Semaglutide for weight loss
Has anyone tried it out? There's currently a preventative healthcare initiative going on in my country where they start screening people over 40 for chronic or potentially chronic conditions.
I went for my initial checkup with the doc today and, being juuuuust below morbid obesity with a BMI of 34, asked her about semaglutide as an adjunct to exercise controlling calorie intake. She's referring me to a weight loss clinic at my local public hospital where I can be assessed for suitability (If I'm not mistaken the clinic has hepatologists and endocrinologists on staff along with allied healthcare workers such as physios and nutritionists). This is great because it costs a bomb if I have to go private. The only wrinkle is that I'm oddly enough not diabetic or pre-diabetic so whether or not I'll qualify for socialised semaglutide is unclear but we live in hope.
I was wondering if any of you had tried any of the variants of semaglutide for obesity and what your experiences have been like.
I am a relatively recently diagnosed diabetic. I use it for controlling my blood sugar and it's been seriously effective for that purpose. I think the slowed digestion causes those random surprise foods that might spike me to level out more over time.
I am also obese, and although since my mid-20s I had always been a bit overweight in a way I didn't necessarily mind, during the pandemic I really did gain a truly shocking amount of weight due to an equally shocking amount of stress. I suspect this is also when I developed diabetes without any major initial symptoms which allowed me the time to begin accumulating some very unfun nerve damage. This has begun to heal thanks in part to the semaglutide.
I have been on it for seven or eight weeks now. My highest weight was 240 in 2022, I slooowly lost 30lbs "on my own" (honestly only remotely possible because some environmental/stress level/mental health changes). Since being on ozempic I have lost another 25lbs, most of it in the first few weeks. It is very noticeable and my entire wardrobe will need replacing soon.
Early days were rough. I had nausea, fatigue, and bathroom issues for the first few weeks at 0.25 and I nearly quit it was so bad. I never vomited, but if I didn't work from home and have easy access to a private bathroom all the time it would have been, uh, challenging. My gag reflex also became so strong that I would have days of consuming only liquid meal replacements (and even then only at the insistence of my sweet and long suffering wife) because any solid food I put in my mouth would be make me heave and felt nearly impossible to swallow.
Now I'm up to 0.5, and the worst side effects have abated. My appetite is completely gone and I do not really experience hunger except towards the end of my dose or if I've messed up and forgotten to eat for an extremely extended period of time, because I'm also lucky enough to have ADHD (which I experience as extreme forgetfulness and occasional loss of body awareness when over/understimulated = forget to eat disorder). I am also on some other medications that could be contributing to this complete erasure of hunger, but I only experienced its full absence after the ozempic. It is extremely strange and while it's inconvenient in some ways I'm definitely no longer seeking food as a comfort in ways that I used to. I find eating boring now to the point of being mildly unpleasant.
Anyway. What I've gleaned online is that people respond to it very differently - I am a "super responder", lucky me, and I am therefore on a much slower ramp-up to a normal dose than usual. Some people don't really respond that much at all, and some people end up vomiting a lot. I think the important thing is to keep in contact with your doctor and monitor yourself.
It has really solidified my perspective on a lot of things wrt weight loss and weight gain.
My workplace has such an incredible drug plan I do not pay a cent for it but I would potentially pay a lot for it if I had to. I am very fortunate to access this treatment and not ashamed to be using it.
Thanks! Hearing about the side effects is really valuable.
I don't take it myself, so I don't want to make a top level post. However, my wife does take it, and speaking of side effects, they've been terrible for her. Constant nausea and frequent vomiting. She's thrown up twice very suddenly while driving. This is her third or fourth week, and it doesn't seem to be getting much better. She's sticking with it for now but will be talking to her doctor about it during her next appointment. She's diabetic, so I don't know if that affects the prevalence or intensity of symptoms, but with so many people chiming in without symptoms or work light symptoms, I felt like it'd be worth mentioning that not everyone is so lucky.
