I recently started taking one of these trendy weight loss pills, and since my blog always gets spam comments from people trying to sell the stuff, I figured I could just make a whole post about it. That way the rest of my blog posts will be safe from spam, right?

It’s been about a week since I started taking the wegovy pill which just came out this year. I think I literally got it about a week after it was officially available. I had seen an article about how this new oral form was recently approved, and I did a bit of research on it. Before that, I had been pretty uninterested in taking it, but the more I read about how the drug actually worked, the more interested I was in it.

#myweightlossjourney™

If you’re tired of reading about people’s struggles with weight loss, etc, you can probably skip this part, I’m just including it because maybe it’s relevant later?

I’ve always felt overweight, ever since I was a kid. Probably because I was pretty fat as a kid. I attribute this to a few things, one being that I was taught to always finish all of my food (my grandma would tell us that for every grain of rice we wasted, we would have to eat a maggot when we died and went to heaven (or hell?)) and also that I really love eating food! Also my mom would buy me hella snacks from our membership at Costco. I had a pretty dope childhood tbh.

There’s a lot of research about obesity and who knows what the actual causes are. It’s not like I blame my family for being fat or anything. I think our society loves to blame individuals for being overweight, but it’s probably some combination of environment plus personal choices plus OMG DORITOS ARE SO FUCKING DELICIOUS!

Anyway, I’ve tried to lose weight with many different techniques in the past, with varying levels of success. I tried playing DDR (yes, really), I did Keto for a few years but it really sucked, especially as a vegetarian. I wrote a freakin’ app to track my bike rides! I’ve also tried just eating less. I think the problem with these diets is that they’re so far from what my baseline of what I naturally want to do is, that I’ll just start gaining weight again once I stop doing the special thing.

Recently I decided to care less about weight and more about fitness. About 1.5 years ago, I started strength training with weights and also exercising on a Concept2 RowErg (just name dropping this brand, iykyk). I think it’s been good for my general health levels, but it’s probably not a great idea to go into bulk mode for a year and a half without cutting…

Anyway, this gets us to the current state of things. My vitals look pretty good, e.g. my resting heart rate has been looking great, and I honestly feel healthier than I did when I was 10 years younger due to being more active. But I figured that there are also negative health outcomes that are more likely with a higher BMI. So let’s try something different!

You Down With GLP?

I mentioned doing research on Semaglutide drugs, like Ozempic and Wegovy and Rybelsus. I had previously read something about how they just make you hate eating which sounds horrible, so I figured they weren’t for me. The truth is a bit more nuanced, though.

From what I understand (from asking AI), the drugs work by making you digest stuff more slowly, along with controlling your insulin production. These two things can help you lose weight because they even out your hunger levels. I think I’m usually pretty good about not overeating my main meals, but I do have a serious snacking problem, so this helps a lot.

There are some other health benefits, like reduced chance of heart issues and less inflammation, which seems like a bonus. But whenever I look at holistic medicine, technically everything seems to reduce inflammation, so ¯\(ツ)/¯ ?

There are some risks are kidney and gallbladder stuff, and some rare Thyroid cancer, I guess. I mean, if you’re looking for more info on this drug, you can do a better job than checking this blog!

I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect when I started, but many forum posts mention nausea and other digestive issues as the main side effect. Luckily, I haven’t had too much of that. I think that the nausea is mainly due to people eating like normal when their body is digesting more slowly, so it causes a food backup. Even before starting on the drug (while I was waiting for my prescription to be filled), I started being more mindful about my portions, and basically got ready to eat less.

Sema-glutide Kind of Life

So after a week of being on this “miracle drug,” here’s my impressions (this is probably the part you wanted to read).

I did notice that my head felt a bit fuzzy, maybe due to how the drug messes with your glucose levels, and at night I actually felt cold (I sleep super hot) which was very different for me. Those side effects have seemed to wane over the week, though.

In terms of my fitness plan, I was concerned that my pumps wouldn’t be as good, but I actually did a bit better than the previous week when I finally decided to pump some iron. When I used the rowing machine, I noticed that I felt a bit less energy towards the end of my workout, but my muscles also didn’t feel as sore as they usually do at the end. So overall, I don’t think the drug had too much of an effect, which is great.

So generally speaking, my first week on this drug has been pretty good! The main thing that I’ve noticed is that I don’t really have a desire to eat junk food, either sweet or salty, which I used to have a weakness for. I had predicted that this would make me sad, but surprisingly it doesn’t. My sentiment was even echoed in some Reddit posts I found about people talking about their “last meal” before going on the drug, like they were on death row!

I definitely felt some joy in smashing a whole bag of Doritos (I swear this blog post isn’t sponsored by them), but that’s also balanced out by the feeling of being a pig and also potential tummy aches later. In retrospect, it sounds kind of silly that I would miss having the urge to binge on snacks, because that’s like saying I would miss the addiction of smoking meth or shooting up heroin (I haven’t tried either yet so maybe I would?).

