Ever since I shrunk back to a size 8 from a size 14, I’ve felt like Kate Moss. Effortlessly slender at 49, I’ve been waltzing around Corsica and Greece in a skimpy, yellow Melissa Odabash bikini after shedding three stone on weight-loss jabs.
But then I tried on a pair of size 23-inch waist vintage jeans in a designer shop, around the corner from where I live in Notting Hill.
As I pulled the jeans up my slim legs – which, since Ozempic, look great again in cut off 501 Levi denim shorts – I did a double take as I caught the reflection of my derriere in the changing-room mirror.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. ‘What the hell has happened to my bum?’ It’s as flat as a pancake, with no shape, like it’s blending into my thighs. When I grab the flesh, it feels as squelchy as my seven-year-old daughter’s dreaded slime, with no elasticity – just loose skin. I have zero muscle definition. I can’t even feel my glutes as I clench my buttocks.
‘Is everything okay?’ my friend asked me outside the changing room. I pulled her in: ‘Look at it. Just look at my bum!’ I shriek. ‘It’s suddenly gone all saggy.’
Welcome to the world of ‘Ozempic bum’. Having it makes me feel as deflated as my backside looks. Is it permanent, I wonder? The relatively new term describes sagging, loose skin and loss of volume and elasticity in the buttocks due to rapid weight loss.
It’s on the stratospheric rise thanks to GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Mounjaro, an unwanted side- effect not only of losing fat but also muscle, and at a faster rate than the skin can snap back.
Only now the full horror of the condition is dawning on me – my bum looks like a deflated soufflé.
After losing three stone on Ozempic, Charlotte was left with a flat bum and worried there was no hope
In January she booked herself into Roar Fitness, a luxury gym known for training high-profile celebrities, including pop star Pixie Lott and actress Sheridan Smith
I’m not a particularly vain person and I realise there are significantly more pressing world events to worry about, but I’m shell-shocked. I am planning two holidays this summer with a handsome single dad and his kids. I just can’t appear on the beach with a caved-in backside.
As a busy single working mum of two young children – Lola, ten and Liberty, seven – I don’t exercise apart from walking Muggles, our pedigree golden retriever, who’s 11.
I don’t even have a long mirror at my two-bed home – and looking at my rear isn’t usually top of my priority list, which is why I didn’t notice it sagging.
But I’ve been terribly neglectful. I’ve been on such a high with the weight loss, not worrying about rolls of fat, feeling like at last I’ve got a handle on my sweet tooth, that I managed to fool myself the jabs were benign.
Before I started on GLP-1 medication, my eating felt out of control. I was only 10.5 stone at my heaviest, but that weight felt like a lot more than my usual weight of 8.5 stone. I would stress-eat while juggling work, looking after my daughters, and latterly caring for my elderly father, too. In early 2024, the GP told me my cholesterol levels were dangerously high and I needed statins. I asked him to give me six months to try to reverse it with lifestyle changes, which is when I got a private Ozempic prescription – and never looked back.
I even stuck to low doses so that the weight loss was more gentle and I could still enjoy food, just in smaller portions. When I hit my target weight last summer, I weaned myself off it by microdosing it, jabbing as and when needed, always keeping an emergency pen in the fridge for when the ‘food noise’ got too loud.
Then, one day, it suddenly looked like I had aged three decades overnight – or at least from behind.
So, this January I booked myself into Roar Fitness, a luxury gym known for training high-profile celebrities, including pop star Pixie Lott and actress Sheridan Smith.
After dedicating herself to the gym and upping her protein intake, Charlotte was able to revive her bum
A flat bum after losing weight on Ozempic or other fat jabs is a common problem
Founded by three-time Olympian speed skater Sarah Lindsay, the gym has an amazing reputation built on jaw-dropping body transformations, with before-and-after photos lining the walls. At my consultation with Sarah, I ask her: ‘Is there any hope for my bum?’ and almost kiss her when she replies: ‘Of course there is!’