She's actually on a lighter dosage than most people who are on it for weight loss.
I wish her luck, I had to lower my metformin dosage due to side effects that my body wouldn't adjust to. Zero part of me is interested in injections based on that. But I'm able to manage my glucose levels without it so I'm quite lucky
Thanks for sharing!
I haven’t taken any GLP-1 influencing drugs, but I do have some very generic medical advice. Generally speaking, medical intervention should be done in order of increasing risk factors. In a broad sense that means that doctors should prioritize lifestyle changes before prescribing drugs when possible, and if neither of those work then surgeries can be explored. Some drugs are fairly benign but every drug has side effects and other risk factors, so that’s why doctors generally prefer to just give advice when possible - which is why you occasionally get frustrating responses from them (“you feel pain when you move your body a specific way? Try not to move that way anymore.”).
So when you to this weight clinic, the very first thing they should be doing is to try to get you on a weight loss plan. I know that it’s very appealing to take a miracle drug to solve the problem for you - people have literally died over previous drugs promising to do the same thing! But the harsh reality is that medical conditions that cause you to gain weight are fairly rare, and the cause of your obesity is almost certainly your lifestyle habits.
More than anything I would recommend leaning in to their weight loss plan with as much enthusiasm as you can muster. There are so many additional benefits you will gain from it when compared to the medication route. What they tell you to do are going to have holistic effects. Food is medicine, after all, so you will find that after eating better for a while, you will start feeling better in ways you didn’t think were possible. Your digestion will improve. You will have more energy. Do you have high cholesterol or blood sugar issues? Diet can solve those problems too! I’ve gone through this route and one of the most surprising benefits it’s had is that it’s actually dramatically improved my depression!
I can’t speak for the program they will have at your clinic, but one of the big differences I had when I went through it was that they provided a lot of support, even going so far as to make life coaches, support groups, and psychiatrists available to me if I felt like I needed it (I didn’t, but I could totally see why one would want them).
The worst thing that can happen is that it doesn’t work. And if that is the case, then they can get you on weight loss drugs. And heck, maybe you will luck out and find that after the time you spent trying this that there won’t be shortages anymore and the prices have gone down. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
This generic advice is actually unhelpful and didn't read/comprehend the actual post. This person seems liek they're already doing everything you mentioned, they want extra help because it's not working, hence the referral and the question to Tildes.
It's very rude of you to claim that I didn't read the post. I did, indeed, and after reading your reply I re-read it and do not see anywhere where they mentioned they are already seeing a weight loss clinic. If they think my advice is unhelpful they are free to say so, but who are you to speak for them? And I am fully aware that this wasn't the prompt, thus the "generic advice".
Giving “You should eat better / work out more often” advice to someone looking at weight loss drugs is about as useful as giving “You should get more rest” advice to someone looking at getting a therapist for burnout.
I don’t believe there is a single overweight person on the planet that isn’t aware of this.
For some people (myself included), becoming fit involves a significant amount of effort and lifestyle changes. To the point of impossibility if you don’t have the right amount of time, money or access.
My fittest was early last year before the war and Kelley’s death. I was skating upwards of 25 hours per week. I’ve since been passively regaining because I can no longer find the time to work out and eat normally. My lifestyle is no longer compatible with the type of efforts required for me to be at a healthy weight… and so I’ve been slowly but surely increasing.
Liraglutide helped for a while but there is a shortage in Belgium so my options are limited. It’s not a miracle drug; but it’s a significant near passive boost to how functional you can be when, for whatever reason, your life doesn’t let you lose weight.
Really, just don’t tell people to go on a weight loss plan … they know. This is something you should assume they know is possible and available, unless you have good reasons to believe they don’t know.
That breakdown of what I said is so uncharitable that frankly I find it insulting. I know how difficult it can be to lose weight because you are describing myself to me. There is zero times in my memory where I have ever not been overweight and I am still morbidly obese with literally hundreds of pounds still to go. I have spent 30 years of my life trying to improve myself. It’s only been this last year when I finally got something to work. I finally got to this point because I spent months working with an entire team of doctors.
