Six Months on Wegovy

Wondering what it’s like to be on Wegovy? I’ve been on it for six months.

What other people think of Wegovy

When I first started injecting myself with Wegovy six months ago, I wasn’t sure I would ever write about it. It seemed like the kind of thing that just wouldn’t be worth it, too controversial.

But since then, I’ve seen and heard too much incorrect info, lots of “hot takes” from people who have no idea what they’re talking about. And SO MUCH criticism of people who are just trying to deal with their weight that I said screw it, I need to write about it.

Thankfully, I’m old enough and confident enough to be able to handle trolls, bullies, hucksters, and well-meaning people who just don’t get it.

That last group is the hardest to deal with, because they really, honestly don’t get it. I know, it’s hard to imagine yourself with someone else’s brain, and to accept that what has worked for you (or lots of other people) just won’t work for everybody.

So now, after a couple of interactions with people who care about me but completely disagree with what I’m doing, I no longer try to convince them of anything. They have no control over me, so why does it matter if they understand what I’m doing?

Losing weight is your own business

I’m not here to tell anybody that they should or shouldn’t lose weight. I’m not a doctor, or scientist, or anything else related to medicine in any way, other than a patient. NOTHING that I say should be considered medical advice.

What I can do is tell you my own experience. If that resonates with you, great! If not, hopefully you’ll find useful info somewhere else.

Motivation

My weight has been going up and down for decades. I have been as much as sixty pounds heavier than I am now. If I’m an expert in anything, it’s probably yo-yo dieting. Not a great thing to know a lot about, trust me.

My main issues have always been food obsessions and low motivation, with a side-order of high self worth.

What? How can high self worth be a problem??

Well, if you don’t hate yourself when you’re fat, you have no motivation to lose weight.

Unfortunately, we live in a society that seems designed to make people hate themselves for various reasons, but I seem to be immune.

My life has been great at all different sizes, and the few times it wasn’t great, weight wasn’t a factor. I never look back on pictures and think “That trip would have been so much better if I’d been thinner.” That would be a horrible way to live.

Plus, I’m adorable at any weight.

In other words, my weight has nothing to do with whether I’m happy or not.

Then why do I care if I lose weight?

The big reason is how I feel physically. I just feel better when I weigh less.

When I get above a certain weight, my knees hurt. A lot. That’s no fun.

I’m much more likely to get plantar fasciitis when I weigh more. My exercise of choice is jogging, and it was just cruelly ironic that after I got bigger, trying to jog to lose weight gave me plantar fasciitis.

I tend to have huge varicose veins on my legs, especially behind my knees. They look like a relief map of the Andes.

I also get short of breath really easily when I weigh more. There have been times when I’ve been walking with friends and couldn’t keep up a conversation without gasping. And after walking a flight of stairs I would need a few minutes to recover before I could talk normally again. I live in a four-story house, so that’s not great.

There are plenty of people who can jog, dance, sing, and do lots of other physical stuff without their weight getting in the way. Unfortunately, that’s not me.

And I’m not claiming that how I look has nothing to do with it. I like it when I have cheekbones! And shopping for clothes is so much easier when I’m thinner.

Plus, I’m trying to get an acting career started. I see who is getting the jobs. I want to do everything I reasonably can to increase my chances of getting work.

Pandemic weight loss

I thought I had finally found my motivation with the pandemic. While people of all sizes, shapes, and fitness levels have died from COVID, it was pretty obvious from the beginning that weighing more was, statistically, a bigger risk. Health officials realized it, and I was able to get the vaccine pretty early because I was fat.

But eventually, my fear faded. The vaccines have been highly effective at keeping people alive and out of the hospital, and masking has proved to be something you can do to keep yourself safer, even if nobody else around you is doing it (if the pandemic taught me one thing, it’s not to rely on other people to care about whether I’m safe or not).

After losing a lot of weight during lockdown, I gained some of it back, and it was still going up.

Deciding to try Wegovy

I wish I could tell you that I gave Wegovy a lot of thought, did months of research, and really weighed all of the pros and cons. Unfortunately, that’s not how I usually make big decisions.

I’d been seeing Ozempic commercials for a long time, and hadn’t really thought about them much. I wasn’t diabetic. Yes, I’d heard that some non-diabetic people were taking it in order to lose weight. I didn’t know much about it, and wasn’t planning on finding out.

But then, one day last March, I happened to see a news alert about Weight Watchers buying a company called Sequence. I think that article was the first time I’d heard of Wegovy, which is the same medicine as Ozempic, but approved specifically for weight loss.

I went down a rabbit hole of reading everything I could about Semaglutide, the drug in both Ozempic and Wegovy.

Then I hit reddit for the ground-level info, from people who were actually on it.

By the end of the day I had joined Sequence.

