Life after Wegovy - emotional eaters unite?

[Berlioze]

Hi all, I'm a newbie here, finally bit the bullet and I'm finishing my first week on Wegovy.

SW: 213lbs
CW: 202lbs (which is crazy, clearly must be water weight!)
TW: 152lbs (well, ideally more like 120lbs, but let's not get ahead of ourselves).

I am at a higher risk of diabetes type 2 due to prior gestational diabetes and I've decided I really need to get healthier.

I feel really good, slight nausea/burping occasionally. I have lots of energy during the day, but get very tired in the evening.

My obesity is due to childhood trauma, further trauma in adult life and associated stress, then more weight gain on antidepressants. I gained nearly 2st in a year last year which is shocking. Obviously pandemic prior to that didn't help and I also had my son 2 years ago and bought a car. I'm in a sedentary, senior job as well. So, the perfect storm, everything suddenly worked against me. I've realised this and took many, many steps to improve my MH through various therapies and reduce stress before Wegovy. I am about to hopefully change jobs soon. I do regular exercise 2-3 times a week as well and walk as much as I can. I eat well and cook from scratch most of the time. I did so anyway, but snacking and evening binging was a huge issue, as well as addiction to sugar and caffeine for sure.

It's still a journey, I can tell precisely when Wegovy is working for me because my brain wants to go into the old habit of snacking to eat my emotions and then it pulls itself back together, I consciously think "I am full now, I don't need this". Which is great, however I know this is the one issue I need to address because once I'm off Wegovy, I will feel empty/anxious and of course eat then.

I am effectively looking for suggestions of how to physically replace Wegovy, i.e.: activities that will keep me on track when I'm off it. I know I'll feel physically hungry and then when something triggers me, I will automatically turn to food, unless I can break this pattern.

I am working on understanding food will never fill the emotional holes I have in my life and it won't be a warm, protective blanket over me. I think that's the thought process I will have to work on for life.

However, what would also help is having some forms of physical and mental activities to refocus when I am about to fall back into trying to do exactly that, fill the hole and falsely protect myself with food, when in reality I'm actually harming my body and mind.

Just to add, I am planning to stay on Wegovy for up to a year, so there is a fair bit of time, but I do want to be prepared and start these preparations now. Lifelong habits won't be changed overnight.

I have this timescale in mind as I'm considering having another baby. This may be relevant too, as I will need to be on a very healthy diet throughout pregnancy due to prior GD. This will be helpful in maintaining the weight loss if I get pregnant, BUT I know from my last pregnancy, I really wanted to eat sugar after the birth which really makes it quite hard. A double edge sword.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated! Fellow emotional eaters welcome in particular 💐

I've nothing useful to add, but that 11lb loss is amazing! I'm on week 2 of Wegovy, and am anticipating being half a stone down on my start weight. I'm really interested to see the responses to your post.

I eat for every emotion - happy, stressed, bored, as a treat, as a comfort. I'm not sure why, I have had a complicated relationship with food since I was a child, and my childhood wasn't great.
Only been on Wegovy for a week and it is suppressing appetite but I am still struggling. I also eat out of habit ie something sweet after savoury. And habits are hard to break
I know they say to do something else when you think about eating, but I can't be constantly doing something else! I think I need hypnosis!

I am absolutely the same.

I had a dysfunctional relationship with my parents, particularly my father who was aggressive, abusive at times and I always felt like he never wanted me and instead he escaped to work. I never had a close relationship with him and we're now NC. This is a big void in my life.

My DM and I are fairly close and I know she loves me, but she was too self-absorbed in her own MH struggles (which were valid) when she had me and particularly when I was a teenager. I had to work hard to realise she was feeding my anxiety and also offloading her own problems onto me, and it took a lot for me to put healthier boundaries in. We now have a more love me from a distance type of relationship.

I also have history of sexual assault, baby loss, numerous highly stressful situations. I'm very well aware all this has been feeding into my perfectionism, low self esteem, anxiety and obviously eating issues all my life. There's no magic switch here. Having DS has triggered me, suddenly all the bad memories of how not to parent and the fears came flooding back. I had a huge struggle with PNA for a while.

I hope Wegovy will be the continuation of me learning to prioritise myself, my health and growing my own feeling of self-worth. I deserve to be a healthy, happy me. I don't need to hide myself away from what's happened to me under the coat of fat. That's what I've been doing, protecting myself through the only way I could easily access. I deserve to think straight like most people, without the burden of my past and my brain playing anxious tricks on me.

I tell myself I don't need to be a victim of all of this for the rest of my life. I want to believe that this is a choice and that I don't need to be a prisoner for life, a shadow of my real self, because other people had made wrong choices that affected me. I want to draw a line under all this, acknowledge what's happened and move forward. I have the right to be happy.

I had hypnotherapy. It worked brilliantly well for me, mine was solution-focused, as you may tell from my approach. I decided not to do trauma-based hypnotherapy, but I can certainly see value in it. I had CBT, counselling, I took ADs, I tried acupuncture. I have been a keen yogi now for a couple of years. Trauma is still there but I can see clearly where I'm going, where I want to be.

I wish I had the tools to use when the going gets tough, because it will - in that very moment. I do breathing exercises and I'm looking up self-affirmations, I will start using them before I come off Wegovy to be familiar with them.

This in a way feels like a journalling thread. I have nobody IRL to talk to about this. They either haven't had similar experiences, or they self-medicated differently to me. Some did it in healthier ways.

Any other suggestions are most welcome. Nice to know I'm not alone 😊💐