I think you may have got the wrong idea from my post. I'm not looking for a miracle that will help me beat the laws of thermodynamics. but put it this way. I've been exercising and calorie counting for years and every time I fall off the wagon I just eat everything back on. Before Covid I got down to 102kg from 115kg over the course of 18 months with calorie counting and exercise. Fell off the wagon and am now back at 115
But the cravings for food are always there and it appears that GLP-1 affecting drugs really help with those.
I just want something to make the food cravings stop at this point so all the other interventions can work. I've been overweight since my teens, obese since my thirties, I'm 42 now and I'd really like to not keel over from a coronary at 60 like my dad.
Just to be clear, I'm not trying to dissuade you from taking semaglutide. The only thing I am recommending to you is to simply take the advice of the weight loss clinic's doctors seriously.
I understand what you're going through because I went through the same thing myself. The numbers were much worse, but I won't bother getting into numbers because I know from personal experience how preachy it makes people sound. I tried just about every diet but none of them worked; the only one that was even close was when I did calorie counting, but when I slipped my progress went away in a snap, and that was absolutely crushing. At one time I even went to a private weight loss clinic, but it turns out that the plan they had wasn't well backed up by science and wasn't remotely sustainable.
What worked for me was a weight loss program sponsored by my hospital, payed for entirely by insurance. I got there because I asked my doctor for help. I also asked him if I could get weight loss drugs and he said he would prescribe me any I wanted - it was actually how I first heard of semaglutide. Literally the only reason why I chose not to was because I wanted to find out how well the program would work on its own before deciding on a drug, and I was so happy with my results that I didn't bother with them.
When you talk to these doctors, they may be willing to write you a prescription for one of these GLP-1 affecting drugs immediately. I wouldn't judge you or anyone else for taking them; I don't just understand the appeal, it's etched into my soul. But what I am hoping is that the doctors you will be working with will be able to give you the same depth of resources that I got that will benefit your health in so much more than just your weight. Weight is, after all, just a number. If you do take those drugs, you'll still be working with the doctors, so once again, my advice is to lean hard into their advice and take it seriously.
Do you have act examples of non-drug weightloss advice that the doctors were able to give you that isn't available online?
If you’re looking for individual facts, there really isn’t anything they taught me that isn’t already online somewhere. But the problem with looking for weight loss advice online is that there is too much of it for anyone to put together, and most of it is either inaccurate, contradictory, or simply not useful without more context. It’s like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle by drawing the pieces from a mixed pile of all jigsaw puzzles ever made.
The department that handled me through this was part of a relatively new unit that practices lifestyle medicine, and I actually went through a pilot program that was a bit more intense. They would actually drop you if you were absent more than twice from their regular classes.
More than anything they provided vital resources. The one I needed the most was access to experts to ask questions to, and for that I had access to general physicians, dietitians, physical therapists, and social workers. But I was also given access to support groups, therapists, life coaches who would call from time to time to keep me accountable, cookbooks, and a whole slew of classes, books, and videos. None of these were produced by them or were exclusive to them, but they were given in a way that presented a cohesive message.
Perhaps one of the more interesting things about the things I were taught is that they did not focus on the things that you tend to hear about the most on the internet. Nobody calculated my TDEE or gave me a calorie cap to go under. Instead they said to eat three meals a day, make sure half your plate is vegetables, and make sure your meals have some source of protein in it. At one point they stated that ideally all of the food I would eat would not have a nutritional facts label at all. I was started off by logging what I ate and was suggested to find out the calories in it, but they never looked at my logs; I asked if I could stop it because I didn’t think it was helpful and they agreed.