I was interested in joining Sequence because of its acquisition by Weight Watchers. Not because I wanted to go back on Weight Watchers, but because I realized immediately that Wegovy was going to become scarce once Weight Watchers actually started giving access to it (it actually happened a lot faster than that).

And I knew that going through Sequence would be faster than going through my own doctor. Basically, I was trying to beat the rush.

Possible side effects

Everyone reacts to drugs differently. Some people get too sick on the lowest dose of Wegovy to continue, while some people get to the highest dose with no issues, and everything in between. I’ll go over my experiences with side effects in a later post, but basically, I’ve been very lucky, and had side effects only a few times.

I’d heard about celebrities getting on Ozempic to lose five or ten pounds and just throwing up or having diarrhea all the time, but didn’t pay much attention. Celebs gonna celeb, and they probably went to a high dose too quickly.

Everything that I’d read suggested that starting on a very low dose, and increasing very slowly, was key to avoiding side effects. And if you’re already thin and just looking to get thinner, you probably don’t want to spend months titrating your dose up. So don’t pay attention to what the celebs are doing, pay attention to normal people.

But there were a LOT of side effects to consider. Anecdotes are not the best way to gauge something like that, and everybody wants to write about the really bad outcomes. The people who can’t stop throwing up, or who get some kind of stomach damage. No matter how rare, no matter what other factors go into those, they get all of the attention.

But I was very worried about nausea. I hate it more than anything. If I’d thrown up during my first pregnancy, I probably wouldn’t have had a second kid. I knew that if that’s how I reacted, I wouldn’t last on Wegovy.

One analysis found that after a year, only one-third of patients were still on Semaglutide. However, the study did not include the reasons why people weren’t taking it anymore, so in addition to side effects, there could be other factors, like cost, or not seeing results.

Obsessed with food

This might seem silly to some people, but I was also really worried that I would lose my love of food. I still wanted to enjoy food, I just didn’t want to be obsessed with it anymore. For my whole life I’d been thinking about food all day, every day. I woke up thinking about it. I knew this wasn’t normal, but it was my normal, and I’d never found a way to change that.

But I’d read some accounts of people on Wegovy who no longer liked eating, not even their favorite foods. I knew that this would be a deal breaker for me. I like to enjoy life, and food is a big part of that.

Cost

Another big consideration was cost. I read one interview with a doctor who said that she was almost happy when her obese patients got diabetes, because then she knew she could get their insurance to cover Ozempic, and they would lose weight.

I was surprised that my insurance approved it. I just have a small co-payment. I was initially approved for six months, then recently for another year.

It turns out that I was an ideal candidate for insurance approval. My BMI was over 30, I had years and years of documented history of trying to lose weight and keep it off, and I didn’t have any of the risk factors for going on Semaglutide (you can read about those on the Wegovy website).

In my case, there was also the added cost of joining Sequence. They handle insurance approval and prescriptions (but they do not send you the drugs—you still have to find a pharmacy that can get Wegovy, which for some isn’t easy).

And since I’d had a physical recently, I had the required documentation for blood pressure and other things they look out for. I’m not sure if Sequence can get those done for you, but if so, I’m guessing there’s a charge for that as well.

Out of pocket costs for Wegovy can be anywhere from about $500 to $1,500 a month without insurance. There are discounts available, but most people still wouldn’t be able to afford it, which is unfortunate. Wegovy is going to be out of reach of some of the people who probably need it most.

Starting Wegovy

Sequence started me on a dose of only 0.25mg per week, the lowest dose. Wegovy is injected, and I waited more than a week to take my first dose, because I was scared of injecting myself. I have absolutely no problem getting shots, but I’d never had to give myself one, and I was afraid that it would really hurt.

Finally I got up the courage to do it, and it was really easy. I was imagining the big needle used in a doctor’s office for vaccinations, but the needle is actually tiny—both narrow and short. I didn’t even feel it going in.

Semaglutide needs to be stored in a refrigerator, and I’ve found that the colder it is, the more I feel it going in, which can be uncomfortable. Now I try to let it warm up to room temperature first.

Slow start

Once I finally gave myself that first shot, I was super excited. I’d read stories of weight falling off, almost too fast. My expectations were really high.

But not much happened.

For almost three months.

I had to remind myself that the starting dose was too low to have much of an effect, if any. But as the weeks dragged on, I was really disappointed.

The thing is, I actually was losing weight. In the first ten weeks, I lost ten pounds. But I can lose ten pounds anytime I want (just don’t ask me to keep it off!!).

So, I didn’t feel any different. There was probably a small change in how often I was eating, but since I wasn’t seeing a big change in my weight, I was feeling like it wasn’t working.