My initial fear of not enjoying food also seems to have been misguided. Food still tastes good to me (at least on my current starter dose). I just eat less of it before I feel satisfied with it. And once I’m satisfied, why would I want more? Without the drug, that satisfaction is elusive, or it never comes, and then you realize you ate a whole frozen pizza.

One weird thing that healthy people tell fat people is that they just need to start enjoying healthy food. But I don’t think that really comes naturally, otherwise they wouldn’t be fat. One thing I’ve noticed is that my perception of food has changed for whatever reason. I noticed while having a veggie burger and fries that the Heinz ketchup I used tasted super sweet. It was almost too sweet! Earlier that day I noticed that some honey flavored Greek Yogurt that I’ve had in the past tasted way sweeter than before. It definitely threw me off and made me wonder if I should even be eating it. Even an Apple tasted like candy. (Editor’s note, I’m so used to capitalizing Apple that I did it here even though I’m talking about the fruit. I’m leaving it in because it’s funny)

I think this is what “healthy” people mean when they’re talking down to fat people about eating “healthy.” My suspicion is that there’s a biological/scientific component and it’s not just about fat people being dumb and lazy and eating like shit for no reason. I realize how obvious that sounds but that’s also the way fat people are treated in real life, so…

I remember trying an organic ketchup brand once, it was probably the Portland one, and thinking it was disgusting. It was probably because it wasn’t sweet enough! I should try that brand again and see if it tastes better to me now. I looked it up and the Heinz ketchup has 5g of carb vs. 3g for the Portland one, with the same serving size of 17g. So ignoring rounding errors that’s like 66% more carbs in the Heinz version!

Apart from hardly snacking, I’ve also been eating more thoughtfully. Keep in mind these are all things that a person can do without a drug, but that’s like saying anyone can climb Mt. Everest while also not being a psychopath. I’ve been eating more slowly and thinking about how full I am while eating meals. My portion sizes have never been a huge issue but I’ve been decreasing them a bit just to see if I feel full on less food. Sometimes I would eat an extra slice of pizza just because it tasted good, not because I was actually hungry. I don’t feel the need to do that anymore, and besides, it would probably make me feel sick with the slower digestion anyway.

As I’ve been running on a caloric deficit, I have been feeling more fatigued. This felt stronger earlier in the week, and I don’t feel as tired today, so hopefully this is another side effect that goes away as my body gets used to it. I’ll probably keep feeling some amount of fatigue while I’m losing weight but that should probably come with the territory.

Based on the vibes above, I think that the first week would be a success. But you know I’m a very numbers oriented kinda guy. This week I lost 2 pounds, which is probably mostly water weight. Since I’m on the lowest starter dose (you’re supposed to go up every month), I don’t expect to lose everything right away, but based on the changes to my habits, I could also see myself being pretty successful just staying on this same dose, too. I’ve heard of people not losing weight until going up in dose, but maybe they have more obstacles to overcome than I do.

Where Do Wegovy Now?

So far, the results seem pretty good. I’m not surprised since these drugs have made a huge impact on society long before I started taking them. I’ll probably keep chugging along on these until I hit a goal that I feel comfortable with and see what I should do from there.

There’s been a lot of debate about whether these drugs are the sort of thing you take permanently, or if you can stop taking them when you’re not fat anymore. My guess is that some people will probably need to keep taking them, otherwise they could just rebound back to their original weight. I also think that the drug could also help people start healthier habits that turn into long term success. So it probably just depends on the person.

I’ve also seen a lot of distrust about the drug, which seems to stem from feeling like using it is “cheating” or “the easy way.” People want fat people to stay fat so they can feel superior to them. Gatekeeping better health seems like a weird thing to want, but okay!

On top of losing weight, I do feel like there have been some interesting insights that I’ve gotten just from altering how hungry I feel. I do hope that more people get a chance to try this themselves, if they want to, and I’m not just saying that because this post is a advertisement paid for by “Big GLP” (that was a pun btw, please clap). It’s really interesting to experience how (in my imagination) a normal person interacts with food, versus someone who hasn’t always had a healthy relationship with it. It would also be kind of interesting if there was a reverse drug that made people hungry all the time, which non-fat people could take so they’d know how fat people feel. I’m sure Novo Nordisk is working on it as I’m writing this!

I’ve read articles about how companies are changing their products for customers due to GLP-1 drugs (maybe that’s why everything advertises their protein content now?), so there does seem to be a shift happening in the economy. It might be a good time to short Frito Lay and maybe buy Dole stock, who knows?

Anyway, maybe I’ll give an update in a bit to see how #myweightlossjourney™ goes. I’m a bit worried that I’ve used up all the good puns but I have some time to come up with more.