Josh Gad fears for his career after five stone weight loss from ‘miracle drug’

The Frozen star reckons he might be iced out of the showbiz world due to his new look

Although most people celebrate shedding a bit of weight, Josh Gad has revealed he’s worried that his career will hit the skids now he’s slimmer.

The Florida-born actor, best known for voicing Olaf in the Frozen franchise, explained that he feels a bit lost now he can no longer be the ‘funny fat guy’.

He has shed a whopping five stone with the help of weight loss medication, which he described as a ‘miracle drug’.

During an appearance on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast on Monday (27 January), Gad explained: “I’m on a GLP-1. This is the first time I’ve opened up about this.”

GLP-1 drugs are a class of medications which mainly help manage blood sugar levels for those who have Type 2 diabetes. But they can also be used to help those struggling with obesity, with the likes of Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro suppressing your appetite and increasing the amount of time food stays in the stomach.

Josh Gad fears his weight loss might impact his acting career (Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions)

These medications work by triggering an insulin rush which pushes sugar out of your bloodstream and in to cells for your body to use, leaving you feeling fuller for longer.

“It has suppressed, in a great way, that noise,” Gad, 43, said in reference to food cravings. “When I wake up, I feel hunger pains, and so much of that is psychological. And what this does is it takes away that signal.”

Without getting into the specifics of exactly what drug he had initially been taking, the father-of-two revealed he ‘had to switch’ to another.

He continued: “So I’m figuring out this new one, and it is life-changing. But it also doesn’t negate the fact that it can’t be in the place of having a healthy relationship with food.”

You can say that again, Gad.

The Broadway star – who wowed with his performance as Elder Arnold Cunningham in The Book of Mormon – confessed that he has felt like he is ‘cheating himself’ by using a weight loss aid.

Gad said: “I’m actually really happy that I’m opening up about this, because I’m having my own journey with it.

The Frozen star said having a ‘healthy relationship with food’ is the most important thing (YouTube/Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard)

He went on: “Sometimes I feel like I’m cheating myself by doing this, and I know a lot of people who aren’t overweight like I am who are taking it, and then I feel like, ‘Okay I should be able to do this because I need it for health’.”

The actor then revealed that his wife, actress Ida Darvish, 49, – who he shares daughters Ava, 14, and Isabella, 10, with – is ‘not thrilled’ about him taking the medication.

She reckons it might distract him from addressing the root cause of his weight gain, however, Gad is more worried about how his new size will impact his acting career.

He told the podcast: “I’ve always been the funny fat guy. Can I be the funny skinny guy? Can I be the hot leading man?

“I don’t know that people would accept me as those things. I’m not as worried about that because my primary goal is, I want to be there for my kids. Everything else is bulls**t.”

Back in 2013, Gad revealed that he had lost around 30 pounds by abiding by a strict diet regime, working with a nutritionist and cutting down ‘from about 18 meals a day to about five’.