The particular program I went through focused on a whole foods plant based diet, which eliminates animal products and processed foods while minimizing sugar, oil, and salt. This was not the only option - the other program focused instead on a Mediterranean diet. I chose it because I wanted to do something that would have “reset” my eating habits, and this was about the opposite to how I used to eat. It was a long adjustment but it’s been dramatically effective. I’ve gone down two sizes over the past year. I probably would have got similar results under their Mediterranean diet plan, but through this plan I have learned that for my particular body, eating fats turns me into a garbage disposal; I would stop knowing when to stop eating. I can’t say if I would have had the same success if I went down that road because of that.
Now that I’ve thought about it a bit more, I realize that the single most major difference between what the doctors have been saying and what the Internet has been saying is the kinds of food they tell you to eat. I just picked up Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food last night (out of curiosity from the phrase it popularized for a while, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”), and while I have only read the introduction it mirrors what all the doctors have been saying. Don’t eat processed food products. Make sure most of the food you eat is vegetables. Don’t eat too much meat. Limit oil, fat, salt, and added sugar. Eat fruit or nuts instead of candy, cakes, and chips.
In the meanwhile the internet is brimming with messages telling you to eat anything you want as long as you don’t eat too much. They’ll tell you that you can lose weight eating nothing but twinkies, and that a balanced meal just means checking the numbers sequestered in a white grid on the side of the box.
Pollan’s book described that perspective as “nutritionist”, and has a whole section criticizing it. And now that I think about it most of the books I have read about diet that were written after the turn of the century have this “naturalist” approach to dieting that recommends eating like our grandparents were when they were young. I remember reading You, On a Diet by Dr Frank Oz (yes, that Dr. Oz; it was written before he started peddling woo) using that phrasing pretty much exactly.
There are health articles out there that talk about some of these concepts but the comments on them tend to always get flooded with people arguing against them. I remember personally writing comments about why there is nothing wrong with processed food. My arguements were technically true, but they missed the point of why the processing causes problems and therefore didn’t actually succeed in proving the article wrong. But I wouldn’t have written it if I didn’t believe it, and I probably ended up convincing someone else in the process. That’s why the internet is generally not a good place to look for health information.
I've shared a bit about my experience before. In my case, the summary is it was absolutely life changing for the better. It kickstarted an entirely new paradigm and I'm a better version of myself in every way than I've ever been before.
Oh, and it annoys me that people are bothered by this medication. I get the hesitation about "miracle drugs" and their "nefarious hidden problems". But I also think it's entirely unfair to treat people who are interested in medication like this as looking for a "miracle drug to solve the problem for them". After my experience, I don't think I'll ever feel the same way about "shortcuts" in life. You never know someone else's situation, and if they have a "shortcut" available to get them to where they want to be, FUCK YES FOR THEM! I really hope they take full advantage of that shortcut and find their happiness.
Thanks for sharing. I don't even see it as a shortcut. I can try to calorie count and so forth but all that goes out of the window when I'm stressed. If semaglutide can help curb the impulse to eat in response to stress/boredom/almost anything it will help me maintain my calorie intake at healthy levels.
And if it stops me keeling over of a heart attack at 60 then by all means give me the short cut.
I take Wellbutrin for depression, and for seasonal affective disorder. Is that a shortcut to happiness?
I'm sure I could devote my energy to other interventions but willpower is a resource. The reality of my brain and its stupid little chemicals makes many basic aspects of navigating through my own life eat up energy and willpower out of proportion to someone who might have more typical chemistry. If I devoted my energy to a complete lifestyle change WHILE my own neurology was working raw against me - something that anyone who has experienced depression will understand is nearly ridiculous unassisted anyway, but humour me - I'd have no energy left over for my JOB.
There have been a lot of strides made in the public acceptance of mental illnesses like depression and the attitude towards their medication in the last several years. People are dealt different cards and there's no shame in using treatments to give you a boost given we can't exactly restructure society to accommodate everyone's diverse experiences better overnight. The modern environment we exist in is complex besides, a recent development against millions of years of evolved biologies, and our environments affect our behaviours as well.
