Finding a man who has been losing weight instead of gaining it when you search for “Josh Gad weight gain” in 2026 seems almost contradictory. Gad used his size to his advantage by making fun of himself all the time. He made a whole persona out of it—the sweet, fluffy comedian who never pretended to be anything but what the mirror showed him. There was a person behind the easy jokes and warm smile who made Olaf feel like a real friend. That person was quietly dealing with worries about food, body image, and self-worth that millions of people have but never talk about on a podcast.
Gad did something on the Armchair Expert podcast with Dax Shepard and Monica Padman in January 2025 that didn’t seem like it was planned. He finally told everyone that he had been taking a GLP-1 drug to help him lose weight. Not in a practiced, publicist-approved way, but with the stuttering honesty of someone who wasn’t sure he was okay with his choice yet. He called the drug “a miracle” and talked about how it put an end to the “psychological noise” that told him every morning to eat before he even got out of bed. He said that a previous drug had helped him lose 40 pounds before side effects made him switch.
The problem, diverticulitis, is not a small one. It makes pouches in the colon wall swell, which can be very painful and, in the worst cases, require hospitalization. It is important to note that the research that specifically links GLP-1 drugs to diverticulitis is still not clear. However, Gad’s experience was real enough to make him change his routine and look for a new prescription.
His story is different from most celebrity weight-loss stories because it isn’t all good or all bad. Before and after pictures of Gad didn’t show him glowing on the set of a morning show. He talked about feeling bad. He said that using drugs made him feel like he was “cheating.”
Because he said that some people who take these drugs don’t even need them for health reasons, it made him question whether or not his own use was legal. That creates a certain tension when a man who has needed help for years feels like he doesn’t deserve it because it’s “in style” to get help. This discomfort might say more about how we treat weight-loss drugs as a culture than it does about Gad himself.
Ida Darvish, his wife, wasn’t totally in favor of the medicine either, at least not without some reservations. Gad agreed with Shepard that her worry was that the drug might keep Gad from dealing with the deeper emotional patterns that make him eat. What they said felt very honest for a celebrity interview. A lot of actors would have run right by it. But Gad seemed to be very open right now. His autobiography, In Gad We Trust, came out not long ago. He’s talked before about having anxiety for a long time and using humor as a defense, and the book seems to go into that topic more.
There’s also an interesting career aspect to this. Gad openly asked himself if people would accept him as more than just the funny heavy guy. “Can I be the short and funny guy?” He asked, “Can I be the hot leading man?” The question was asked with a lot of doubt. Gad knows this better than most because Hollywood has a long and cruel history of putting comedic actors into groups based on their bodies. He lost about 30 pounds for the role of Steve Wozniak in the 2013 movie Jobs, which showed that he could change his body for a role that required it. But that was only for a short time and was project-based. This feels different—more personal, and the goal is to last longer.
It gets even better with Gad’s upcoming role in and production of Paramount’s comedy Heavy Duty. The movie is about a normal guy who thinks that losing weight will make his life better, but when he gets to a wellness retreat, he finds that things are going crazy.
It’s hard not to see how ironic it is that Gad came up with that idea while also dealing with his own complicated feelings about the same subject. It remains to be seen whether the movie turns out to be a broad comedy or something with sharper edges. However, the timing gives it an autobiographical feel that a studio pitch deck couldn’t create on its own.
We get the impression from reading Gad’s interviews and following his career that his weight story isn’t just about numbers on a scale: he gained weight, lost weight, took medicine, felt guilty, and found hope. In it, a performer tries slowly and sometimes painfully to separate himself from the body he’s always been in. That change is too hard for any drug to make possible.
