident finds herself rethinking her style “on the fly” every two or three months as her weight fluctuates on Ozempic, leading her to cycle through clothing items in multiple sizes.
Lowenthal’s habits have also shifted in the grocery aisle. If she kept snacks in her house before starting Ozempic, they would all be gone within days. Now, after nearly a year on the drug, she no longer has obsessive thoughts about food.
“I felt like I was in the passenger seat when it came to food cravings,” Lowenthal said. “These drugs [put] you back in a place where you can control what you’re eating, where you can control your thoughts, where you can control what goes in and out of your body.”
JP Morgan Research found that people currently using weight-loss treatments purchased about 8 percent less food — including snacks, soft drinks and high-carb products — between November 2022 and 2023 than consumers not on the drugs. Weight-loss medications suppress appetites by making people feel fuller for longer.
Some people who take the drugs have also had an easier time controlling their impulses, which helps them resist junk food cravings. Processed food companies such as General Mills and Conagra saw a decrease in U.S. snack sales between 2023 and 2024, according to SEC filings. PepsiCo’s FritoLay division, which sells Dorito and Lay’s chips, also reported a slight dip in snack sales in its most recent quarter.
Hartman has firsthand experience with changes in her grocery basket.
She still buys the occasional junk food, but eats more intuitively now. Before, she could finish half a pint of ice cream in one sitting. Now, she eats a few bites biweekly.
“I try not to deprive myself, so I always have a sourdough loaf on hand and I have a ton of ice cream pints in my freezer,” Hartman said. “The caveat is that it takes me much longer to get through everything, so my purchase cycle has become a lot longer for these junk foods.”
Popular weight-loss treatments can also cause people to lose muscle mass, so consumers such as Hartman have also swapped out zero-sugar, low-calorie meal plans for high-protein, healthy snacks. Those healthier habits don’t bode well for major grocery chains and packaged food companies.
Most grocers sell a lot of unhealthy food at small profit margins, according to Simon Somogyi, a Texas A&M professor who studies food consumer behavior. But slimmer consumers often switch to healthier food items that sell fewer units, albeit at higher margins. If grocers stop selling mountains of candy and chips each day and shift to lower volume products, they’ll have to rethink how they arrange their stores, Somogyi said.
“It sounds odd because it’s a good thing that people are buying more healthy food, but it’s not typically in line with retailers’ strategy,” he said.
Sugary displays near check-out lines could disappear, and whole aisles of chips and ice cream eventually could be replaced by more fresh produce and protein, said Somogyi, who suspects that manufacturers of high-calorie, processed foods worry about keeping their prime supermarket placement.
Even manufacturers of diet foods — such as Lean Cuisine or Healthy Choice — are now in a race to support, rather than prompt, consumers’ weight loss. Somogyi expects other companies to follow suit with initiatives such as grocer-gym partnerships, high-protein meal rollouts and loyalty perks for shoppers taking weight-loss drugs.
The food industry has to help people losing weight become aware of high-protein products, said Russell Zwanka, who directs the food management program at Western Michigan University.
“We can make it easier for them,” Zwanka said. “We can call it out on the packaging. … We can help them call it out on the shelf.”
Weight Watchers in December launched a program that specifically caters to those taking weight-loss drugs. Nestlé, the world’s largest food and beverage company, has also launched products to support consumers’ weight loss. The company sees the rise of weight-loss drugs as an opportunity to push into an emerging market, rather than a threat, a Nestlé spokesperson told The Post.
Zwanka likened the rise of weight-loss drugs to the challenges grocers and manufacturers faced when vegan and paleo diets gained popularity. The industry has adapted to shifts in consumer diets before, but weight-loss drugs could have a lasting effect, he said.
“You always have some reason why people might eat less or shift their focus, but this one is the first time, other than maybe liposuction, that actually makes it painful to exceed the allotted amount of food,” Zwanka said. “That’s kind of a game changer.”
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