Thoughts on Wegovy (Semaglutide, Ozempic) for weight loss? (CW eating disorders)

It works by causing gastroparesis: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/15522-gastroparesis so I would recommend speaking with your healthcare provider and making a well-informed decision.

I was wrong, see https://hexbear.net/comment/6292789

400lbs is pretty dangerous- you should see if you can get those drugs covered. There are manufacturer coupons.

I have really bad sleep apnea and allergies that can make it hard to treat with a cpap. My doctor recommended a GLP1 for that, and it really helped the sleep apnea. It also is managing some weight gain that I experienced from steroids for bronchitis. The sleep apnea improvement has actually been separate from weight loss..that got better before my weight went down.

The side effects are really minor for a lot of people including me. I get weird occasional nausea for like 10 minutes a few times a week. Really not bad. It also makes you constipated but that's easy to treat.

Some people apparently feel like total shit, but not most people.

It works by just making you less hungry. You eat a normal amount of food and then you're full. It's really that simple. I thought it would make me not enjoy food- couldn't have been more wrong. Maybe if your main enjoyment of food is like eating 3 costco cheese pizzas- sure you can't do that, but tasty food is just as good as before.

The biggest thing for me is that I dont have to FUCKING think about food so much. I have ADHD and a little bit of hunger is extremely distracting and derailing which has caused a lot of weight gain. Now I don't care if I'm a little hungry. Now I can notice I'm a bit hungry, and just ignore it and go to bed, and I won't feel like shit from not eating.

The one other side effect is that your body, being designed to eat food, will try to find other ways to get you to eat... Now instead of hunger pangs when I haven't eaten, I get really sleepy. Like super sleepy. Black coffee doesn't really wake me up, sugar does. By the way, drinking calories is the one way to still gain weight on these drugs, so use sugar water as an emergency wakeup supplement when you gotta drive or whatever, and otherwise don't drink it.

Ignore the stigma, it's stupid and insane. Rich actors are using it to lose 15 pounds, but you are almost 400 pounds. That's unsafe and probably such a fucking shitty painful way to live. These drugs aren't magic but no drug is. Don't beat yourself up, take the best medicine for what ails you. Hoping to lose weight doesnt work, trying really hard doesn't work. Dieting makes you gain weight more often than it makes you lose it. These crazy new drugs actually do shit. I would never risk taking them to lose 15lbs but they are definitely less risky than being 380 or whatever. That much is clear by now.

These drugs modify the hormonal signals associated with hunger, side effects can include gastrointestinal upset including nausea but they don't work by making you nauseous no.

There's a lot of fucking terrible social stigma around fatness and losing weight through "improper" methods. Frankly I think people should fuck right off of telling other people what they should or should not do with their bodies.

These drugs appear to be relatively well tolerated, better than other effective weight loss drugs. Side effects appear manageable but that is in the context of other weight loss drugs that work being stuff like meth so... you know. Some people have great experiences, some don't. For people it works for they typically just describe not being hungry.

You should know that so far basically nobody knows how to reliably lose weight and keep it off at a population level. Evidence is emerging that these drugs may be no different. What I mean is that whatever causes someone to feel like the amount they eat is the right amount seems to be frustratingly persistent, and after interventions people often drift back towards wherever they were at prior. That said, each person is individual and what works for you might not work for others. Also if you'd feel better about yourself if you lost some weight and slowly regained it over the years then that's meaningful positive impact for you.

You should talk to a doctor, and discuss options. It's possible a combined approach or some other intervention would be more appropriate, you also need to know the state of your body before deciding if any particular thing would be safe and effective. Like are your organs healthy and whatever. If you want a bit of a dive into the meds from a critical but non judgemental angle: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/ozempic/id1535408667?i=1000630805156 is pretty thorough and goes over the good, the bad, and the bullshit.

Imagine a burger a slice of Marvel slop. I wish I had something else in my canon that was more apt, but this fits so snugly in my mind. In the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies Tom bends the rules and fucks up. Iron Man comes over to him to take his suit. Tom goes "I'm nothing without the suit" and Iron Man goes "If you're nothing without the suit you shouldn't have it.[1]"

In this essay I will explain why that's how I feel about Semaglutide drugs. The fundamentals of nutrition still matter. In fact, they matter more. If you endeavor to lose weight, you'll find that there's a few struggles you find. You need to get enough protein, you can't just stop eating without playing god with your metabolism, and you're going to be hungry. The thing is two of the three, usually, are knowledge checks. If you know what to do, you win, if not, you're in for a bad time. You can calculate protein requirements, you can know high protein foods, and you can plan what you're going to eat to hit the requirements. You can estimate your calorie requirements and, in my experience, that estimation is within 150 calories of a measured requirement. The big, bad time you're going to have is being hungry. The struggle when you know intellectually you're at your calorie limit but could totally smash another burrito and have to stop yourself with a willpower saving throw. That's where semaglutides shine in my mental model.

What if you just stopped rolling willpower saving throws? What if the only struggle was knowledge checks+side effects? It sounds too good to be true. I call it a superpower; that's probably why I reach for a superhero metaphor. Iron Man isn't saying that there shouldn't be a Spider-Man, on the contrary, he believed in Spider-Man and wanted his success in beating bad guys. So without the requisite int/wisdom (int for weight loss, wisdom for being a superhero) bad shit happens. You'll fuck with your metabolism if you don't get enough calories for too long. You'll fuck with your muscle tissue/tendons/potentially even worse if you have a couple shots of vodka instead of a protein rich meal and never think about what your hunger is communicating. This is all in conjunction with the idea that if you stop taking semaglutide, without the knowledge, you'll have learned nothing but had a transient, difficult, expensive experience with weight loss.

If you make sure you understand your TDEE, your protein requirements, how to read nutrition labels, what to eat when you're hungry and tired, how to meal prep, how to weigh food, and how movement+resistance training spares muscle tissue you'll move mountains with your super powers. If you don't, you give yourself more danger and suffering while learning nothing. I would recommend you lose 25-35lbs through conventional means before you pursue it. Learn what the hunger feels like and be amazed by how semaglutide suppresses it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9esCA8_EPeY

Allow me to echo a common bit of advice. Any weight loss you do must be accompanied by an overall diet and lifestyle change in order to be permanent. Weight loss treatments and drugs are fine if you are using them with medical supervision (sounds like you are) as a way to kick start this transition in diet and lifestyle for a more healthy and manageable future for maintaining your weight and governing your health. But that lifestyle and diet change is key. Don't squander your chance to get on the right tract to start taking control of your health. Make the changes. Stick to them and you'll see success.

I am pretty sure that there is some research into it being a first line treatment for obesity and should be used as such. I forget which organization called it.

I the hospital I regularly see people who take too much and don't get enough protein and fiber have pretty bad stomach aches. So long as you use it correctly side effects are uncommon. Also, I am 70 pounds down from buying stuff from China at like 1/10th the price and it's been chill for me.

I have not used it but I have purchased Tirzepatide with plans to start in a couple weeks (quit nicotine over a year ago and gained 20 pounds).

I found a Chinese seller that produces the peptides in their own labs without a huge markup (10 month supply was ~$250, could have been cheaper but I was a fool and ordered way more per vial than I had to, I'll be throwing away 3/4 of every vial since they're only safe to inject for 28 days after reconstitution).

I found them from a website that tests the purity from samples they purchase and provides the results to the public (Don't know if I'm allowed to link it here).

It got sent in its powdered form and I had to locate BAC water myself which is what caused the holdup of why I haven't taken it yet.

I can let you know how it goes once I start?