That is how I think about ozempic, food, weight loss. If a drug can change how people feel about food, how they experience cravings and hunger and satiation, does it not stand to reason that perhaps their experiences were atypical to begin with? That they don't lack willpower, but rather, they need to use more of it due to the increased real and physical intensity of their experiences of these things? And then, that suggesting a solution which involves spontaneously redirecting or manifesting the resource of willpower is not going to be universally applicable given the diversity of our experiences?
The prevailing attitude is still that it's a failure of character to be fat, and one must flog themselves back into shape to atone for it. It's really a shame. Honestly, I think a lot of people are on the drugs and keeping it a secret for that reason.
I appreciate this perspective. One of the thing that frustrates me when talking to people about weight is that there's always someone out there who wants to collapse it into something simple and one-dimensional. In this case it most often comes to people trying to simplify things into CICO. But that turns the topic into a joke. That's like saying you can lower your mortgage interest rate by lowering the fed's interest rate. The reality is that things are the way they are because of a huge complicated web of different factors, both internal and external. It can be affected by genetics, health (both physical and emotional), culture, education, and environment.
Even if we later learn that this kind of weight loss drugs are just a bandage put over a different problem, is that such a bad thing? Don't forget that the whole point of a bandage is to let the body heal. Judging people for taking them is counterproductive at best, but evil at worst.
Thanks for your perspective. I definitely agree. I'm on meds for anxiety myself so I get what you mean about involuntary responses.
Yeah, absolutley. It wasn't a shortcut for me, it made it possible. But some people can see it as one, and this experience has changed my perspective on things I might see as shortcuts.
I'm all for making things easier and accessible, I'm simply wary of the drug that promises what so so so so many snake oil has tried to sell for centuries.
Now this stuff really does seem to work, but it's not too uncommon to be a bit hesitant with these things.
I wish I'd had your experience. Sadly, results vary wildly. I am glad for you.
My wife was on it and lost about 30 pounds with no issues or side effects. She just went to get it refilled and health insurance denied coverage of it because she's not a diabetic. They covered it before. So now she's off of it and gaining back the weight.
The joys of US healthcare....
Yeah the not-being-pre/diabetic thing might disqualify me but hopefully being on the cusp of morbidly obese will allow Socialised Healthcare to subsidise it.
My wife is on it right now. If the doctor prescribes it for an “on label” purpose, like controlling blood sugar, then it’ll be covered by Medicaid in the US. My wife started at 0.25mg, and lost about two kilos in the first week, which seemed like a lot. She had some side effects (stomach pains, alternating loose stool and constipation, low energy) which went away in the second week. The second dose she said didn’t feel very effective, and her appetite was strong again. Doc gave her the go-ahead to bump up the dose, and after a few days of titrations she’s at 1mg. She says its working again, but worries that it’s effectiveness will wear off.
It seems to be helping, but maybe that first week was a bit of placebo “I just don’t feel like eating” effect and now we’re settling into the more normal routine. Also seems to curb desire to consume alcohol.
I’d say give it a try if you can get it. The hardest part for us was to find a pharmacy that actually had it in stock. We called all the traditional pharmacies near us, and none of them could help. Eventually we found a Sam’s Club pharmacy on the other side of town with the drug in stock. Given its popularity on social media, everyone and their mother (literally) is trying to get this med right now, so it’s in super short supply. Check with insurance first. See if the doctor is planning to write for the purpose of weight loss or blood sugar. Sometimes they’re willing to help with the insurance people if need be. Cost of the med is absolutely insane if you pay out of pocket (like thousands of USD per month).
Luckily here if I paid out of pocket it would be around 1k per month which is doable though painful. If I can qualify for it under public healthcare it gets heavily subsidised.
If I can I ask a stupid question, are GLP-1s something you need to stay on indefinitely or in periodic waves (like 2-4 times a year)? I hadn't thought about it being a temporary solution and it seems like in cases where it is proscribed it should be for whatever duration is needed (ie. indefinitely if that is the case). It kind of feels like giving patients a taste of change and then taking it away and that sucks.
