Ozempic for those a few months in - part 3

[DrMadelineMaxwell]

Thread was full so I've started a new one. 😀

Hi,
I started on Ozempic (via Jupiter) in April.

Was on 0.25 for the first month then 0.5. That was working really well for me so I requested to stay at that level.

In the last 8 months I have reduced my BMI from 29.5 to 23.3. I have been running, doing strength and resistance training and eating super-healthily. It's just been amazing not being a slave to a monstrous appetite and dramatic low blood sugar level dips. A revelation. You think 'God! This must be his 'normal' people feel all the time!'.

I am now wearing size 12 dresses and tops (big boobs) and size 10 jeans. Needless to say, I am over the moon.

I don't want to lose any more weight so I had my last shot Friday 1 December. So I'm nearly a week now past the day when I was due to have a shot. I have felt fine in this time until today..

Had a banana and some almonds and went for a run. I had to stop - I was blacking out, feeling faint/ wobbly and dreadful low blood sugar. I bought some peanuts from a cafe and had them but the old cycle of hunger and sugar craving and blood sugar level rollercoaster has been plaguing me all day.

I'm so disappointed... I'd sort of forgotten how awful it was. I was hoping to be able to stop the medication and just continue to exercise and eat healthily and maintain my weight loss but I've had 2500 calories today including chocolate and biscuits. I haven't really been interested in this sort of stuff for the entire 8 months I was on 0.5. Feel horrid now - all wobbly with the sugar.

I've placed an order with Jupiter for a 0.25 pen (which will come tomorrow) and will plan to stay on this level for several months to come.

I'm wondering if I'll just have to be on it for life and what the health implications of that will be,

Is anyone else at their happy/ healthy weight?
Will you come off Ozempic or stay on a maintenance dose?

@SarahC50 loving the new wardrobe yes! I am still at the higher end of a normal BMI and I want to lose another stone. This will probably take me until March, so a full year since I started. I saw some pics and films of myself recently and I don't hate them, but I certainly don't look emaciated, but plump/happy/well. At my age I think getting too skinny is neither flattering nor healthy.

@LSGX that sounds awful, I'm sorry. I have a stone left to lose and after that I plan on staying on a maintenance dose for a few months or more. I don't worry massively about health implications. As far as I'm concerned coming off the jab is also a risk.

I do think exercise is great, but it doesn't help me lose weight and it can trigger massive hunger pangs for me - and in calorie deficit I just don't have the fuel for anything but dog walks. I am no nutrition expert but I have picked up some things that work for me, but no idea how they will work without the jab obviously. One crucial thing that I take away from this year is the amount of protein I need. I wasn't getting anywhere near enough. My target now is 50g/day while still in calorie deficit, so that's a challenge. Turkey is my new best friend. I would like it to be higher, more like 80g/day. I find the protein heavy diet extremely sating. Again, I know it can come with risks. But so does everything.

Sorry to ask this but does anyone have a discount code for boots online doctors? I definitely did for 10% but cannot find it anywhere now.

@LSGX thats not good to hear. I did worry my blood sugar would destabilise off ozempic. I'm thinking the same stay on 0.25mg for a year. Frustrating. Tbh I haven't done much exercise on ozempic as I've been so fatigued but also running cardio etc just makes me ravenous. I'd rather not be on it long term either but I don't like the alternative

@VanellopeVonSchweetz99 yes agree nothing worse than going scrawny

I've been MIA from this thread for a bit. I'm now on 1.7mg and still losing slowly but nice. Unlike others, I haven't had a radical weight loss but am pleased with the weight loss lost so far.

I'm due to have a small procedure under general anaesthetic in January. It's a quick 15mins procedure but too uncomfortable and awkward with a local.

I wasn't planning on taking my injection that week but boots are saying they don't advise taking Wegovy a month before and a month after. Seems extreme.

I'm waiting to hear back from anaesthetist but wondered if anyone else had experience

@UsernameFail A number of the people I follow on TikTok who have lost a lot of weight and chose to have skin removal have all had to come off it for a good few weeks prior to the surgery so I think that's accurate.

