‘You’ve Got to be Freaking Kidding Me’: U.S. Military Spends Over $700 Million for Ozempic and Other GLP-1 Weight Loss Meds

Military personnel criticize the hundreds of millions spent on weight loss medications as a misguided approach to addressing the obesity crisis in the U.S. Armed Forces.

A report from the American Security Project in 2025 revealed that approximately 68 percent—two out of three—of the military’s Reserve and National Guard forces are classified as overweight.

Subsequent to this report, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth expressed his concern on X, stating, “Completely unacceptable. This is what happens when standards are IGNORED – and this is what we are changing. REAL fitness & weight standards are here. We will be FIT, not FAT.”

Was the solution found in raising the bar for “REAL fitness & weight standards?” Perhaps they were. However, some startling revelations concerning weight loss have emerged, with RealClearInvestigations dubbing this disclosure the “Waste of the Day.”

Since 2021, the military has allocated nearly $726 million for Ozempic and other GLP-1 weight loss medications, with $274.6 million spent in fiscal year 2025, as revealed by spending records acquired by Open the Books.

This expenditure encompasses 102,597 individual purchases, all made through the Defense Logistics Agency for “troop support.” The majority of the funds were directed to the wholesale pharmaceutical company Cencora. Over a dozen varieties of GLP-1 medications were acquired, including Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Trulicity.

Many individuals—and taxpayers alike—who have served in the military are infuriated.

Lt. Ted Macie, a retired Navy Medical Service Corps officer, was appalled. He informed The Gateway Pundit that data obtained from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) indicate that obesity rates have surged in the military over the last decade.

From 2016 to 2019, an average of 13,863 cases of overweight and obesity were documented across all branches of service. This average rose to 21,969 between 2020 and 2023. Remarkably, there was a 190 percent increase during this period, with cases soaring from 12,249 to 35,531.

Macie criticized the use of Ozempic and other GLP-1 medications as “yet another bandage on a broken leg, and this one comes with a nearly billion-dollar tax burden and for avoidable poor choices.” He has long been an advocate for fitness and nutrition, both personally and as a command fitness leader.

“It’s frustrating to watch policies that miss the mark while service members pay the price,” he lamented. “There are well-documented, life-altering side effects like bone and muscle loss, vision issues, kidney problems, the kind of things you don’t just cure at the next Physical Readiness test.”

Macie argued that the military’s message is contradictory. When overweight service members are regularly promoted and seen throughout installations, he said, it undermines any genuine assertion that readiness and health are important. “These commanders can’t preach fitness while rewarding the opposite.”

In his view, the military’s investment of $726 million in what is essentially a temporary “fix” is “very shortsighted.”

“Odds are, we’ll be paying for the downstream health consequences later, too,” he admitted. “It continues to display the power of the relationship with the pharmaceutical industry and the military.”

In conclusion, Macie remarked, this is “par for the course, unfortunately.”

U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Josh Snodgrass, who retired in 2024 after 20 years of honorable service, also spoke to The Gateway Pundit. Furious, the former 82nd Airborne Division Paratrooper and Military Combat Adviser, told The Gateway Pundit, “No, I’m not okay with this.”

For him, “Spending hundreds of millions on drugs like Ozempic raises a basic question: what are the long-term health effects, especially when used broadly across a force?”

Referring to the COVID-19 shot mandate, he said, “We’ve seen how quickly large-scale medical solutions get adopted before the full picture is understood.”

“More importantly,” Snodgrass asked, “how did we get to a point where weight gain across the force requires pharmaceutical intervention at this scale?”

In the last five or six years of his time in the Army, he admitted that he encountered more issues with weight control than he had ever anticipated. “Standards not being enforced the way they should have been,” he shared. “It wasn’t as prevalent in Combat Arms, but it showed up in support roles and even in Special Forces. That’s an uncomfortable reality, but it’s real—and it doesn’t start at the unit level, it starts in basic training.”

Basic training is the crucial stage where recruits should be instilled with a strong foundation to “shape mentality, discipline, accountability, and standards—not reward mediocrity or lower the bar.” When the enforcement of weight and fitness standards becomes “soft,” it doesn’t remain isolated. He said it proliferates and intensifies over time.

“The Army already has regulations and structured pathways for service members who fall out of standard, including time and resources to correct it,” Snodgrass pointed out. However, based on his observations, those systems were seldom adhered to as intended.

“To my recollection,” he said, “I never had to chapter a soldier out for weight because we made sure they had every opportunity to fix it. But that only works if leadership actually enforces the standard.”

There are always exceptions. Medical problems are genuine, and Snodgrass has experienced his fair share of injuries, which helps him appreciate the necessity for flexibility, particularly during recovery. “But at a price tag of $726 million, it’s hard to believe this is limited to legitimate medical necessity.”

“At some point,” he said, “you have to ask whether someone who requires ongoing pharmaceutical support to meet basic physical standards is fit for service in the first place.”

“This level of spending doesn’t just raise eyebrows. It demands accountability,” Snodgrass contended. “Who is receiving these drugs, and under what criteria? Because from where I stand, there are a lot of ways that kind of money could have been better spent directly improving combat power and capability for the individual warfighter.”

Emphasizing that his views do not represent those of the Department of War or the Department of the Army, the Gateway Pundit also interviewed an active-duty Army Green Beret with more than 15 years of service. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, he expressed his disbelief: “You’ve got to be freaking kidding me.” He deemed the costs “outrageous.”

For all the military’s emphasis on standards, fitness, and uniformity, the Green Beret said that this appears to be “antithetical to that.”

“I can’t even pretend to understand what goes into these haphazard decisions they make,” he remarked. “Without knowing the criteria, the stipulations of being able to get Ozempic or other GLP-1 weight loss medications, or the screening process or vetting process,” he fears, “this is going to be something that’s going to be used and abused regardless of whether it was well-intentioned or not.”

In his opinion, “This is just another classic example of something you’re paying for that you don’t realize you’re even paying for.”

 

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