The Maxim model microdosing GLP-1s: What Brooks Nader's cover confession reveals about the state of weight loss drugs

Brooks Nader is Maxim’s latest cover star, gracing the men’s magazine’s September/October issue in a plunging silk slip. According to her family’s Freeform reality series, Love Thy Nader, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model and Dancing With the Stars alum had some unconventional prep for the sultry shoot: “upping” her dose of weight loss drugs.

In Episode 7 of Love Thy Nader, the 28-year-old revealed that she’s been using weight loss drugs for two years to keep her weight down. While she normally microdoses — as in, takes a small amount of — her GLP-1 medication, Nader decided to increase her dose ahead of her Maxim shoot.

“Since I have Maxim coming up and I’m probably gonna be half naked, I’m upping my dose a little because I want to be extra-snatched,” she said in a confessional. “At the same time, the symptoms of the weight loss drug have gotten a lot worse.”

Days before the shoot, cameras captured Nader feeling faint in a Zumba class and nearly passing out in a bathtub. At one point, she reported vomiting. When her sisters confronted her about those instances and their possible connection to her GLP-1 use, Nader shrugged it off. “It’s not that big of a deal. I’m nauseous and tired,” she told them. “I do this all the time. ... I get sick all the time.”

Two of her sisters, Mary Holland Nader and Grace Ann Nader, later found vials of Nader’s medication — which they identified as semaglutide — in the fridge of their New York City penthouse, along with a stockpile of unused needles to inject it with. Concerned that the prescriptions appeared to be sourced from different doctors and pharmacies, they joined forces with their youngest sister, Sarah Jane Nader, and psychologist Rachel Goldman to hold an intervention.

Even still, on the morning of the shoot, Nader was filmed pulling the vials out of the fridge and filling a syringe for her GLP-1 injection. “Taking these weight loss drugs in the modeling industry is so common. I probably know more models that are on it than aren’t,” she said in a confessional.

Nader’s comments contribute to a bigger conversation around the current state of GLP-1 drugs and the rising trend of microdosing them. But how it works and what the risks are is still unclear.

The move to microdosing

Microdosing refers to taking a fraction of a recommended dose of a substance. It’s been used in the context of psychedelics but is gaining popularity among those on GLP-1 medications, which were developed to treat type 2 diabetes, although they’ve been prescribed for the off-label use of weight loss. That’s what Nader — and millions of other Americans — take them for.

Dr. Melanie Jay, a professor of medicine and public health and director of NYU Langone’s program on obesity research, tells Yahoo that those taking a GLP-1 such as semaglutide typically start with a 0.25 mg dose “to get used to the side effects and then go from there.” (The maximum dose can vary; for Ozempic it’s 2 mg, while for Wegovy it’s 2.4 mg.) But Jay says microdosers may be going even smaller, “below the starting dose.”

There aren’t specific regulations for microdosing GLP-1s, since it is an off-label use of the medication and usually involves compounded formulas, which aren’t FDA-approved. Jay points out that brand names most often come in injectable pens (with some exceptions, like Zepbound vials offered by Eli Lilly), which don’t go any lower than 0.25 mg. Noom, a weight loss company that offers compounded semaglutide, was among the first to launch a microdose program, which maps out dose recommendations ranging from 0.2 mg to a maximum of 0.6 mg. One Virginia medical spa goes even lower, suggesting a starting dose of 0.05 mg weekly when microdosing.

Why microdose in the first place? “[Lower doses] are legitimate for weight management, for decreasing side effects or for people who are hyper-responders” and therefore may be sensitive to the medication, says Jay, who adds that “generally, we do not get much weight loss” with microdosing. Cost is another factor; microdosing can be a way to make a pricey prescription last longer — the GLP-1 equivalent of eating a square of chocolate instead of the whole bar.

But the jury is still out on how effective such low doses can be. Jay’s patients who are prescribed GLP-1s for on-label use, which includes regulating blood sugar levels and aiding weight loss associated with health issues like diabetes and obesity, might not see much benefit from microdosing because it doesn’t provide enough of the medication to address those health markers, she says. Those who don’t have a body mass index over 30 or comorbidities associated with excess weight — which may be the case with Nader — might be more sensitive to microdoses and experience weight loss, however. There isn’t current research to back that up, Jay emphasizes.

“The cosmetic use case and everyone trying to capitalize on it is leading to the Wild West, where everyone is just trying all different things. And that raises a lot of safety concerns,” she says.

The unknowns

Nader’s setup of different vials and syringe needles points to one of the biggest concerns when it comes to microdosing, which is that people will make mistakes with their medication. “There’s just a lot more room for error,” says Jay.

Jay also sees microdosing GLP-1s as one of the few ways that people are experimenting with the drugs, like biohackers who are testing it for longevity. “It’s just dangerous,” she says.

Lastly, the lack of regulations and guidance from physicians around microdosing creates a higher risk for issues around nutrition and exercise. “I worry about people getting enough nutrients when they're on the medications,” says Jay, whether they’re microdosing or not.

Nader, for one, got called out by her sisters after refusing to ingest anything other than bone broth the day before her Maxim shoot. “I actually forget to eat when I’m on it, I have to set alarms,” she said of her GLP-1 doses. “I’m diving into my career more now than I ever have in my life. I’ve lost relationships, I’ve been taking these weight loss drugs. I haven’t been sleeping, I haven’t been eating. That’s been the cost and the price that I’ve had to pay.”