I don't have any personal experience with it, but the podcast Maintenance Phase just had an episode about it that I thought gave a good overall perspective: https://www.maintenancephase.com/
I've been on it. I'm "morbidly obese" (and I hate this term). I'm 50 now.
TL;DR: this shit scares me. I'm afraid to try Mounjaro but will likely, and with great care, if given the opportunity. I'm not optimistic (for reasons cited below). Also, it is quite possible that I am an outlier WRT how I respond to these medications.
Let's start with the US insurance bullshit.
"Wegovy" is semaglutide for weight-loss purposes. "Ozempic" is the same medication but for managing diabetes. The dosage is lower for the latter and controllable by the patient: it can be dialed in, literally, to the applicator pen. Wegovy, OTOH, comes in fixed sized dosages. You may have more luck with insurance if you ask them to approve Wegovy for your weight loss. Be warned: the Wegovy doses are significantly higher. Smaller changes in dose than what Wegovy has you endure had me bedridden with complete physical exhaustion for a week. Adapting to the increased dosages, from the starting dose, may kick your ass in ways you can't imagine.
My experience as a then-49 year old male: it reduced my appetite so that I ate less. My exercise and calorie counting patterns rarely hold up—likely a result of my (adult-diagnosed) ADHD. Even with treatment for that (Adderall/Vyvanse), forming lasting habits around exercise is a real challenge. Calorie counting almost literally makes me crazy. I become so obsessed with it that I become extremely overwhelmed (thanks, again, ADHD).
All in all, I lost a little bit of weight—maybe 10 or 15 pounds.
I started at 0.5mg, working my way up (taking Ozempic) a few clicks extra at a time to 1mg. The one time I tried jumping up .2mg out of impatience is what had me bedridden.
However, I suffered crippling depression, as a result. Cessation of the semaglutide seemed to allow the depression receded. I cannot prove causality here: however, depression and suicidal ideation are allegedly rare but noted side effects (though they're rarely cited).
My doctor and I are hoping that I'll have more success with Mounjaro. It was recently cleared by the FDA for weight loss and available under a different brand name than its diabetes-treating sibling by the end of the year. My doctor hypothesizes that I may see benefit with a dose that exposes me to less of the GLP-1 agonist (mounjaro combines a GLP-1 agonist with another substance that has a different vector that I cannot recall offhand) so as to be safe for me. Mounjaro has demonstrably more benefit than Semaglutide.
The per dose cost is still insane: ~1100 USD. I expect insurance companies will go ape-shit raising rates to account for the massive uptake on FDA-approved weight-loss medication.
Re: treatments overall, in terms of descending desirability, it goes something like:
I'm at a place where, though it scares the bejeezus out of m, I've discussed everything including Option 3 with my weight loss doctor. He still prefers Option 2. He notes that these medicines can have just the same impact as surgery but without cutting up your body.
Anecdotally, I know someone well who has gone the surgery route . He experienced complications despite significant weight loss—falling in the shower due to orthostatic hypotension's (blood pressure crash) and giving himself on mean scar after a trip to the ER.
Disclosure: I'm a techie and not affiliated in anyway with the pharmaceutical or medical industry. These are just my experiences.
Once again I thank the powers that be that I'm not subject to the vagaries of the American healthcare industry.
Thank you for sharing your experience!
It's terrible. My insurance stopped covering Ozempic. Wegovy likely would kill me—and I'm not exaggerating.
Hey, I don't know if this will help your friend, but I struggled with low blood pressure and orthostatic hypotension for most of my life. The thing that has helped me most is to consume electrolytes at a very high rate. I buy a bulk sports drink powder and mix my own, and I drink it several times a day, particularly in advance of activities that are liable to induce fainting (like taking a hot shower). I also try to schedule these risky activities for later in the day when my blood pressure is higher; for example, I don't take showers or do exercise in the morning. With this regime, I haven't had any accidents for a few years now, whereas they used to be common and unpredictable (e.g., I would go dizzy and collapse just while gently walking around).