@LSGX so sorry you’re feeling rubbish. Were you on 0.5 and then just stopped? I’m not ready to stop yet, but I’m definitely going to taper down when I am ready. I’ve had side effects going up to 1mg and anticipating it for 1.7, so doing an interim 5 weeks of 1.35mg. So just thinking of I’ve had side effects going on to it, it stands to reason that I might feel ropey coming off it. Hope it levels out for you soon x

@UsernameFail I read somewhere about a lady going in for a GA and mentioning she was on semaglutide just before the op, there was a bit of faff due to the delayed gastric emptying I believe, it carries more risks (pulmonary aspiration due to food present in the system?). A month sounds really extreme though? I'm no medic but surely emergency surgeries happen all the time without the patient having fasted. Although I totally get why it would be better/easier for the team and patient to have fasted.
Found this article, warning there are photos of stomach contents. The patient had fasted for, I belive, 10 hours but there was a lot of stomach content anyway and the procedure was aborted.
Anesthesia Considerations for a Patient on Semaglutide and Delayed Gastric Emptying - PMC (nih.gov)

Thanks @VanellopeVonSchweetz99 for the article. This is helpful. I've done a bit of research myself and from what I can tell, there's very little info out there as it's still early days. Most of the cases reported are of people who have unplanned emergency surgery.
I do feel Boots are being heavy handed by suggesting two months off (and again one clinician was happy to prescribe but another then came back and said a month before and a month after) for a 15min procedure but let's see what the anaesthetist says.
I'll let MN know the outcome.

Is anyone taking smaller doses from Wegovy pens? The clicks are not the same as with Ozempic and I'm trying to work out how to take 1.7mg from a 2.4mg pen.

@leilani83 I've just come on here to say/ask the same.

I received my first 1.7mg Wegovy pen this morning and thankfully noticed that the amount of solution (3ml) is the same as for the 1mg Oz pen, but the concentration is 6.8mg as compared with the 4mg for the 1.0 pen.

I'm just grateful I noticed otherwise I would have counted the clicks in the usual way and been floored by the extra dose (I'm meant to be on 1 now but given how I suffered going from 0.25 to 0.5 decided to go up to 0.75 -glad I did as some of the previous side affects came back and dread to think how much worse they'd have been on 1.0...)

Anyway, that's a long way to say I have the same question. May have to go off and do some maths when I'm ready to use it.

Thanks very much for pointing that out!

Yikes, I'm not very good with maths and when googling Wegovy clicks there are a lot of different answers...maybe I just need to take the 2.4mg dose...a bit worried though about going up to the max dose just before Christmas! 😱

Ok - in a 1.7mg pen there are 75 clicks for a dose of 0.75ml solution/1.75mg meds

1 click = 0.022mg (1.75/75)
30 clicks = 0.68mg
33 clicks = 0.75mg
38 clicks = 0.85mg

So you'd need to do a similar calc for for the 2.4mg pen. How much solution does it hold in total?

Thanks a lot!

There is 9.6mg in 3ml in a 2.4mg pen.

The trouble is I don't know how many clicks there are in a 2.4mg dose. Can you dial it back once you have dialled it to the recommended dose?

Sorry, being really dim! 😂

I think I found a clickchart from Reddit!

@PlasticineKing
Yes, I was on 0.5 and hoped I'd be ok to just stop.
Had a surge in appetite, this horrible, dramatic, wobbly, low blood sugar episode, hunger pangs and sugar cravings.
It really shocked and upset me. I had got SO used to feeling 'normal' on 0.5 I (stupidly) kind of thought I'd 'cracked it' with super-healthy eating and exercise. Though I was 'cured'. Sadly not.

I'm now back on it - 0.25.

I've made an appointment with a private GP late January. I DON'T want to have to be on this medication forever - but I absolutely do NOT want to put this weight back on again. I don't really know what I'm hoping for with him but we'll see what he says.