In fact there’s a lot I can do to make a big difference, she says – in large part because I was doing the sum total of nothing before.
My predicament is common for users of GPL-1s. ‘Losing weight feels good and often becomes addictive,’ Sarah tells me. ‘Women just look at the scales or feel their clothes getting looser. They aren’t paying attention to what is really happening everywhere. But there is a tipping point where it becomes detrimental to aesthetics and overall physical health.’
She tells me I need to fill the lost volume with muscle, not fat, and then the loose skin will tighten around the buttocks. It’s going to mean committing to a hardcore 12-week training programme (two PT sessions a week in the gym, plus working out at least twice a week at home with a dumbbell and resistance band) and a nutrition package involving 105 to 110g of protein every day to help muscle growth. The whole programme starts at an eye-watering £3,509.
I’m also going to get collagen-boosting and muscle-toning treatments with Dr Galyna Selezneva, one of London’s most in-demand aesthetic doctors for non-invasive ‘body contouring’. The idea is to engineer a butt boost in the quickest amount of time without resorting to a BBL. (For the uninitiated, that’s a Brazilian Bum Lift).
As I stand in the plush gym wearing my new high-waisted shiny Alo Airlift leggings – a staple in celebrity athleisure – I certainly look the part.
But I feel like a lost cause. I can’t imagine anything changing as Sarah puts me in the hands of her top personal trainer George Nicholson. I should have been resistance training from the beginning of my weight loss journey – before I even picked up the Ozempic pen, not after the damage was done.
‘When you’re heavier, you can lift heavier weights,’ Sarah explains. ‘It’s much harder to build muscle than maintain it.’ Resistance training while on weight loss drugs can be a challenge, however. ‘You can’t do weights efficiently as you may be nutritionally depleted from not eating enough, not hungry and possibly feeling nauseous,’ adds Sarah.
I’m off them, of course, so I should at least be able to eat the requisite muscle-building fuel. Yes, I am starting from ground zero But I am determined. I have one clear goal: to get my backside back.
George, 25, is passionate about putting in 100 per cent effort for his clients. I just have to match it, which means I’m frantically running around Kensington High Street doing school drop-offs and pick-ups in Lycra – and being labelled a ‘gym mum’ by my kids.
To lift and reshape the buttocks will require me doing a whole roster of unfamiliar exercises: Bulgarian split squats with dumbbells, barbell hip thrusts, hack squats, glute cable kickbacks, glute ham raises with weights, sled pull and dumbbell step-ups. No, me neither.
I also need to ensure I eat all that lean protein for muscle growth. I’m pescatarian, and start bulk-buying cottage cheese and Greek yoghurt, as well as salmon and eggs. I have to drink lots of water (two litres) a day, too. In fact I discover protein water in cherry flavour (20g of protein), which isn’t as heavy as those protein shakes and tastes good.
I haven’t worked out in ten years, but surprisingly I’m not collapsing with exhaustion on the floor. I’m doing short, sharp bursts of resistance training in one-hour sessions – regarded as one of the best ways to slow and even reverse age-related muscle loss – which forces muscles to contract against an external resistance such as weights, bands or body weight to build strength.
After the first session with George, something wonderful happens – my gluteus muscles wake up. My bum feels sore, and I can hardly walk two days later.
At home, I’m doing banded glute bridges, sumo squats and ‘clamshells’ on a yoga mat for 20 minutes per session in the kitchen in between cooking fish fingers for the kids.
By the second week, I’m hip-thrusting 60kg – and I don’t feel dizzy or sick anymore, as I did to start with. As I leave the gym, I feel uplifted, stronger, almost euphoric.
I spend most of my life sitting down writing – so this is a new routine. Yet… nothing is happening to my bum. I feel the pain of newly alive glutes, but it still looks droopy. By the fourth week with very little change, I feel totally demoralised.
In fact, secretly I’m terrified. What if I can’t salvage my bum and can do nothing to change it?
