Ask the person taking Ozempic

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
121

Doctor visit last week. My weight hadn’t really dropped any more - though some of that was due to fluid retention from our long driving trip the week before. She sent the prescription for the 1mg dose to Dropped’em - who says they have it in stock, but suddenly required prior authorization. I can’t tell if it’s sorted out or not; the text message says “working on it, should be there by 5/1” but the web page says “not shipped”.

That’ll be a pain anyway - Dropped’em does not do those discount coupons, whereas the local pharmacy would.

I’ve heard that Medicare programs do not cover weight loss drugs. Which, especially with expensive stuff like this, I can sort of understand. I’ll be on Medicare in the next couple of years, unless either my husband or I decides we really really love our jobs and want to keep at it. But “luckily” I carry a type 2 diabetes diagnosis, so I might still be able to get it.

Doc said I can lower my second BP med to half its dose. I showed her recent tracking, and she first thought that one reading (90ish / 60ish) was likely an error, but I said I was getting that kind of thing often enough, just hadn’t transcribed them into the new app I was using. Most are 110ish / 80ish.

122

My step up to the 2 mg dose has helped kick things moving again. I’m down about 10lbs in the 10 weeks since I started at that dose, after being mostly stalled at the 1mg dose for a decent bit of time.

So yes, a step up can help. I’ve also seen changes in responsiveness with different injection sites - there’s only anecdotal evidence that it can make a difference, but I do feel stronger reactions when I inject in some locations over others.

123

Can you explain this a bit more? What are the options for injection sites?

124

Sure. The standard sites recommended are belly or thigh, with upper arms being another option. I initially was a belly injector, alternating sides each week. Injecting there, I had some appetite suppression and a few side effects - primarily occasional nausea and constipation. Thigh injections were similar.

A couple of weeks before I stepped up to 2mg, I was reading about arms as a possible injection site and thought I’d see what happened. I had significantly stronger appetite reduction with an upper arm injection - I also saw more consistent nausea, at least over the first couple of days after the shot, than I had with previous sites.

With the step up to 2mg, I haven’t had increase in side effects, so I’ve continued to rotate between my upper arms for the injection. The increased nausea I had those first couple of weeks has eased well but I’ve continued to have stronger appetite reduction than I did with belly/thigh injections. I’ve tested a couple of times in those areas and noticed a difference. Could it be mental? Absolutely, but that doesn’t mean I’m not feeling the difference, even if my brain is doing it.

125

MamaZappa Medicare covers Ozempic for diabetes. It does not cover any injection for weight loss. There is movement to get GLPs covered for weight loss in patients with heart disease but that won’t happen til at least 2025. I know this stuff because I want to go on Zepbound for weight loss and will have to pay out-of-pocket.

126

Thanks very much. All my fat is in my belly. I’ll discuss with my doctor on my next visit, but I think I’ll have to keep sticking it there.

127

I alternate between thigh and belly and I haven’t noticed any difference personally.

128

That was my assumption (that it would cover it for T2DM). Lucky(?) me!

My weight stalled, partly due to our eclipse trip, but I dropped a few pounds last week - likely getting rid of the water weight from that trip. BP is definitely lower; I just refilled my pill organizer with the halved BP dosage (have to use a pill cutter, it’s not scored, so it’s a pain in the neck).

I need to discuss with the doc at what point we say enough is enough. If I keep losing, when I go to 1 mg, do we stop and go back down to .5 mg at some point? Right now, my weight has just crossed from “obese” into “overweight” territory.

I get labs done next week; dunno if another A1c is in the works, but we’ll recheck my thyroid to see if the lower dosage is right.

129

I’ve been off Mounjaro for about 6 weeks now. First time I’ve been off of injectables since 2018. For a while I wasn’t too crazy hungry, but more hungry than when I was on it. I was still in a pretty good mindset of “you won’t be able to eat too much anyway” for a while, and just didn’t eat so much. But I would find myself being hungry later at night, even after having eaten dinner. Albeit satiated with a very small snack.

I got back in to checking my bloodsugar. I don’t know how well I believe my meter. I did use some fresh control fluid and stuff but readings seemed low for me. Like in the 90s or low 100s when I figure it should be around 130 all the time.

I did have some very high readings after eating bad stuff, and low readings when not being able to eat. One day I stood up and found myself to be shaky and low, but wasn’t having feelings of hunger. I was at 76! Usually I’ll feel hungry by 100. Very very odd for me to be low w/o being hungry.

Anyhow, I asked my doc to write me a RX for 2.5mg (I had been on 10mg) so I could start using that to ramp up once production came back, and lo-and-behold, I snagged me a box! I picked it up at my pharmacy and the pharmacist literally picked up some pom-poms to congratulate me. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.

Oh, I did start gaining weight. Probably 4 days of food debauchery over my birthday weekend was not helpful. I swear I gained 5 lbs just in 4 days.

Back on the horse tomorrow, then.

130

I’ve been taking Wegovy/Ozempic since the end of February for weight loss. I’m neither diabetic nor pre-diabetic, so I don’t have A1C values, etc… to compare. But… I’m about 20 lbs down so far, and I’m only on the 1 mg dose by this point.

From what I’ve read and talking to my doctor, semaglutide does a couple of things. One, it slows your GI tract, making you feel fuller longer. That’s a purely physical effect. The other main thing it does is regulate insulin levels- IIRC it causes your pancreas to secrete more when needed.

So from the inside, it makes you feel full longer, and you don’t eat as much because you’re already feeling full/not hungry. It also wipes out what they call “food noise”, which is the term for the sort of mental preoccupation with food that many of us have.

