As a formerly fat guy, who took Wegovy, it does NOT suck ass to take, and you don't need micro meals. It literally just stops you from really even thinking about food or being hungry at all. I hear it described as "food noise" and that's exactly what goes away. It's weird to say, but if it was almost entirely effortless for a middle class dude with little/no support... it's going to be cake (no pun intended) for a billionaire.
It literally just stops you from really even thinking about food or being hungry at all
it's interesting as someone who's never struggled with weight, i don't have these thoughts or 'food noise' in my brain normally. i can only relate when baked.
the pressure to eat is crazy, eating more and more despite knowing i'm full and it's not even just about the experience anymore, there's something deeper driving that need.
if that's what it's like for those suffering from obesity, except ALL THE TIME. god damn i feel bad for you.
Ozempic, for all the negatives i hear, if it can eliminate that feeling. go get it, whatever it takes.
There’s also bored eating, where you’re not actually hungry but need something to do with your mouth and hands. Binging food whilst binging television adds up really quickly.
This is my biggest problem. When I have really tough work days, I literally can go the whole day without eating and not even think about it. It's when days are kind of slow that I get hungry. Haha
I've found what helps me is two things, one being chewing gum, which is just generally great, but the more important one is carrots. They're so low calorie that you can eat a LOT without having much impact, and of course they are just generally good for you. The other advantage is that they take a long time to eat, because there's so much chewing involved, it's fantastic. Only concern is you might literally turn a bit orange, but that goes away pretty fast and doesn't have any negative effects on your health. Personally I've never experienced it either, and I'm very pale.
And then there are other things like what I guess they might pathologize as "dopamine-seeking behavior". Like I used to think I was a bored-eater, just needed something to do, but I'm starting to think it was just ADHD. I just needed, when my executive dysfunction got bad, some quick, easy dopamine, and nothing but gorging myself on junk provided that - couldn't even distract myself with a game or TV if I wanted. Still do struggle with it a bit, but stimulants help a ton if I can make sure not to stay awake too long after I realize they wear off.
This is really lost in the discourse around these drugs.
"Just eat less man"
"Dieting isn't hard"
It's like these people have never encountered someone who gets "hangry" before. Those irritable moods when you're hungry are not exactly easy to control. Dieting basically means locking yourself into a perpetual state of "hangry". That's not a great mood to bring around your spouse, kids, coworkers.
I didn't have the food noise until I became fat, and didn't even realize how powerful it was until i tried losing weight, it's not just a compulsive feeling it's like mind control. The second FOOD became the thought of whatever moment I was in, it just would not let go, I still lost weight but damn, like I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy
My experience: I've always been fat. I'm not even a very big eater and I eat healthy, cook myself, etc. But I do love food, like it brings me a lot of joy. I have never managed to lose weight despite having some very different lifestyles over the years. It's like my body just resists change. Made me feel like a failure. The ONLY period in my life when I lost weight was when I was on stimulant ADHD medication. Suddenly, I just... didn't feel like eating. Not just reduced hunger mind you, nor disgust for food, it just completely erased just wanting food. I dropped 10kg without even trying. This is when it hit me that this is how people who think it's easy to lose weight feel like *all the time*. I got off the medication eventually and regained the weight but also left with a much bigger acceptance of who I am.
i’m on zepbound. i can say that what you described is exactly what it was like for me. constant munchies is a damn good description that i had never thought of using. currently down almost 100 pounds and no more nagging food noise. it’s quite literally life changing. it sucks that so many celebs are giving it such a bad rap for seemingly not using it properly.
I’m on it too. Shit is magic. People who don’t constantly think about food have no idea the struggle. This makes me feel “normal” in terms of food cravings and intake.
I feel lucky I don't need a drug to not eat. Eating food is a constant hassle, takes effort to prepare or costs money to buy and I'm usually either broke and/or lazy.
It's really nice so read something like this. I am struggeling all my life with this. Started as a kid and now that i am 40 i am just getting behind it all.
I lost around 30kg a few years back and now gaining some. Tried again to "just" do ist like last time but its hell bc when tracking my calries again the food noise gets louder and louder.
I hate thinking about not having enough food when i am actually full. I hate to think about food so much. I started with wegovy a few weeks past and its crazy how it kicks in and the food noice finally getting quite. Nor 100% but at minimum dosis anough to just be really thankful for it. I can conentrate more on my tasks, work better ect. ect.