I’d been on that first low dose for four weeks, and then on 0.5mg for six weeks. I was frustrated with how slowly Sequence was moving me up to higher doses, but I also hadn’t had any side effects, so I tried to be patient. And it turns out, they knew what they were doing.

A big change!

After moving up to the 1mg injection, I finally started feeling a difference! It wasn’t exactly overnight, but it was pretty fast. Almost everything about my relationship to food changed.

Food noise

The biggest difference, the thing that made all of the other changes possible, was that the food noise in my head was gone.

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve always been obsessed with food. I would just think about it all day. And I would eat with urgency, like I was afraid that the food wouldn’t be there later.

But suddenly, I wasn’t doing that anymore!

Stopping when full

Not only that, but I was only eating until I felt full. I was leaving food on my plate.

This was a foreign concept to me. I’d had a leave-no-food-behind mentality for as long as I could remember. But now, it was like an alien had invaded my brain. An alien with self control!

I really can’t stress just how weird this felt. You can only truly understand this if you’ve been through it.

Making good choices

I remember one day I wanted a banana, so I ate a banana. No peanut butter, no Nutella. Just a banana. I really like bananas, but I used to think of them mostly as a more socially-acceptable way to eat peanut butter or Nutella without diving right into the jar.

And you know what? I was satisfied. I thought to myself, “So this is what it feels like to be satisfied by a banana.” And then immediately said out loud, “That’s what she said!!!” because mentally, I’m twelve.

Before, I would only choose something like a plain banana as a snack if there were some kind of definite, hard-and-fast rule. Like, on Weight Watchers, bananas were a “free” food for me, so I would eat them as a snack. But I wouldn’t feel satisfied. I wanted half a jar of peanut butter with it.

Now, the banana was enough. I knew that I could have some peanut butter with it next time, if I wanted to. It would all be there later. And I’ve eaten plenty of bananas with peanut butter in the past few months. I just don’t have to do it every time.

Eating less

I’ve always eaten a good mix of foods. I just ate way too much of all of them. I still eat pretty much the same foods, but a lot less at each sitting.

The one exception is what I would consider snack foods. When I actually sit down for a meal (which could be anywhere from two to six times a day), I’m usually eating something homemade. Not always, but I’d say most of the time.

When I eat snack foods, though, they’re more likely to be heavily processed. Chips, crackers, granola bars, cheese popcorn, etc.

I still eat those things, but I find myself snacking less, so I’m not eating those foods as often.

Before, I would grab a snack because I wanted to eat it. Now, since I’m actually waiting until I’m hungry, I’m more likely to make something, or eat some leftovers. When you’re not eating twelve times a day, I guess you don’t have to rely so much on packaged stuff.

I still eat some really processed, unhealthy (delicious) foods, though. For example, every Monday I have to move my car for alternate side parking. If you’re not familiar, it involves moving all the cars from one side of a street so that the street sweeper can come by.

I hate doing this. In order to get a spot on my block, after getting the car out of the way for a while, I usually have to sit in it for almost an hour, in case someone comes by to ticket me. So, when I first move the car, I go to McDonald’s and get an egg and cheese biscuit. And I don’t hate moving the car as much! It’s no longer Alternate Side Parking day, it’s Egg and Cheese Biscuit day.

The difference is, now I can only eat half of it. I used to eat a whole one, plus a couple of hash brown patties.

Before and after

I hate before and after pictures. I think they send the wrong message. Here’s how bad it used to be, ugh! And here’s how great it is now. Isn’t everything wonderful?

But like I said, I was still really happy when I weighed more. Things were great! If you’re not happy when you’re fat, losing weight isn’t going to make you happy.

So, I don’t like thinking about how I look in terms of before and after.

I’ll get around to posting some pictures eventually, I promise. In fact, at some point I’ll probably put an actual split-screen, before-and-after pic on social media and Pinterest, because nobody reads there. You have to catch their attention with pictures. But for now, it’s just numbers.

I’ve lost 37 pounds since I started Wegovy 26 weeks ago. That’s an average loss of 1.4 pounds per week, which I think is a really good rate: not so slow that you don’t feel a difference, but not so fast that it seems dangerous.

It’s almost 20% of my starting weight, so I’ve already surpassed the average loss that people experience on Wegovy.

The biggest difference isn’t in my weight, though. Food is now a much smaller part of my life.

I still love cooking and baking, but when I’m not eating or cooking or actively planning a meal, I’m just not thinking about food. Or weight loss. It’s all just become a non-issue. Writing this post is the most I’ve thought about it in months.

It’s a great feeling.

Other Wegovy Posts

Side Effects of Wegovy (From Someone Who Had a REALLY Embarrassing One!)

Taking Wegovy is Cheating, and Other Stupid Comments

Wegovy Update: Thirteen Months (Plus a Lot of Pictures!)