by Laurie Ruettimann

If you’re unemployed or stuck in a long job search, you may have found yourself asking a question you never expected to ask.

Should I take a GLP-1 to get hired?

People don’t ask this because they’re shallow. They ask it because job searching is destabilizing. It makes people feel visible and powerless at the same time. And if you already live in a body the world critiques, it’s easy to conclude that your body is the thing standing between you and stability.

Here’s my answer.

You should never do anything for a job.

As I write in my book Betting On You, a job does things for you. It funds your life. It gives you a place to apply your skills. At its best, it offers an opportunity to contribute something useful. But you should not spend money to work. You should not hurt yourself to work. You should not redesign your body to become employable.

Watch how executives behave. They minimize the personal cost of labor. Transportation is covered. Meals are expensed. Clothes are reimbursed. Housing is paid for when needed. They do not treat work as something that deserves their sacrifice. They treat it as a transaction.

The framing matters when we talk about weight, beauty, and employment, because there is a documented weight bias in the United States. Obese people are judged more harshly. They are paid less. They are assumed to be lazy or undisciplined. This bias is real, and ignoring it does not make it disappear.

But stopping there creates a different problem.

It invites a single-cause fallacy, where one visible trait is assigned responsibility for a complex outcome.

More than half of Americans are overweight or obese. We don’t have 50 percent unemployment, and HR isn’t firing fat people. People with soft bellies, thick thighs, back fat, and chubby arms are employed everywhere—in leadership roles, as managers earning six-figure salaries, and in public-facing jobs. Clearly, having fat on your body does not disqualify you from work.

Does bias sometimes make things harder?

Yes, of course. Does it explain every stalled job search? No.

When someone tells me they can’t get hired and immediately blames their body, I slow the conversation down. Not because bias is imaginary, but because self-blame is counter-productive. It’s easier to blame your body than to examine your resume, your story, your network, or your strategy. Thanks to thousands of years of the patriarchy and misogyny, bodies make convenient scapegoats. They absorb shame quietly. And this impacts everyone.

So, before you decide your body is the obstacle, make sure the fixable variables are actually fixed. Make sure your CV clearly communicates what you do well. Make sure you are talking to real humans, not just submitting applications into automated systems and wondering why nobody responds. Make sure your story makes sense to someone who doesn’t already know you. Exhaust those paths before you turn yourself into the problem.

Will a GLP-1 improve my energy or stamina for the job search?

I’m not a clinician, so I’m not giving medical advice. I am saying this: eating less has never reliably produced more energy for most people. Energy comes from sleep, nourishment, movement that doesn’t punish you, and time with people who regulate your nervous system. Those things make you cognitively sharper and more resilient, which is what job searching actually demands.

Late-stage capitalism already expects people to perform while depleted. You don’t need to assist it.

I’ve heard GLP-1s quiet food or alcohol noise so I can focus on work.

This framing deserves scrutiny. Not because medication is wrong, but because the goal is so narrow. Most people are already over-focused on work. They scroll job boards late at night. They rewrite cover letters instead of resting. The problem is rarely distraction. It’s obsessive fixation and panic. It’s also an inefficient way to look for a new job.

A better question is whether your attention needs to be narrowed at all. Relationships, recovery, and honest reflection about what kind of work wouldn’t hollow you out are also productive uses of focus. Medication may or may not help with cravings, and that decision belongs between you and a qualified medical provider. But turning down the volume on food so you can turn up the volume on work is a terrible and bleak trade.

Aren’t our bodies ruined by sugar and ultra-processed food? Will I be addicted forever?

I’m not here to blame junk food, although I am comfortable blaming food manufacturers and the government for creating a system where baby formula and veggies kill us. In some ways, Oreos are safer than a salad. But I am here to criticize a widening wealth gap, time poverty, chronic stress, and an economy that optimizes workers for efficiency while insulating the wealthy from inconvenience. We live in a system that demands constant self-optimization from regular people while executives outsource discomfort entirely.

If you’re going to assign blame, put it where it belongs. Not on your willpower. Not on your appetite. Not on your body.

This is what matters most to me.

Obesity is often framed as the root cause of dissatisfaction, when far more damage is sitting in plain sight. Long commutes. Bad bosses. Precarious work. Surveillance disguised as management. An economic system that treats people as inputs instead of humans.

The cure for that isn’t medication. It isn’t shrinking yourself. It isn’t proving you can suffer quietly enough to deserve stability.

Before you stop consuming food, consider stopping the consumption of other things. Online content that teaches you to hate your body. Messages from childhood that taught you your worth was conditional. Narratives that equate thinness with virtue and productivity with morality. Therapy often has a better return on investment than self-erasure.

If you take a GLP-1, take it for you.

Take it for your health, your comfort, or your relationship with your body. Do not take it to become employable, to earn dignity, or because work convinced you your body is the thing standing between you and stability. Your body is not the problem. A job is not a moral test. And you do not owe work your transformation.