Before this stuff, I was constantly snacking on things, overeating too much of the ones I really liked, and generally thinking about my next meal with excitement and anticipation. Now it’s much more… sedate(?). Food just isn’t really on my mind most of the time- I don’t feel hungry, and I can leave chips and cupcakes alone without any sort of struggle. Or I can choose to eat them. But it’s not an urgent desire like it used to be. That’s probably the biggest change from the inside. I don’t feel any compulsion to clean my plate, or overeat because something tastes good. It’s weird, but welcome. I imagine that’s how most people operate actually.

Side-effects wise, I have been really lucky. The only real GI issues I’ve had were last week, believe it or not, and I’m still not entirely convinced they were Wegovy-related and not the result of something dodgy that I ate. The symptoms and outcome were a lot more consistent with having eaten something bad, in that it came on in the third week of 1 mg, lasted for about 5 days, and ended with a couple of bouts of diarrhea and almost immediate relief, with no side effects whatsoever since. Other than that 5 day period, it’s been side effect free for me thus far. The effects I did suffer were extreme heartburn, terrible sulfurous burps (like farting out of my mouth!), and gut cramping.

I kind of feel like the bad side effects most people get are related to the GI tract slowing down, and that probably amplifies any uncooperative stomach/gut issues people already have, like heartburn, constipation, gas, etc… Lucky for me, my guts have always been pretty agreeable, so I think that’s why I haven’t had much issue yet.

As far as the long term goes, I think the reason that the weight doesn’t stay off when people stop is because all that food noise rushes back, and suddenly they’re hungry again because their GI tract speeds up. I suppose that if you did it just right, you could parlay the medication into building better lifestyle habits, but I don’t know that those are going to hold up in most people in the face of that food noise and hunger. As far as I was concerned, I figured I was going to end up diabetic and taking something like this anyway in the next decade, so why not cut to the chase before things get that bad, and lose some weight using it? So I don’t really expect to ever go off of some sort of GLP-1 agonist type drug whether it’s weight loss or because I end up diabetic.

131

I’m on Zepbound, not Ozempic/Wegovy, but this could have been written by me. Things got out of hand this last year during my wife’s cancer battle. There was lots of comfort food in the house as she never knew what she would be able to eat and when, so there was lists of opportunity for grazing for me.

The craziest thing for me is that I can still eat chips or cookies, but just a small portion is totally satisfying. The food noise thing, that it gnaws at me that there are still chips left in the bag, that’s totally gone.

132

Yep- I’ve done things like watched my kids eat chips, and eaten one chip myself, and then went about my business. That NEVER used to happen. Or watching people eat cupcakes, knowing there are more in the fridge, and being entirely unmotivated to go get one for myself.

133

Add me to this list. It’s really a quite remarkable attitude shift. I had two small slices of pizza last night. Before I would have had at least 4, and stopping there would have been a struggle. Plus, at least two glasses of red wine, versus none last night.

Yes, that’s what I was thinking. My brother, who’s never been overweight, approaches food this way.

134

Now you’ve struck right at the thing that has surprised me the most. I was not a heavy drinker, maybe four drinks a week, like a glass of bourbon or a cocktail every other night. In the eight weeks since I started, Zepbound, I have not had one single drink, not because I intended to stop, but because I simply haven’t wanted one.

I read an article a couple weeks ago in one of the local papers saying that they’re starting to hear some widespread concern from the wine industry, in that demand might shrivel as more people start taking these medications.

135

Same here. We ordered in pizza the other night, I had leftovers for lunch yesterday and I only heated up 1 slice. It would have been 2-3 pre-Ozempic.

136

What amazes me is that sometimes I forget to eat. Like I get preoccupied with something, and lunchtime will have come and gone, or I’ll look at the clock and realize it’s mealtime, and I’m just not interested.

That’s an entirely new experience for me.

137

I’ve got an interesting experiment in front of me over the next few days. I’m going to New Orleans for an all-company get together. We’ve got dinner and drinks planned for each night. Great places picked out too.

In the not too distant past, I would have seen it as a challenge to eat my weight in crawdads, etoufee and gumbo, but I doubt I’ll do much more than pick at appetizers. And the cocktails! I would have been in heaven. I’m really going to have to exercise restraint. One drink, max, nursed over the course of an hour.

The one thing working in my favor is that I’ve discovered a couple factions forming in the employee ranks. The young folk that want to bar hop all night, and the parents who are looking forward to an early bedtime. I need to laugh with my people, the ones that think that midnight is an excellent time to have already been in bed for three hours.

138

I read an article a while back mentioning concerns like that, as well as with the snack food industries!!

I just had my thyroid checked. My TSH level has gone up.

From .170 to .171. Yeesh. I guess my synthroid dose is going down, again!

My 1 MG dose of Ozempic now claims to be arriving as early as next Sunday. I’ll believe it when I see it.

139

Add me to the list of people thinking “this must be how normal people view food.”

I plateaued awhile ago at -40 from my starting wt. I’m maintaining on a near minimal dose and do not plan to increase it. I did have a supply enforced drug holiday of about 60 days, only in the last week or so of did I feel like I was losing control.

If I’m being honest, my food quantity has dropped markedly, but my food quality is only modestly improved.

140

So my doctor told me yesterday that my A1C had finally breached into diabetes at 7.1 (not a surprise as it has been working its way up for three or four years), and then she went on to say that she didn’t want to prescribe me Ozempic because it was unavailable so often.

I think she was thinking that Ozempic was something that would be on my mind, but to be honest, I didn’t even know Ozempic was a diabetes drug…I had barely paid attention to the news on it, and only knew of all absurd things that Oprah had touted it.

Anyway, now I am very curious about this drug, thanks for starting the thread.