This time is for real - my journey with Wegovy

I don't know when is started... my weight. Maybe I was like that eversince, but when teenage years arrived, I really started piling up. It did not help that my mother constantly tried to keep me on a diet. I remember I resented not getting the food that my brother refused to eat, because he was skinny and was not eating. I was unhappy at being singled out and I felt punished for something which was not really my fault. I became bitter, spiteful, agressive. I would eat my diet food and then all the food in the house I could find. Not that it was a lot. In comunist years, with parents unrelated to grandparents in the countryside, we only ate what we found in the local foodshops, as it was not much. In order to keep me on a yoghurt diet, my parents would wake up really really early to be in line for the only 8-10 bottles of milk available in our local shop, so that it would be turned into yoghurt for the fat kid who needed to be on a diet. Good intentions, lots of effort, zero to even negative results. I don't have kids of my own, so I am not the right person to give advice, but if you have overweight kids, first love them and build up their confidence and self love, and then find creative ways of helping them lose weight. Maybe it works better than it did in my case.

Aaaanyway, at 49 years of age, I find myself (still) on a carousel of losing and gaining and losing and gaining weight. One of the few things which have stayed with me along the way, all the way, is my obsession with food: my love for it, my hunger to tasting it, my frustrations when I am being kept from it. Yes, I know. It's an addiction. It took me a long time to realize this. Am my worst, I must have weighed like 130 kg, and this was in my early 20s!

If I was not on a diet, I was miserable because I was fat. And then I was on a diet, felt in control, but it was oh so difficult... the focus, the rigor, it cannot be observed for long. The very sneaky reflection :"why me?!" it's so unfair... And then I fell off the wagon. Again and again and again.

Now, the miracle drug appears. First Ozempic, diabet-specific, then Wegovy and Monjarro. It comes at a very good moment: my menopause makes it pretty much impossible to find the strength to keep up a diet regimen, with the exercise and the diet and everything else. Will is simply not there anymore.

So first thing first: convincing a doctor I need it. At my 88 kg, I am right in the middle between "you don't qualify (yet 😸 ) and "meah, what the hell, let's give it a try". It was the latter, after numerous blood tests, ecographies and convincing speeches from your truly.

Then comes shot day 1: Tuesday, July 7. 88 kilos, scared shitless, I read the instructions 3 times, because jabbing my belly is not my thing. Turns out it's not that big of a deal: Just load the pen, grab a fold of fat off the belly and stick the needle, press and wait.

The next day, silence. I don't think you realize what that means. Let me say it again: silence. Many people speaking about this treatment often report to the food noise dissappearing. In fact, it is maybe the one main thing about this medicine. The food noise goes away. Disconcerting at first, because it has been with me always. All of a sudden, I don't care about what I eat. Seeing a kebap house when I am very hungry does not raise my desire. Neither does the bottle of prosecco in my fridge. Don't get me wrong. I am hungry, and I eat when I am hungry. But that is it. There are minor side effect: slight nausea, but that actually prevents me from eating, which is good. Then, I am constantly thirsty. I don't know where the water is going, because for sure it's not coming out the other end (not all of it anyway 😸).

2 weeks in. Third jab. I lost 4 kilos. Just like that. But now comes the difficult part. I understand why you are supposed to increase the dosage every four weeks. My body is now used to the substance, and the food noise comes back around the fifth day. Not as loud, but still there. This time life gets complicated, because I am on holiday, spending 2 weeks with friends. I have control over what I eat, but the available choices are numerous, so it is easy to overeat. Luckily for me, no alcohol around. Weird, four adults in the house and no alcohol. That's a new situation for me. I always associated fun and holiday with the consumption of ... you know... lots of booze, but not this time. And I have to say that I am not missing it at all. This jab though came with a short but very nasty nausea episode, also connected with sunstroke (Yes, I spent the day cutting grass in the sun. Yes, I know, that was not a good thing to do. Yes, I will probably do it again). And I got stung by 2 wasps, because I stuck my nose and hand where I shouldn't have. But, one claritine and one paracetamol and 15 minutes of bedrest later, all is back to optimum.