I used Ozempic for a few months (stopped after reading a story about shortages making it difficult for Diabetics to get access to it). Due to shortages, I started with (and stuck to) 0.5mg and it worked very well as an appetite suppressant for weight loss, and I had no side-effects. Other side-benefits I saw directly:
YMMV, but I think if you think it can make a significant difference in your weight, you're happy risking the listed side-effects (and, importantly, you're happy with being on it for the rest of your life - I don't think it's any more likely to result in a change in your lifestyle/mindset than any other weight loss intervention) it's worth a try.
It's a little easier (and I think a little cheaper?) to get it from a compounded pharmacy, and even easier and much cheaper to get it compounded online without a prescription "for research purposes only." Of course I don't recommend this, especially if you are able to get a prescription and get it, you know, FDA-inspected etc.
I am still on the lowest dose at week 4 (.25mg) and definitely seems to curb desire to eat. It's like a faint feeling of nausea all the time, and if I eat too much - especially on the day of or before the dose, when the effect isn't as strong and it's easier to eat a lot- I will get very bad stomach pains and even one time threw up.
There are drugs on the market right now that are the same thing as the diabetes drug but approved for weightloss - for semaglutide its wegovy for weightloss and for tirzepatide its prepbound.
I'm in Singapore and access to grey market pharmaceuticals is a lot more controlled than in many countries.
However if I do qualify to get it through the public system it becomes heavily, heavily subsidised and will be prescribed along with an accompanying holistic weight loss support plan.
Five days without a bowel movement sounds really alarming to me. You mentioned compounding; have you been taking it on your own accord or have you been taking it under the watch of a doctor?
I started in the beginning of June as a weight loss solution prescribed by my doctor and covered under my insurance for just that (I tick off a bunch of risk boxes). So far I’m down just over 50lbs in that time but it’s been coupled with strict food logging (calorie tracking) and extensive excessive (6 hours of cardio today) throughout the week. I was already active before starting it but weight and other health concerns were what drove the decision.
With that said, in the beginning I only had minor side effects but those dissipated after the first month or so. Things like needing to use the bathroom more often. Dizziness. And maybe a few other minor things that were easy to manage. All in all it’s been a godsend.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
Yes I intend to use semaglutide alongside other interventions such as a planned exercise and calorie counting programme.
I was on Ozempic for 5-6 years.
I'm not diabetic, I have 3 different types of hypoglycemia chronically and at the time I started I was making roughly the times as much insulin as my body needed. This includes reactive hypoglycemia, something most doctors don't seem to care about.
My doctor put me on several medications to both raise my blood sugar and decrease insulin production, one of those was Ozempic.
I was lucky and didn't really notice any side effects from it when I started. About a year ago, my doctor decided to increase my dose from 1mg to 2mg. This time I wasn't so lucky. My nausea was so bad that I couldn't eat, even Ensure was making me sick. After about 4 months of this, my doctor had me back off to my previous dose, which I tolerated okay.
At this point my doctor switched me to Mounjaro. I had no side effects because I was switching from a higher dose of Ozempic. I noticed in the first couple of days that my blood sugar was a lot more stable and I got my appetite back. I said I had no side effects, apparently the decrease in hunger had come on so gradually I didn't notice.
A side note on pen injectors - Ozempic has the best pen injectors I've ever used. You can adjust the dosage and it never misfires. They went from 2 doses per pen to 4 doses per pen, which is a lot less wasteful. They have a parent on it that won't expire for many years, so no other company will be using that design. Mounjaro is a single use pen, so you get 4 entire pens each month. The needle doesn't come off, you have to properly dispose of the whole thing in a sharps container. I even took pliers to it, I couldn't crack the shell without hitting it with a hammer, which I'm not going to do. I get actively angry about this injector, it's incredibly wasteful for no good reason.