'Mama June' Shannon Credits 'Weight Loss Drug' for Dropping 30 Pounds Amid Shortages

'Mama June' is the latest famous name to admit using weight loss drugs like Ozempic to drop pounds.

By Andrew Roberts

"Mama June" Shannon is the latest famous name to reveal they've lost weight using the drug found in Ozempic and other diabetes medications. According to E! News, the Mama June: Family Crisis star has dropped around 39 pounds across nine weeks after being prescribed semaglutide injections.

"Even though I'm losing weight, I'm only about three to four pounds a week," Shannon tells Entertainment Tonight. "It isn't as fast as a gastric sleeve or a gastric bypass, but it is doing it, like, more safer."

Shannon underwent a gastric sleeve surgery in 2015, but opted for a safer route this time in hopes it will stick. "I don't even know who that person was five years ago," she added. "I still have about 74.2 pounds to go."

Shannon is eyeing to see a final weight between 170 and 180 pounds. To maintain, she's changed her diet and is working out three or four times per week. "Mama's thing is, when she's really strict on herself, she's really strict on herself," Lauryn "Pumpkin" Efird said about her mother, insisting she's going overboard.

The decision follows the loss of her daughter Anna "Chickadee" Cardwell to cancer in December. She started to see herself slipping and gaining weight with no end in sight. "With the stress of everything going on, eating out, not eating right, just all kinds of stuff, I had packed on about 120, 130 pounds," she wrote on social media, according to E! News. "I tried to cut back on my eating, nothing was actually helping.

"I know a lot of y'all are on similar journeys so let's do it together," she continued. "Tell me what your experiences are pros and cons and everything. I will be updating every week how things are going."

The weight loss drugs in question have been a point of controversy for some, with shortages taking hold since 2023 due to the increased use of the drug as a vanity weight loss route. "Attempting to get it can be quite complicated, it's like going on a scavenger hunt to find your own medicine," one semaglutide user told Vogue. "As a diabetic, it does infuriate me to know that there is a shortage of medicine that highly benefits me and that there are people who are using it [for weight loss] have different options [when it comes to losing weight]. But I also know that losing weight is hard, so I try to give them the benefit of the doubt."

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