Losing it: Inside Cayman’s weight-loss fixation

At 5.30 most mornings, while much of Cayman is still asleep, 41-year-old Jenna Snyman is already at the gym.

By 6.30am, she is home in time to see her daughter before school and before moving into work, family life and weekly netball. This year, she reached a 10-kilometre running milestone. None of it came quickly.

That, for her, is the point.

She moved to Cayman from South Africa a decade ago, arriving to a culture where triathlons, running and gym life seemed embedded. From the outside, it felt intimidating. Many women, she believes, think they need to be thinner before they can begin, rather than seeing fitness as the starting point.

When she joined a small local gym two and a half years ago, it was not about aesthetics but about coping with homesickness. What followed was a gradual transformation.

“I don’t even check my weight,” she said. “I don’t take my measurements. I don’t even take photos in the mirror. It’s more about how I feel.”

Her approach sits on the spectrum of a wider shift across Cayman, where weight has become both a public health issue and an increasingly visible cultural fixation.

The numbers alone are hard to ignore. About 70% of adults in Cayman are overweight or obese, according to the STEPS 2023 National Health Survey, with obesity affecting about one in three overall and up to 40% of women. Among those aged 45 to 69, the figure rises to nearly 80%.

A change in attitudes

“I would say that there has been a significant shift in the Cayman Islands from five years ago,” said Dr. Carmen Martinez, founder and medical director of Cayman Rehab Services.

“People have taken weight loss more seriously as they understand now that obesity is not only about appearance, but is linked to a lot of medical problems and is recognised as a chronic condition.”

In her clinic, the conversations have changed. Patients, particularly women, are arriving not just with aesthetic concerns, but with a growing awareness of inherited risks: diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease.

“They still want to improve their appearance,” she said, “but they are more conscious about the impact that obesity has. … They are more open to discuss medical weight loss measures. And with the introduction of GLP-1s, they’re accepting it even more.”

Google search trends reveal a shift

Google Trends data analysed for this article shows a clear shift in weight loss–related search behaviour in Cayman over the past five years, with interest in general advice declining, while engagement with pharmaceuticals and specialised diets has increased.

Searches for broad terms like ‘weight loss’ and ‘how to lose weight’ have fallen by 10% to 20%, replaced by sharp increases in drug-related queries. ‘Ozempic,’ ‘semaglutide weight loss’ and ‘weight loss injections’ are all breakout trends, with ‘Ozempic weight loss’ rising by as much as 800%.

Traditional diet trends are fading. Searches for keto, Atkins and plant-based diets have dropped significantly, while niche approaches such as carnivore diet, anti-inflammatory diet and diabetic diet are gaining traction.

Perhaps most striking is the surge in basic nutrition literacy, with searches for ‘what is a balanced diet’ up more than 3,000%.

Overall, the data points to a shift away from generic, aesthetics-driven weight loss toward a more complex mix of health awareness, pharmaceutical solutions and nutrition.

Clinical observations

Dr. Joan Harriott, an obesity medicine specialist and medical director at Cayman Wellness and Medical Center, said patients are becoming increasingly more educated and expect faster results.

“In clinical practice, there has been a marked increase in patients seeking medical support for weight management in the Cayman Islands, along with evolving expectations,” she said.

“Patients are presenting earlier, more informed, and increasingly proactive, with greater recognition of weight not merely as a cosmetic concern, but as closely linked to metabolic conditions such as type 2 diabetes, cholesterol abnormalities, hypertension, fatty liver disease and cardiovascular risk.”

The prescription drugs driving this shift are potent. GLP-1 therapies such as Ozempic and Mounjaro, originally developed for type 2 diabetes, mimic hormones that regulate blood sugar and satiety, suppressing appetite and often driving rapid weight loss.

But Harriott warns that eating less is not the same as eating well. Without guidance, patients risk protein deficiencies, muscle loss and long-term metabolic consequences.

Dr. Scott David of Grand Harbour Medical said demand for weight-loss treatment has risen sharply over the past five years, with increasing interest in medication paired with exercise and behaviour change.

“I would say people are very interested in using medication-assisted weight loss with the understanding of exercise,” and “re-formatting the relationship they have with food”, he said.

David said the drugs work best not as a quick fix but as a tool to reset habits within a model that combines medication with structured exercise and long-term lifestyle change.

“As a physician, I emphasise and expect resistance training at least three times a week to preserve muscle, boost metabolism and improve body composition,” he said, adding that patients are monitored through biomarkers including iron levels, liver function and HbA1c.

He said the medications can be transformative under medical supervision, but warned that, without behavioural change, they risk becoming “an expensive yo-yo diet”.

Dietitian Chad Collins of Cayman Nutrition has a similar concern. Many patients on GLP-1s, he said, are simply eating less of an already poor diet, creating new nutritional problems rather than solving old ones. The real challenge is not the weight loss, but what happens when appetite returns and habits remain.

“The nutritional risks are mostly related to eating a poor diet before GLP-1s and then consuming less of a poor diet, which is more sub-optimal,” he said.  “This is where nutritional deficiencies can pop up.”

Cost is also shaping who can access this increasingly medicalised weight-loss culture. With Mounjaro priced at up to $500 a month for a typical 10 mg dose, annual costs reach about $6,000 – around 8% of a $75,000 income.

