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I’ve been on Wegovy for thirteen months now, and there have been some big changes. Mostly good, some weird. And I’ve had to buy a whole new wardrobe.
One-year Wegovy Anniversary
On March 17th, St. Patrick’s Day, I marked one year on Wegovy (Wegovyversary?). In the weeks leading up to that anniversary, I’d planned on posting a one-year update. But I was really busy, and it never happened. I wasn’t really motivated to write about it.
And then today, I realized something kind of big. This might not seem like a big deal to some people, but if you knew me, you’d realize how weird it is.
Hotel cooking
There are times when I’ll bring food with me for my own convenience. I’ll bring food because I know that what I bring will be better than what will be on offer where I’m going. Or I’ll bring food because I’m worried there won’t be any and I’ll be hungry and cranky.
But whenever I could, I would eat out. I’ve always loved eating in restaurants, and being away from home—whether just for a few hours or days or weeks—was always an excuse to do it.
And I would stuff myself! I looked forward to restaurant meals way too much. Even if the food wasn’t as good as something I could make myself, I still craved it.
In the past year, I have noticed myself eating out less. It’s not a huge shift, but I don’t take every opportunity to get restaurant food like I used to.
When I stay in hotel rooms that have some kind of kitchen, I almost never bring food to cook (I used to bring simple breakfast stuff, like bagels and cream cheese, when travelling with the kids, because that was just easier than getting them ready and out the door when they were hungry).
So fast forward to yesterday. I was packing to stay in a hotel for a few nights, and I knew that my room would have a kitchen. So, I grabbed a cooler and very carefully packed everything I would need, in the exact amounts I would need them, to make three breakfasts and two lunches (except butter and ketchup; I threw in a stick and a bottle, respectively).
I figured I would cook my usual eggs and toast for breakfast each morning, along with some home fries, because I’d made too many a few days before. And I’d make a sandwich for lunch, and have some of the delicious potato salad I’d also made a few days ago, when I ended up with way too many potatoes.
I also packed snacks, and some Girl Scout Cookies. And I left the three dinners open for getting some restaurant food. I didn’t really think about any of this, I just did it.
This morning I woke up really late (after a really late night). And as I was rummaging around in the cabinets, finding what I needed to cook eggs, I suddenly realized what I was doing.
In the past, I would have absolutely relished the thought of eating every single meal out, or getting room service! Nothing would have stopped me from taking full advantage of being away from my own kitchen.
But here I was, at eleven in the morning, still in my pjs, making breakfast in a strange kitchen, with no desire to go out, even though there are a dozen restaurants right near my hotel.
This is just another thing that has changed since I’ve been on Wegovy that has nothing to do with weight. I’m still discovering things.
Yes, I’ll probably be on this forever
When I was planning on writing that big anniversary post, I asked my friends on Facebook if they had any questions about Wegovy that I could address. And several people asked the same thing: Do you have to keep taking the drug forever?
Once again, I’m not a doctor. I’m just recounting my own experiences on this drug, and what I’ve read. But right now, it looks like yes, in order to keep the weight off, you have to keep taking the drug.
Several studies have shown that people who stop taking semaglutide tend to gain back a significant portion of the weight that they had lost. This doesn’t surprise me at all, because I think I had a ten-day preview of what would happen to me if I stopped taking Wegovy. And it wasn’t pretty.
About four months ago, I had a urinary tract infection. I’ve had them before, I take medicine, they go away. But this time, I was prescribed an antibiotic, bactrim, that I’d never taken before. And it turns out, I’m allergic to it. My entire body broke out in a rash that felt like my skin was on fire. It was awful.
I was put on Prednisone to help with the rash. I don’t think I’d ever been on a steroid before, and definitely not Prednisone.
I ate almost continuously during the ten days I was on it. I just kept eating and eating. It didn’t matter whether I was hungry or not, just like before Wegovy. I was obsessed with food again, and stuffing myself. (But I also barely stopped moving and only slept a few hours a night, so I still lost a pound in those ten days. It was like I couldn’t turn myself off! And OMG was my house clean.)
As soon as the prescription was done, I went back to my new Wegovy normal almost immediately. But it was scary how I had just gone right back to my old habits.
Now, maybe eating all the time is just a side effect of Prednisone that could happen to anybody. But I think something else was going on, and here’s why.
Other side effects
It turns out that I’ve had two side effects from Wegovy that I didn’t realize were from Wegovy, in addition to the ones I’ve discussed before. The first is hair loss, which I hadn’t even noticed until my long-time hairdresser said something. It hadn’t been at all obvious because I have ridiculously thick hair. Even after losing a lot, it’s still super thick, so I just wasn’t aware of it. Usually at the end of every hair cut, she thins my hair out as much as she can. But she didn’t have to that time.