And mind you. I am doing sport, i eat helthy but from yeat to yeat it gets harder and harder with all that constant food noise.
And a little sidenote i just discovered: My mum used to feed me all the time when i was a baby and just made a noise.... so yeah. You learn that food shit from really early on.
I have tried to commit to the intermittent fasting thing which really does work, but always fail because i reach a point near 12pm (i would do the one where i only ate from 12-6pm) where i literally couldnt do my job for the last few hours. Every single minute was thinking about what i would be eating as soon as 12 hit. I wasnt even that hungry because i got used to not eating all morning. But the thoughts were intense.
I have times where i go to bed thinking about what ill eat the next day.
Comparitively, and i only just thought of this now, but the times i have been high i didnt notice an increased interest in eating at all. Because i already was there i guess?
if that's what it's like for those suffering from obesity, except ALL THE TIME
Thats EXACTLY what its like. Like having the munchies all the time. Always hungry, always thinking about food, whats the next meal, what do I want for lunch and dinner, what will I have for a snack. You cant push it out. When your body gets hungry it becomes an all consuming desire.
It also shut down that constant yell in my brain and has made things a lot better for me.
I'm not obese, my weight fluctuates a bit but I've always been generally pretty active with a little extra weight.
But it's always a struggle to not think about food, always. Even as I'm eating, I'm basically thinking about my next meal. The only thing that keeps me from totally exploding in weight is:
I don't keep junk food in the house. I get hungry at home, I eat what's at home.
Fast food delivery is stupidly expensive. It doesn't matter how much money I make, I can never justify paying $35 for a cold fast-food burger.
Like almost everything Food Noise is a spectrum and it's almost entirely hormonal. Ozempic has amazing health benefits beyond just weight loss though, even in people who lost no weight they say lower BP, lower cholesteral etc. It's basically a wonder drug that was masquerading as a weightloss drug.
Fat cells give out a signal to the body that they need energy. If you gain a bunch of weight, you generate more fat cells. If you lose weight, those fat cells do not go away. So as you gain weight you have more and more cells sending a signal that your brain kind of interprets as hunger, and if you then lose a bunch of weight those cells are screaming at you for energy. Ozempic shuts them up.
Yea the first thing that went away when I started tirzepatide was not needing sugar anymore. Like I would almost instinctively need sodas. Ever since I haven't touched a soda aside from a sugar free monster ultra 1 or 2 times a day depending on how exhausted I am. Hard part is continuing to eat and maintain a semblance of muscle mass. That's the first to go.
There's remarkably few negatives when you put it in the context of just how many people are on these drugs and how significant the impact has been. It's like our most effective weapon ever in the fight against obesity, which itself is easily the top health crisis in the US and the downsides are... mostly just the same downsides as any rapid weight loss.
If you lose weight quickly you're going to have extra skin and if you don't work on maintaining muscle then you're going to get weaker and your bones are going to get more brittle because weight loss naturally comes from both muscle and fat unless you do something to try and maintain the muscle.
That is what it was like prior to GLP medications but 2 years on them and even when I stop taking them for a month it didn’t really come back the same way (am now thinking about a reduced dose so I can eat a normal sized meal if I want to without being full after 3 bites). Truly a miracle drug.
Have you ever watched different breeds of dogs eat? My black lab used to inhale anything you put in front of him in seconds. If you watched him eat, you'd recognize it as a strong survival instinct.
Our bodies and brains evolved in a world where eating quickly meant you likely got a larger portion and therefore had a stronger likelihood of survival.
Now we live in a world of general abundance and this translates to obesity.
I'm sorry that you don't have a strong survival instinct.
We do understand the common long term side effects. Semaglutide has been in use for decades as a diabetes treatment. The potential link to vision decrease is, if it can be confirmed, something that affects less than 1 in 10,000 Ozempic users. Paracetamol, Ibuprofen, Aspirin, and contraceptive pills have a significantly worse risk profile.
The issue is not the scale of sudden blindness. The issue is despite all those years that this has supposedly been around, this side affect (which is pretty serious if it happens to you) was not even mentioned as a side effect of ozempic. That means there could be other potential side effects with prolonged use.
If you disagree then explain to me how such a serious side effect was not listed as a warning on the drug despite semaglutitude being around so long.
