Here’s one side benefit from the emergence of Ozempic et al.:
For a very long time, bariatric surgery, in which doctors removed a portion of the stomach, was the standard procedure for helping patients lose weight and manage obesity, alongside metabolic disorders such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. However, ever since GLP-1 medications like Ozempic became available on the market, there has been a shift in how people seek to lose weight.
I just wish this stuff had been around all those years ago, before I had my bariatric (gastric band) surgery. I don’t often regret my important decisions, mostly because I’ve given them a considerable amount of thought before making them; but having a plastic sphincter installed at the top of my stomach — thus reducing the amount of food one can swallow — was easily the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.
Executive summary: it took away one of my few pleasures in life. And yes, I could probably have had the thing removed (probably not now, it’s been too long), but at the time I had no health insurance (and the removal probably wouldn’t have been covered anyway) so here I am, some eighteen years later, still stuck with the damn thing.
And still unable to swallow a decent mouthful of delicious food.
And yes, I’m back on Ozempic, because (as I discovered) it did change my attitude towards food and the quantities thereof while I was taking it. I thought this attitude would persist after I stopped taking it, but it didn’t: in the year after losing some fifty pounds, I put about ten pounds back on. And so here I am, back to the weekly prick in the stomach, at about $50 a pop for the 0.25mg privilege.
Fach.
Just don’t expect me to feel any sympathy for the bariatric surgeons as they see their income shrink.
I just can’t imagine such a thing, the bariatric or the drug.
Stop using salt (loses some flavor – appeal) use smaller plates/bowls, stop preparing so much food.
Today I’ll have a cup of V8 for break, a turkey sando for lunch and a (thawing) piece of salmon and broccoli for supper. No snacks, no sweet drinks, just water.
Everyday is similar. Got better things to do than think about food all the time. It just ends up in the septic the next day. shrug
> Got better things to do than think about food all the time. It just ends up in the septic the next day. shrug
See, that’s the difference.
I’ve got a friend who would finish breakfast, and on his way to the office start *planning* lunch. Food was *always* on his mind. He bounced off 500 pounds a couple times despite having the best doctors he could find (and he’s rich enough that money isn’t really a concern). Now he’s on Ozempic, and he’s lost *at least* 175 pounds. He says that for the first time in his life he’s *not* thinking about food all the time.
My wife has a friend who was similar–she never got over 250, but she was *always* obese. She’s on one of the GLP-1 agonists, and now she’s down 30-40 pounds in 6 months, and having to replace a lot of her clothes.
And I understand both your position *and* theirs, because from the time I get up to about 2 to 4 PM, I can take or leave food, depending on my level of exercise and brain work (the brain consumes a massive amount of calories, and if you’re working hard problems can suck up glucose like crazy). But after 4 or 5, and certainly from dinner onwards, it’s *crazy* how much thoughts of eating *just* a little more intrude.
2 senarios:
1) I can stand at my wood lathe for 2-3 hours straight and never once think of anything but keeping my fingers intact and not fucking up a $40 piece of wood.
2) I can sit on the internet reading depressing trash or watching educational / entertaining videos and in no time at all my stomach starts gurgling, wanting attention.
The choice is right there, do stuff that makes you want to eat, or stuff that doesn’t.
It’s infinitely helpful to not buy junk food in the first place.
We’re at least half an hour from any store so there are never any quick runs for some snack cakes, etc.
In nursing school we were taught about bariatric surgery. The only surgery I found more barbaric was orthopedics with its erector set like apparatus to install a scaffold for bone reconstruction. One of our instructors reported which type of bariatric surgery she had. If she hadn’t told us, I never would have guessed that she had had any bariatric surgery.
I’m 75 years old, so there’s no sense in changing things now. I gained a lot of weight after retirement (alcohol) and while I’ve considered some bariatric procedures over the years, each time I do, I see that Biafran-like waif, Al Sharpton, and I lose all desire for the surgery. Could someone get him a Big Mac?
As for the weight-loss shots, I hear about all the terrible side effects (Mayim Bialik is the latest to report her misadventures,) and I have no desire to subject myself to those particular horrors.
Ghostsniper is right. Watch what you eat, eat sensibly, and get some exercise.
About half the people experience side effects when starting GLP-1, but it *usually* dies down in about a month.
Usually.
The problem that y’all don’t want to accept or understand is that for many people eating “sensibly” leaves them *CONSTANTLY* hungry. The biological mechanisms that signal “enough” don’t work right. Or a lifetime of the sorts of portion sizes that came about in the 70s and 80s have “bent” those mechanisms so that the signals don’t come out right.
Docs tried to talk me into stomach reduction surgery for years.
Having heard all the horror stories (including yours) of people sometimes being unable to consume anything solid for the rest of their lives, I knew I never would consent to having it done so I told them where to stuff it.
Ozempic came years later. It worked for about a year and a half to suppress my appetite, but now it barely does anything for that. But for I mainly use it for diabetes, and the weight loss was a nice side effect.
All of the 130lbs+ I lost in that year and a half came back in a few months, sadly, and I’ve been fighting to get rid of it again for several years now. Lost some 70lbs already, another 70 to go until I am where my doctors want me to be (which is still 50lbs over where the long discredited BMI scale tells me I should be, a scale still used by the surgeons who have to authorise eventually some surgery I may need in the future).
A question that you don’t have to answer if you feel it’s too invasive:
You say it’s $50 a week for the shot, but how much decrease in your grocery bill do you see (if any)?
Not as much as $50. Mostly because while I buy less, I now buy better (more tasty) stuff.
Sigh.