‘You’re not going to have a Kim Kardashian bum in a few months,’ George points out. ‘That would take a year of ongoing work. You have to be realistic.’
But there will be a ‘hallelujah’ moment, he promises, when my backside will finally take shape and look fuller, and with those words of reassurance ringing in my ears, I keep going.
Around the five-week mark, after I’ve got the hang of the gym, I do start to feel just the subtlest of differences. My bum starts to feel ‘pumped’, is the best way I can put it. I’m now doing 72.5kg barbell hip thrusts – and I was struggling before on 40kg. We are trying to force quick progress, increasing the weight at a speed which is pushing my limits, but in a comfortable way.
My muscles start to feel like they are pulsating and spasming during reps. Now I understand why people swear at their PTs. I’m out of a slump – I’m seeing results and it’s reflecting in the training: I have renewed vigour. My rear is still a long way off from the perfect peach – but I’m getting there.
That’s when I head off to see Dr Galyna, who has a range of non-invasive procedures for Ozempic butt. She has a clinic in Knightsbridge and at the Lanesborough Club and Spa on Hyde Park Corner, where we meet.
It is all very high end: a spa butler takes me to a lounge area, and in a very welcome change of pace from the gym, I am told to lie flat on a massage table.
As Dr Galyna inspects my buttocks, she says my skin looks deflated. ‘As we age, we lose collagen and elastin, and hyaluronic acid depletes. So, you get the crepiness and laxity. Also with a reduction in oestrogen [round about the menopause] we get dryer skin. Your rapid weight loss has accelerated the whole process,’ she says.
It’s lucky I’m having an ‘intervention’, she says, because I’m ‘on the journey to sarcopenia’ – progressive, age-related loss of muscle mass, strength and function, which sounds, and is, terrifying. Alongside resistance training and diet, however, she can help fix it.
She begins by muscle toning with Cristal Fit by Deleo (£300 per session).
It’s a non-invasive treatment that uses high-intensity electromagnetic muscle stimulation (HI-EMMS) to induce deep, targeted muscle contractions.
She sticks electromagnetic muscle-stimulation pads on my buttock cheeks, which produce first tapping and then more intense pulling sensations, like a contraction. It’s a bit overwhelming at first, but perfectly fine once I get used to it.
I’m having ten one-hour sessions, ideally spaced a week apart since I don’t want to overexercise the muscles. It’s not going to create muscle, but it will speed up the process by activating and toning the glutes.
I’m also going to have six sessions of high-radio multifrequency skin tightening using Deleo’s Cristal Skin (£800 per session), administered via a handheld device moving across my buttocks in circular movements. This stimulates collagen production by generating controlled heating in the skin tissue at multiple depths, and claims to improve skin quality, elasticity and firmness.
I’m told it takes up to six months to see the full results, but – twisting my head round in the mirror to gaze frankly at my derriere – I reckon there are visible improvements after a few sessions.
For treating cellulite on the buttock area, which can often become more noticeable after weight loss, she uses Deleo’s Cellution (£800 per session) which also boosts collagen production. By the end of my sessions at the wellness hub at the Lanesborough, my butt feels hydrated, soft and perky. It even has bounce. My bum is transforming in front of my eyes – and it’s exciting to watch it as it lifts and becomes fuller, grabbable and… yes, sexy!
During my final week at the gym, I’m lifting 80kg with ease, thanks to George’s expert help – double the weight that I started out with. Now when I lie in bed, I feel I’m propped up on my bum rather than it squelching into the mattress. It feels strange – but in a good way – when I put my jeans on, I fill them out for the first time in months. I can flex my glutes, and my bum feels as hard as a wall.
If I can do it, then anybody can: the good news is muscle wastage on GPL-1s doesn’t have to be permanent. Just remember, though, you must hustle for your muscle and then hold on to it for dear life. I had to work my backside off, but wow it was worth it.
Roar’s London personal training programmes start at £3,509. Sarah Lindsay offers one-to-one online training. Prices available on request.
