Why are you NOT taking a weight loss drug?

[Carowe]

I’ve lost nearly 20 pounds by intermittent fasting and cutting calories right down to 1300. Plus I’ve upped the exercise.

I made the decision not to use a weight loss drug as the side effects of nausea,
abdomen pain, vomiting and diarrhoea sound horrific. I had a friend who said she shot the bed. That is just not something I could tolerate or risk as a germphobe.

Plus there have been a few people who said it made their anxiety worse which is not something I can play around with due to generalised anxiety disorder.

However, I have my weak moments like now where my brain is just obsessing over food (god I want a jam doughnut). And my goal seems so far away.

What are your reasons?

My friend lost similar weight after gastric band and her face looked bad. Nobody or course didn't tell her that.?She was in her thirties. Anyway she has put loads of weight back. Even though she can't eat big dinner she will snack in between. If go for a pizza she eats half of it and is full but she takes the rest home and eats it when she does feel full anymore...

I will still not drink wine every night. I wasnt much of an over eater anyway. My weight gain came from drinking to much. I have cut my Wegovy dose considerably and never reached the max dose anyway as I didnt need to. I am very positive, my mindset is good and my motivation is there to not go back. I was always around 9st until lockdown boredom drove me to drink.

I made the decision not to use a weight loss drug as the side effects of nausea,
abdomen pain, vomiting and diarrhoea sound horrific. I had a friend who said she shot the bed. That is just not something I could tolerate or risk as a germphobe.

My reasons are similar to yours. I’m not keen on the possibility of the side effects you listed.

Additionally I usually need to take high strength antihistamine at this time of year and I find even they can give me weird symptoms like setting off my insomnia and strange dreams! Basically I suspect I’m quite sensitive to medication and don’t want to get my mood thrown off by them as I often struggle around my period as it is.

Also I’m really stubborn and feel I’ve did it before without drugs so I can do it again! My issue is diet as I don’t mind exercising at all, but I’m a binge/emotional eater and I’m kind of interested in unpicking and tackling the root cause of that.

My weight loss has been up and down since the pandemic but I’ve lost around 2 stone altogether since 2022 and lost half a stone in spring - aiming for another stone off by end of summer.

Heart condition- not risking any drugs

Just RTFT and a couple of posters said weight loss usually comes back no matter how you use it. I know there’s a stat about dieters failing but I do think it depends. In my early 20s I put on a lot of weight. Then I spent one year going to the gym 2 or 3 times a week and walking around 10K steps a day on my daily commute and calorie counting. I lost all the excess weight and although I didn’t continue calorie counting it did make me more mindful and knowledgeable about how fattening different foods were and what size portions I should have.

I continued with my lifestyle of walking a lot as part of my commute. I was comfortable at 9 stone for about 12 years. The weight only crept back on when my life changed and I I dropped those healthy habits that were nicely embedded into my lifestyle for over a decade especially when the pandemic hit .

So I guess my point is when you make a lifestyle shift and make sustainable changes there’s a good chance of long term weight loss. A lot of the “dieters” regaining weight never overhaul their lifestyle, it’s all about soup diets , smoothie detoxes or super low calorie or cutting out various food groups etc I didn’t do any of that which is why I think it lasted so long.

I was not going to… worried about side effects… then succumbed about 3 weeks ago as I thought ‘why not, I’ll just lose the weight while working on my head and starting some new habits’. After two weeks of my stomach feeling in knots, chronic thirst, limited bowel movements, and hearing about the admittedly rare cases but cases nonetheless of obstructed bowels, Ive thrown away the remaining two weeks of the first injection.

Yes same for me, I've kept all the weight off for years and I was 20 stone so it does happen, but I've had to keep it up and always deny myself apart from occasionally. It's a constant effort ☹️
Shame the stats show most people put it back on, it's not motivating for overweight people to see
Diets don't fail, they work if people stick to them and keep it up after. It's people going back to the bad habits that happens.
If these injections stop the food noise and mean people keep the weight off then that's fantastic.

but I've had to keep it up and always deny myself apart from occasionally. It's a constant effort ☹️

That’s a shame, that must be difficult @Disturbia81

For me it was no real effort as such. I didn’t drive and was just active on my commute to work and socialising etc, so I’d do 10-20K steps every day and would often choose to stand on trains etc. I didn’t actually do any of this to lose or maintain weigh btw it was just part of my lifestyle. I often would get a Starbucks coffee and a cake in the mornings for breakfast before work, and was known for being the first one to delve into office treats. But back then I didn’t snack that much if the food wasn’t in front of me and I usually had a fairly healthy lunch and a decent portion for dinner and rarely got takeaways . I went to the gym off and on in addition to all the walking.

