JD Vance’s Weight Loss Journey Explained

If you’ve been keeping up with Vice President JD Vance since his “Hillbilly Elegy” days, you’ve probably noticed he’s changed quite a bit. In an old CNN interview with Jake Tapper, he admitted he wasn’t a Trump supporter, but he did say he understood why folks in his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, were drawn to him. Fast forward to today, and he’s not just backing Trump — he’s fully on board with Trump’s agenda.

But Vance hasn’t just changed politically. Back in 2016, he was clean-shaven and a little heavier. These days, he’s got a beard and is looking noticeably leaner — 30 pounds lighter, to be exact.

In the age of Ozempic, people naturally started to wonder if he was taking semaglutide to slim down. Even former Rep. George Santos chimed in on X, asking, “Can anyone confirm Vance is on Ozempic? He’s looking thin and good!”

As it turns out, the answer is no. “I haven’t taken any drugs,” he told the Daily Mail. Vance started dropping the weight after he became a U.S. Senator in early 2023 — and he did it the old-fashioned way: with diet and exercise.

Vance said he wanted to lose weight because he struggled to keep up with his three young children. On the 2024 campaign trail, then-VP nominee Vance shot a promotional video at a Pennsylvania grocery store, outraged at the cost of eggs. Pointing to his sons, he said, “These guys actually eat about 14 eggs every single morning” (via Independent). While five eggs daily for a child may have shocked the internet, those eggs weren’t for Vance. “I tend to skip breakfast, whereas before I would have, like, you know, three waffles and scrambled eggs and bacon,” he said to the Daily Mail.

Skipping breakfast may be an easy way to cut calories, but it could come at a cost. A 2020 meta-analysis in Obesity combined the results of seven studies that looked at the effect of skipping breakfast for about eight weeks. Although the breakfast skippers lost a little more than a pound on average, they didn’t see significant changes in body fat compared to people who ate breakfast. Breakfast skippers also saw their LDL cholesterol (that’s the “bad” kind) increase by 9 points.

Vance also attributes his weight loss to eating “better.” This is a wise choice if you want to keep off the weight, according to a 2020 review in Obesity Reviews. Among several weight loss registries, some of the best strategies to maintain weight loss include eating more vegetables, keeping healthy food at home, and reducing sugary and high-fat foods.

Despite his busy campaign schedule, Vance said he started running and going to the gym to help shed some weight. While he didn’t share specifics about how far he runs or what workouts he does, exercise can play a major role in weight loss. A 2021 article in Obesity Reviews found that regular exercise can help you lose more than 7 pounds on average. It also improves body composition by reducing nearly 6 pounds of body fat. If you lift weights, you may even gain up to 2 pounds of muscle while losing fat. Exercise also helps reduce visceral fat — the unhealthy fat that surrounds your organs.

While brisk walking can support weight management, Vance’s choice to run may be more effective for losing weight. If running feels boring to you, sprint intervals are a great alternative. In a 2014 study in Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, women ran on a treadmill three times a week for six weeks, performing four to six 30-second sprints with four-minute rest periods. By the end of the study, the participants had lost 8% of their body fat, reduced their waist size by 3.5%, and increased their muscle mass by 1.3%. The best part? They didn’t change their diets.