Looser since starting a GLP-1: what Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs do to your skin

The face is often the first place anyone notices weight loss on a GLP-1 drug, and not in the way they hoped: hollower cheeks, a softer jaw, skin that looks looser and older. The popular name for it, "Ozempic face", suggests a drug side effect. The evidence so far points to three things, and one of them is hormonal.

This article is about skin, not the medication. Questions about your treatment belong with the clinician who prescribes it.

1. The fat goes, fast

GLP-1 receptor agonists (semaglutide, tirzepatide and their relatives) produce rapid, substantial weight loss: in the main semaglutide trial, 14.9% of body weight over 68 weeks against 2.4% on placebo.¹ Facial fat goes with the rest. A 2025 systematic review of 23 plastic-surgery papers describes the pattern: fat loss in the temples, cheeks, tear troughs and along the jaw, which can make faces look gaunt and resemble advanced facial ageing.² Skin that was draped over that volume does not shrink to match.

2. The drug may reach skin cells too

This is the newer part, and it is still a proposed mechanism. GLP-1 receptors are not only in the gut and brain. A 2025 review in Endocrine set out evidence that the fat stem cells and fibroblasts in skin carry GLP-1 receptors, and that stimulating them may have consequences beyond fat loss.³ Two matter here. Stimulated fat stem cells make fewer protective signalling molecules, which leaves fibroblasts more exposed to oxidative damage. And the fat layer in the skin makes estrogen locally; when it is suppressed, it makes less, and fibroblasts lose part of the estrogen signal that keeps them producing collagen.³ The authors' view is that "Ozempic face" may not only be decreased facial fat; there may be ageing mechanisms in the skin itself.³ This comes from cell and tissue research. No controlled trial has yet measured skin laxity or collagen in people taking these drugs.

For anyone who has read the other articles in this series, that will sound familiar. It is the same mechanism as menopause, from a different cause: less estrogen reaching fibroblasts, less collagen made.

3. Drier, with less oil

Rapid weight loss also takes fatty acids with it, and a 2025 review for dermatologists notes that this loss compromises the skin barrier and produces dryness, alongside a decline in collagen and elastin.⁴ Oil output drops as well. In a two-year observational study of 110 people on semaglutide, with no comparison group, sebum production fell by about a quarter, from 186 to 139 micrograms per square centimetre, as weight and insulin came down.⁵ Less oil is welcome for anyone who had acne; for skin that is already short of volume and collagen, it is one more reason it reads as dry and crepey.

Hair can thin too, for a few months. Rapid weight loss can leave people short of iron, zinc, vitamin D and biotin, and those shortfalls are known triggers for diffuse shedding.⁶

Put together

"Looser since the weight came off" is fat leaving the face faster than skin can adjust; possibly, the drug acting on skin's own fat and fibroblast cells so that less local estrogen reaches the collagen-makers; and a drier, lower-oil surface. The first is weight loss. The second and third are why it is a skin and hormone story and not only a scale story.

What this means for a routine

Skincare does not put fat back, and that should be said plainly. What a topical routine can do for skin in this state is support the look of firmness in the skin itself, return water to a surface that is drier than it was, and replenish the barrier lipids that went with the weight. Cōpḍī's Plump carries biomimetic peptides, growth factors made in plants and carried in oleosomes, which support the look of firmness. Both formulas carry five molecular weights of hyaluronic acid with snow mushroom and polyglutamic acid, and nigella and prickly pear botanicals, with avocado in Plump, to replenish barrier lipids without weight. Retinol-free, so there is no ramp-up on skin that is already sensitised (what the ramp-up is).