The second one I had been aware of, but I’d assumed it was just one of those things, maybe from getting older. Over the past year or so I’d noticed that I couldn’t read in a moving car anymore, something I’d always been able to do in everything but the worst stop-and-go traffic. But now I could barely do it at all without feeling like I was going to barf, and in bad traffic I was getting nauseous even without reading.
Except for the ten days when I was on Prednisone! I needed to look something up while my husband was driving, and about an hour later I realized that I was still reading, and I was fine!! But then after the Prednisone was done, I went right back to getting carsick again.
And that’s when it hit me: the car sickness had started not long after I’d really started losing weight on Wegovy.
It was like the steroids had completely reversed everything that Wegovy was doing to my brain.
I don’t think there have been any other side effects, but now I’m looking out for them more than I had been.
I might have to pay for it
I still have about six months left on the pre-approval from my insurance company, but I already know that if they stopped paying for it, I would pay for it myself. It’s that worth it to me for the changes it’s brought to my life. And yes, I realize that I’m very fortunate to have that option.
Other changes
So, other than those weird revelations, things have been great! My weight loss is starting to level off, which is to be expected. In the past three months, my average weight loss has been 0.4 pounds per week. So I’m still losing, but very slowly.
I’ve already lost way more than the average amount people tend to lose on this drug. I’ve lost a total of 57 pounds since starting Wegovy, which is about 28% of my starting weight. I’m now at a weight I haven’t seen since I was in my twenties. And just this week I dipped down into the “healthy” BMI range. Honestly I think BMI is bullshit, but it’s still a number I track because it’s used so much.
Look at me in 1997 (25 years old), backpacking around Chile with my (future) husband! I weighed roughly what I do now, but I was definitely more muscular.
I’m sure part of it is age, but part of it is definitely weight loss, too. So, I’m jogging again, and lifting weights, and I hope to gain more muscle. Which will probably push my BMI back into the “overweight” range. See? I told you BMI is bullshit.
Clothes
A year ago I was a size 18, and now I’m an 8 or 10, depending on the clothing brand. I do have some extra skin down below my stomach, and while a lot of that has been there since my second pregnancy (so, 20 years), it looks more prominent now that I’ve lost so much weight.
I can disguise it with underwear or pants that are designed to hold things in, but it really does bother me. I’ve been considering surgery to get rid of it, but I’m not sure I want to risk an operation, and go through the recovery.
This picture is from January, when I weighed eight pounds more than I do today, but if anything that little skin pooch looks worse now.
I still hate shopping for clothes, but now at least it’s easier to find things that fit. I swear if I had unlimited money, I would find someone with my exact body, and pay that person to parade in front of me wearing different clothes, so that I could just choose without trying them all on. I got headshots done a few weeks ago, and the clothes shopping I had to do in the month leading up to the shoot was just miserable.
(I can hear the comments now: “Oh, poor you, you had to go SHOPPING!” But we all have those things that we hate an irrational amount, and this is one of mine. I’m not comparing it to war or starvation, I’m just saying I hate doing it a LOT.)
I’ve had to do a ton of clothes shopping in general. I had saved a lot of my clothes from when I was younger and smaller, but for some reason, I was mostly buying dresses back then. I could probably wear a different dress each day for the entire summer and not repeat one. But I needed jeans, pants, suits, shirts, blouses, jackets, workout clothes, bras, and underwear. Basically everything is new except for socks, shoes, a few things I’d bought in the past twenty years hoping I would fit into them someday, and all those dresses.
I can’t remember why I had my husband take the picture above, but I love it, because it’s a good example of what a difference well-fitting clothes make (and black always helps hide things!). Compare it to the picture below, taken when I weighed the same, but I’m wearing clothes that are too big.
I’m eating more
And so here I sit in my hotel room, in late afternoon, still in my pjs, eating a delicious lunch of a sandwich and potato salad.
Half of that sandwich is wrapped up for later, by the way. I eat more now than I did when I was losing weight faster, but I still wouldn’t be able to eat that whole plate of food without feeling ill.
It’s hard to estimate how much I eat now compared to a year ago, but if I had to guess, I’d say half. That’s quite a difference.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about Wegovy you’d like me to answer, feel free to comment, or to email me if you’d rather remain anonymous.
Other posts about Wegovy
Side Effects of Wegovy (From Someone Who Had a REALLY Embarrassing One!)