There’s something about me that I don’t bring up often here and don’t really mention to anyone in person. That is, the fact that I’m diabetic. One of the self-made ones, not one of the born ones. I’ve recently decided to describe it as having a long, abusive relationship with sugar. While thinking this post out, I had a lot of ranting and validation I wanted to say, but I’m ditching all that. The bottom line is, this condition doesn’t define who I am and I don’t let it stop me from being me.
That prelude out of the way, I’ve been on a cluster of medications to manage this condition for years now. I thought I had reached a point where I was satisfied, but it was not what my doctor was satisfied with. I steadfastly refused to begin insulin injections, and that was pretty much the final step that could be made. That is, until recently. After a lot of deliberation, I accepted that a GLP-1 med would be acceptable. And so we swapped out one of my meds for Ozempic.
Before I get into the details of my experience so far, I feel it’s worth saying that going on Ozempic gave me a little bit of guilt. It is a very high-profile drug, very headline-grabbing. It’s been tabloided as a quick fix cure for famous people to lose weight. It’s been hyped to the point of supply shortages, where only the rich people can get it and the ones who need it for actual diabetes are left short. So being associated with that whole thing is a little shameful. I never really feel I deserve any special treatment, especially with how I treat myself. But here I am, five weeks into treatment.
Oz has a unique feature in that it slows the emptying of your stomach, so you feel full longer. That is how it achieves the weight loss. My doc said I need to lose weight, but I didn’t believe so. I’ve been hovering around 200lbs for years and while, yeah, I do have a gut, I’m not what I would call obese. And I’m generally pretty body-positive, so I’m not ashamed of how I look, and losing a lot of weight by taking a drug that rich and famous people take to lose weight is not what I’m about. I’d rather be somewhat fat.
I said that I’d been maintaining my weight for a long time. And that’s despite the diet I was keeping. Prior to my first dose, I would consume a full bag of pretzels each day. That’s about 10 servings, 1200 calories. And on top of that, I would have a couple packs of peanut butter crackers, sometimes a small bag of gummy bears, and my typical morning apple and portion of carrots. Lunch would be the same as ever, a small pizza or a burger meal. Dinner, could be whatever. This was a routine. And balanced with the exercise I was doing, everything seemed stable.
I took my first .25ml dose on a Sunday morning and assumed nothing would immediately change since it’d need to get into my body, and I was correct. But Monday morning, everything did change. Like my experience with the SSRI, Ozempic is literally magic.
I did not snack. AT ALL. I did not open a bag of pretzels. I did not eat any crackers. I ate my morning apple, but didn’t eat any carrots. Lunch came and I could only eat half of my normal amount. Dinner came and again, less than half before I was full. And as others on Oz have said, I didn’t even have to eat. I wasn’t hungry. I only ate because these feeding times were a strict routine for me to get out of the house.
As the days and weeks went on, this pattern became the norm. I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t exactly nauseous, but I didn’t feel good. Food wasn’t appealing. I didn’t get any increase in energy, I only got lethargy. Today, as I write this, I’ve spent more time lying down than up and around. This isn’t the utopia it was supposed to be.
Some days are better than others. Today just happens to be a worse than normal day. I can still get out and hike on good days. Some days a meal can be satisfying. But right now, it feels like I’m holding out for some payoff. I’ve lost 12 pounds at my last weighing, but I won’t know the effect on my guiding star, the A1C, for another couple months.
I’ve searched before for Ozempic malnutrition and that does appear to be a thing. While the core of my diet isn’t super heathy, the cuts to my diet have all been useless calories. But they were a massive source of carbs which gave me energy – the energy I am severely lacking right now. And this goes back to something I’ve repeated multiple times here in my blog, why live a long life in misery? If you’re not happy, why are you living? I’ve got like 10 bags of pretzels in my cabinet that have expired because I haven’t opened any in over a month.
I’m going to wrap up this post and go lay back down.
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