For the first time, I’m injection curious. I’ve witnessed several of close friends and acquaintances drop tons of weight over the last couple of years and I’ve even lived under the same roof as someone prescribed a dulaglutide which is similar to a semaglutide, but until this week I was never curious about it for myself.
If you are unfamiliar, dulaglutide and semaglutide are classes of drugs currently being prescribed to treat diabetes, as is the case with my husband, but they come with a pretty remarkable side effect. You might recognize some of the brandnames Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wegovy, or Trulicity. The amazing side effect of this drug is big time weight loss with very little effort and that is where the majority of Americans are putting their hopes of reversing the affects of our culture to finally achieve a “healthy weight”.
I read this week that Weight Watchers has started prescribing its customers these injectables as a tool to help lose weight. If you are wondering how a private company without a medical license can prescribe medications, the answer is they bought a tele-health company and the rest is history.
If you are following, that means that one of the largest weight loss companies on the planet has fully embraced the idea that medication is the key to lowering weight and is moving away from the notion that we can do this on our own. Every time I stop to really think about that, it feels heavier and heavier. Weight Watchers was always a proponent of body positivity and behavior modification to help people lose weight but their data must show we aren’t interested in that. In our data driven times, only the numbers could propel a company of that size and influence to change course. The money is in the meds, obviously.
With this recent announcement by WW I was truly intrigued, and had the thought that maybe I should be open to trying these wonder drugs to help me lose more weight. If you haven’t already read my post about fasting, its what has worked for me better than anything else I’ve ever done. I’ve lost 60-70 pounds but have another 60-70 to go before I’m considered a healthy weight. I’ve been very happy with fasting and its simplicity, but the nonstop barrage of medicated weight loss success stories has piqued my curiosity to say the least.
I started to ask the people around me using one of these drugs what their experience has been and here is what they have said. I talked to three people who have all lost 40+ pounds using Wegovy or Mounjaro. All three had a very similar experience.
First, the medication is expensive. Sometimes insurance will pay a portion of the fee but it’s dependent on your specific insurance and medical history. Second, the medication was not hard to adjust to. There was slight nausea in the beginning but it went away after a short time. Third, the weight comes off regardless of exercise or limiting specific foods like sugar or carbs. Awesome! And fourth, the moment they attempted to get off the medication, they were hungry all the time regained weight quickly. Boo!
That last point is the one that gives me pause and the one that I think is going to keep me from trying this for a while longer, at least until more long term results are available. You might be wondering how being hungry while fasting is different than being hungry coming off the medicine and the answer is, I don’t know. But for me, the devil that I know, is less scary than the devil that I don’t.
With fasting your body shifts and hormones adjust. I became more attune to the real chemistry in my body and understood each different hunger sensation in a way that made them very easy to manage. Most were mental hunger or thirst, rather than actual hunger. I’m not sure its the same when coming off of drugs designed to manipulate how your brain perceives the signals it’s getting.
It might be exactly the same as learning during fasting how to manage your hunger, but I am not confident that is the case just yet. For my friends and family who are still taking the drugs because they couldn’t get off of it without regaining the weight, I’m not eager to feel out of control like that.
For the record, I DO think that this is a very exciting development for weight loss and am going to stay open to the opportunities it presents, but for me its still too early to get onboard. I will stay the course with fasting and see how things shake out for the injectables, as time goes by. I’m glad to know there will be an option if I need it going forward. The medicines obviously work. That is exciting!
Leave a Reply