Yes as I said in my case regaining the weight was definitely about me not maintaining the habits due to various life circumstances, so it was never de-motivating for me to hear “diets don’t work”. When I reached my highest weight and decided to make a change it just made me determined to make sustainable changes rather than excessive fad or restrictive “diets” which I know I can’t maintain.

Due to anxiety and under-employment and then studying full time, I was at home most days and when I got a job again I was tempted by the arrival of deliveroo etc in London - especially when the pandemic hit and i began WFH full-time and was extremely sedentary.

I see the reasoning behind why people are taking them and not necessarily saying no one should take them, but this thread is about why wouldn’t you take it and for me, one of the many reasons is that I’d feel it would leave me reliant on them.

If I’m only able to form and maintain certain habits while on the drugs, it’s very likely without them those habits will fall too. Right now I’ve been addressing my emotional eating and I’ve found that so helpful and effective for being able to recognise the hunger pangs are often something else.

After two weeks of my stomach feeling in knots, chronic thirst, limited bowel movements, and hearing about the admittedly rare cases but cases nonetheless of obstructed bowels, Ive thrown away the remaining two weeks of the first injection.

@curious79 that doesn’t sound good . I think you were right to listen to your body.

Sorry wasn't aiming the rest of my post at you, just agreeing with the bit about how you kept it off until bad habits crept back in. I walk a lot too and really love healthy food so those parts aren't hard. But I'm a binge eater so I'm always fighting tempting thoughts! I let myself have a blowout every now and then to silence the beast 😆 the food noise is deafening.

Rebellious for doing Slimming World? You do know they have 900,000 members, right?

No problem!
Yes I know what you mean I find myself fighting -or giving in- to binge eating sometimes! 😅

@norfolkbroadd

No the rebel comment was supposed to be a joke as I do follow SW but add in some IF - eating between 12-7 but thanks for the sarky comment
Who knew 🙄

I just was in Facebook and there was story about ozempic boobs. So in addition to ozempic face you will get ozempic boobs you need to fix afterwards. And of course all the loose skin. Article pointed out that you need to loose weight slowly so that your skin can reduce in line with weight loss.

I’m not sure I agree.

The rapidity of the weight loss compared to smaller calorie reduction may mean that areas of the body which would be less likely to lose fat are doing so as a result of these drugs.

Many drugs have ‘side’ effects which are shown in appearance : change of colour, skin texture, propensity to spotting or blood vessel breakage. So it is not impossible that these drugs do have some influence over appearance.

I understand your point, however people fake symptoms to get all kinds of drugs they don't need - antibiotics being one of the worst cases in point. This issue is not by any means unique to weight loss drugs.

The fact that people abuse medication doesn't mean that it shouldn't be available and encouraged for those who do benefit from it.

I wonder when the disinfo campaigns will start once these medications take off and become mainstream to the point where sales at fast food restaurants and certain brands start to really take a hit. Fat, unhealthy people are big money (ahem!) to a lot of corporations, so them not consuming their products in mass is going to ruffle a few feathers.

I think it'll be an arms race between the fast food giants and the pharma giants.
Fast food will become more addictive, pharma will come up with a stronger craving suppressant.

A depressing thought but I think you're right.

I can see these drugs becoming quite controlled quite soon. It is very easy to get hold of them on online pharmacies - where you answer a questionnaire. As long as you give the right answers you get the drugs. On some websites, it even flashes up red when you give the 'wrong' answer to prompt you to change it to something more acceptable.

To me, as someone who has suffered from an eating disorder in the past the risk is huge. The risk is not those who are obese or diabetic using them under doctor supervision but those who are just looking to get thinner and thinner by any and all means.

Society has gone mad in my view. The industrialisation of food - ultra processed everything. This is why we are all getting so fat as a society. I have started to try and reduce processed food in my diet and there is so so much of it about. Supermarket wholemeal bread. Supermarket Finest Sliced sandwich ham. Stuff you would think is relatively healthy is often ultra processed.

So rather than tackle the food industry we create a drug that fucks with your body even further. And we wonder why we are seeing higher and higher rates of bowel and colon cancers in younger and younger people.

I 'got over' my disorder a while ago but there is alway that little niggling voice. When you see a celebrity looking ultra thin. I could get like that...

Luckily (or unluckily) for me I have also seen the aftermath of pancreatic cancer and the hell the ensues if your pancreas is not happy.

Lol this reminds me of the South Park episode on ozempic!

This.
Plus concern re side effects too

I’ve committed to not doing it. Primarily because 10 years ago I did lose a similar amount of weight to what I need to lose now post baby. But as I have PCOS in order to lose weight my calories do have to be quite restrictively low. Definitely puts food on the brain. When progress feels slow and I’m obsessing over a craving I won’t lie ozempuc does seem tempting.

Totally agree!

Loose skin. In my Facebook page I get adverts about shape wear. The models have large amount of loose skin that they squeeze into the shape wear. Looks definitely better but I wonder what happens if you want to be intimate.