Part of the reason (aside from any health implications and the cost) I don't want to be on it forever is the shame I feel around it and so the secrecy and sneakiness involved. I don't care if the whole world knows that I l'm on HRT. Absolutely crowds of people take statins or thyroxin or any one of a gazillion other bread-and-butter drugs to help their bodies function 'normally'. No shame whatsoever! But this is different, isn't it. I see Piers Bloody Morgan has criticised Oprah for being honest about using Ozempic saying that she's now made it acceptable for people to stuff their faces and not move. This is 'society' shaming people who use Ozempic.

That is fucking ridiculous - I stuff my face a whole lot less and move a whole lot more. The idiocy makes me want to weep with frustration.

@LSGX oh sweetheart, I’m so sorry with the internal struggle you’re having with this!

I would say a dose of 0.25 for a wee while and then maybe even 0.125 if you struggle to come off that. Just remember, it’s one of those drugs where it needs to build up to a level in your system, so tapering down is normal. And it may be you’ll have a couple of tricky days when you lower dose/come off it. But hopefully it would all balance out.

Piers Morgan is an absolute snake - I really wouldn’t give him any headspace, although easier said than done granted. He’s clearly done no research and doesn’t understand it at all. Here’s me sat at my desk making myself eat a light lunch because I know I wouldn't otherwise, and I do need some food, having not eaten since 7pm last night. We all know it only works if you eat less!!

The stigma will generally lessen over time, and I really hope that this drug and the positive effects it has on people will lead to more research into the causes of obesity and overeating. I’ve mentioned it on other threads I’m sure, but the hook Ultra Processed People speaks a lot about obesity and it was the first time I’d ever felt properly “seen” regarding my issues with food and weight. I think keeping a massive secret is really hard; but if you could find a couple of people to open up to in real life it might make the burden a bit less for you.

Sending hugs, it sounds like you need one today 💐

@leilani83 no you can’t unclick - but I asked about this upthread and I think it’s the same dose per click on all pens. When I was on 0.25 hardly any clicks at all, and more and more as the pens get bigger; they get a lot more fluid in them as you go up doses! Let me see if I can find the one I used before, as I was doing 0.75mg for a while on a 1mg pen

It can't be the same dose per click unless the clicks themselves are smaller - with the bigger pens the volume of liquid remains the same but the dose of medicine in that volume is higher.

So assuming the clicks are the same volume of fluid in each size pen; then eg with the 1.7 pen the dose per click is higher than the 1.0 pen.

(And you panicked me on the undialling as I dialled my 1.7 all the way up to count clicks 😅 - can confirm it let me undial all the way back down and nothing came out when o pressed the dose button).

Oprah is right to say we need to take the shame away. She was wrong to say what she said in September especially as it wasn’t true. Piers likes to stir up controversy and he seems to be saying that the main thing is not to tell anyone if you are a celebrity due to the shortages but also not to lie about it so mixed messaging there.

I have just had my last dose before a break. Really scared I will gain weight back but I want to see if I feel better from a mental health perspective off the drug. Also I lost weight quite slowly and I have been maintaining for ages so perhaps it doesn’t work that well for me. (Although I have never maintained like this before I guess without really trying). I also had nasty side effects for the one week I went up to 1.7 and couldn’t face trying that again. Anyway I am planning at least 2 months off, see how I feel and what happens to my weight.

If I go back to it I need to be more motivated with the diet too as I have generally been quite lazy with that which is probably why it hasn’t worked that well for me. I can make a start with that anyway In the mean time as I will probably need to without the medication.

@PlasticineKing

Thank you ❤️

Game changer!!! Thanks so much for this. How many clicks for 1.7? I was beginning to doubt myself but had noticed each one I was doing more clicks IYSWIM. I really don’t want to do the full 1.7 tonight, want to do 1.35 for 5 x doses to work up to it

@PlasticineKing see above for my maths. On the basis of 0.022g per click in a 1.7 pen, you'd need 61 clicks for 1.35mg dose.