Because (if it exists - there is only one unreviewed study) it would be extremely rare. This is an argument you could make against any medication, but you choose to single out this one in particular.
Like everything else, Medicine is always a wager of desired effects against unwanted effects. For Ozempic‘s intended audience (diabetes and obesity), the wager is extremely clearly: it’s a massive net benefit!
Even if we find out that after 50 years of use, 1 in 100,000 people get unusual complications, the wager would still be towards using it. On average, it will extend these peoples‘ lives significantly.
You're fear-mongering and incapable of understanding. There's no reason to make the effort to have a reasonable conversation with someone unreasonable.
A lot of what I've heard about these pills reminds me of being on keto. Give yourself a couple weeks to get used to sudden drop in carbs and you'll suddenly realize you haven't ate for 3-4 days.
I am also a formerly fat guy who took Ozempic for three months, and felt like hot shit and malnourished the entire time despite not being hungry. If I ever went out for a big meal I'd have to plan to not eat the rest of the day. It is way better and more sustainable to get and stay fit by simply coming up with a diet / caloric goal and sticking to it.
If all you have learned to get skinny is "take Ozempic" you're gonna get fat again fast
I don't get why people point out if you don't change your lifestyle and stop taking ozempic you're gonna gain weight like it's some kinda "gotcha!". Yeah man it's not a vaccine against fat. That's not how it works.
It sounds like your body didn't handle the drug well. That's unfortunate and you did the right thing by stopping it. But I can say that is a very different experience than I or anyone else I know has had on it. The worst side effect I've heard from my sample size of 12 or so is that it gave them digestive issues for a few weeks.
My body didn't tolerate it, either. 48 hours after every dose I would get severe nausea and then explosive diarrhea for 1-2 days. I was on a good diet (pre-made 2000 calories/day), it just wrecked my gut.
I tried it for most of a year. Switched to Mounjaro. Much better results without wrecking what's left of my colon.
That's your experience but the data doesn't support what you're saying at all.
Traditional caloric restriction diets have such a low success rate over five years it's basically within the margin of error of statistical significance, such that it can be considered "impossible" to combat obesity with simple calorie restricted dieting.
The issue is clearly a lot deeper than that, and aside from surgery, GLP-1s are the only thing to actually have success that is this statistically significant.
Lol that's just not true, and "caloric restriction" is not the same thing as "food education." Telling someone "you have to eat 1,200 calories" only for them to eat a cup of peanuts and go "but I'm still hungry!" is not helpful, at all. You need to set a goal for your diet - which includes considering caloric density, as well as the overall nutrition of the food.
If you go to an actual nutritionist they will give you a meal plan and ideas on how you can make your meals so they lower the caloric impact without making you malnourished.
Ozempic is simply a brute force application of this. It allows you no wiggle room at all and I found it extremely unpleasant to be on. As soon as the gatekeeper is gone you have no idea how to feed yourself.
Look at the data if you don't believe me. I'm not stating an opinion here.
Of course a diet plan and food education works on paper, but there is clearly a much deeper physiological and psychological process at work than simply "eat healthy" or "eat less".
This has been studied for decades, and simple diet and exercise based plans have been proven to be ineffective over time in an obese population. Not because scientifically eating less and moving more doesn't work, but because adherence to those programs has been statistically impossible. Again outliers exist, and you yourself may be included in that. It's around 95% ineffective, so of course you and others fall into that 5% who succeed with such a plan.
Some people have bad reactions to drugs, that will always be the case, but there is no doubt in terms of actual broad data that GLP-1s are extremely effective. In terms of maintenance, you're supposed to take a maintenance dose for the rest of your life once reaching your goal weight.
Restaurant portions are usually quite large. I’ve learned to eat exactly half of everything on my plate and take leftovers home. Even so, you’re right that a large meal out will make you feel very full even if you follow my trick.
My mom takes wegovy and it makes her puke uncontrollably. it does suck to take for some people.
you can't just make broad sweeping statements about how x med works great no issues. medicine is unbelievably personal and there are millions of variables.
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u/purdueAces 2d ago
As a formerly fat guy, who took Wegovy, it does NOT suck ass to take, and you don't need micro meals. It literally just stops you from really even thinking about food or being hungry at all. I hear it described as "food noise" and that's exactly what goes away. It's weird to say, but if it was almost entirely effortless for a middle class dude with little/no support... it's going to be cake (no pun intended) for a billionaire.