That burden helps explain why the boom is uneven. For some, these drugs are a useful clinical tool; for others, they remain out of reach, even as social pressure around thinness intensifies.

Clinical psychologist Dr. Shannon Seymour, director of The Wellness Centre, said the surge in GLP-1 appetite-suppressing drugs is unfolding within a cultural environment already “preoccupied with thinness”, raising concerns about how they are being used and perceived.

While the medications have clear clinical value, she warned that their growing use outside strict medical need can “blur the line between medically supported weight loss and disordered eating”, particularly for those already vulnerable.

For Seymour, the issue extends beyond medicine. She argues that constant scrutiny of bodies continues to fuel body image issues and disordered eating, and that rapid, highly visible weight loss, often amplified socially, can reshape norms in subtle but powerful ways.

“Young people are always watching us,” she said, cautioning that when adults become “hyper focused on weight,” those behaviours risk becoming normalised, shaping how the next generation understands food, bodies and self-worth.

‘Anabelle,’ a Caymanian student in her early twenties who asked not to be identified, says she cannot afford a gym membership or prescription weight-loss medication. Instead, she navigates the same environment through restriction – eating very little and relying heavily on caffeine.

She describes trying a range of approaches shaped in part by “SkinnyTok,” a corner of TikTok promoting extreme dieting and rapid weight loss. These have included cutting out fruit due to sugar, taking apple cider vinegar daily, experimenting with the carnivore diet and drinking chia seed water each morning.

At 5 foot 8 inches and 110 pounds, she sits at the opposite end of the weight spectrum, but within the same culture of pressure.

That culture is reflected in Cayman’s unusually dense fitness landscape, where access to gyms is significantly higher than in larger markets, such as the United States.

The fitness industry

In the United States, there are roughly 13 to 14 gyms for every 100,000 people. In Cayman, by contrast, the landscape is far more concentrated. With a population under 100,000 and an estimated 30 to 40 fitness facilities, access to gyms is significantly higher.

Within that environment, shifts in weight-loss culture are being shaped by the community and structure these spaces provide.

Brooke Moore, a 44-year-old Caymanian, said her health journey was driven not by thinness but by breaking a family cycle of early heart disease – her father died at 50 and her grandmother in her 40s.

“Although I was not obsessed with losing weight, I have gone through a weight-loss journey in order to get healthy,” she said.

After years of fad diets, Moore shifted to a more sustainable approach – joining a gym, improving her diet and reducing alcohol. She lost more than 40 pounds in 14 months and has maintained it for a year.

She said the gym became a key source of community and that she now feels healthier and stronger than ever.

“It’s been a lot of work, but I am the healthiest and strongest I’ve ever been,” she said.

She completed the process without using weight-loss medication and described the more meaningful outcome of being able to do things she once would not have imagined possible.

Melissa Carrillo-Evans of School of Fitness said that despite the rise in GLP-1 use, gym membership has remained steady, with increasing focus on education and long-term health over rapid weight loss.

“Regarding GLP-1 medications such as Ozempic, while it’s a topic people are aware of, we haven’t seen it directly impact gym attendance,” she said.

“Overall, the broader trend we’re seeing is a gradual shift toward a more balanced approach to health, where people are becoming more open to combining different strategies, but still recognising that exercise, strength training and consistency are essential for long-term results and overall well-being.”

Personal trainer Erika Abruzzetti said women do not need another restrictive diet so much as guidance, structure and a healthier relationship with food. Cayman’s environment, she noted, can work against them: Long workdays, high stress and constant access to convenience food make healthy routines harder to sustain.

“One of the biggest challenges today is the search for quick fixes, extreme diets, injections, or shortcuts, instead of building sustainable habits that can truly last,” she said.

Personal trainer Carla Shearing said she does not see a weight-loss craze unique to Cayman so much as a local version of a global wellness and body-image trend.

“There are a lot of people who are overweight and some are using injections for weight loss, but, in my experience, people are more focused on wellness; things like taking care of their bodies, eating well and working out,” she said. “As a personal trainer, I guide my clients to focus on those things.”

Still, the influence of wider cultural trends and the medication boom are unmistakable.

Cultural trends

Cayman is part of a much larger commercial and cultural machine worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Reuters reported in December that drugmakers and telehealth firms are pushing treatment into consumer-style channels, bundling medication with apps, subscriptions and lifestyle marketing as pill-based GLP-1 drugs near market, raising concerns about blurring the line between medicine and consumer product.

That shift is already visible locally. A previous Compass report quoted Blue Water Medical Supplies managing director Jordan Stubblefield saying use of the drugs had “exploded,” with “thousands and thousands” of people using them monthly. It also reported that Dr. Rajnish Kumar of Total Health has around 1,200 patients on GLP-1s.

Dr. Scott David said he has written more than 10,000 GLP-1 prescriptions across his Cayman and US practices in the past two years, and believes the therapies are “here to stay.”

The result is a complex landscape. Cayman’s weight-loss fixation is rooted in a real health crisis, but also shaped by social media, pharmaceutical marketing, body pressure, rising health awareness and the promise of rapid results, amplified by a digital ecosystem.

Snyman’s journey offers a nuanced perspective.

She is not anti-medication. She sees drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro as useful aids, but rejects the idea that transformation can be separated from effort or that speed equals progress.

“There’s a major obsession with losing weight overnight,” she said. “Doing something for yourself is something that you need to work hard at, and it takes time.”