This was actually on Sunday, October 8, 2023. I was actually 198.8lbs, and my life partner told me to take a picture of the scale. I was going to do that, but I thought I’d do that on weigh in day, and he reminded me that I may not be 198.8 again on weigh in day, which was a good possibility, so I took a picture and by then I had gone up to 199.0.
Weigh-in day came and I was actually 198.8 again, but I thought this picture was good enough.
So here’s my routine and what has helped me to lose more than 65lbs on Ozempic.
Breakfast: Banana, and if I have them, Yoplait light.
Lunch: Salad. The ingredients are romaine lettuce, 1/4 cup of cucumbers, same amount of diced celery and shredded carrot, hard boiled egg chopped up, a slice of turkey breast lunch meat chopped up, a few olives, bacon bits and the dressing I’m using is actually Miracle Whip light because it’s only 20 calories per serving. The ranch and thousand Island I was using previously are 180 calories per serving. I’m not into Italian dressing.
Afternoon snack: Baby carrots and celery sticks with 1 serving of peanut butter in a little bowl to dip the celery into to make them taste better.
Dinner: Weight Watchers Smart Ones frozen dinner with added frozen vegetables – California mix with cauliflower, broccoli and carrot chips. Or peas and corn or just broccoli or baby Brussels sprouts.
Exercise: We go to Planet Fitness every other day and walk on the treadmill for 30 minutes. I walk 3.0mph with 0 incline. I also use the Total Body Enhancement for 12 minutes. When we are finished, we use the lounge water massage.
That’s it. That’s my day every day. I am not eating extra carbs like breads or pasta with the exception of the pasta in the weight watchers meals.
Ozempic. Where has this been for the last 25 years that I’ve been heavy?
So I started taking Ozempic on May 8, 2023. My doctor prescribed it in late April, but she prescribed Mounjaro, which the insurance wouldn’t cover, so finally she changed it to Ozempic in May and I started taking it the same day I got it.
So far I’ve lost 55lbs. I think this is such a small amount of time to lose 55lbs considering I only have 100lbs to lose. If I were heavier, like 300 or 400lbs, this might have been expected to go this quickly. The doctor said the more fat you have, the faster it will come off with Ozempic.
I did not have some of the horrible side effects like nausea and vomiting. Thank goodness. I do have dizziness and constipation, which aren’t that horrible. Trust me, I’d rather be dizzy every time I get up and only be able to poop every 3 days lol. I hate vomiting with every fiber of my being.
I joined a Facebook group for people who are just seeking support while on any of these many drugs meant for weight loss. I see a lot of people who have horrible side effects and they aren’t giving up, but some have given up because it’s too much for them. I don’t blame them one bit.
I’ve seen a lot of people talk about muscle loss. I believe I am suffering from this because I’m not able to carry heavy groceries from the car to the house like I used to. I don’t know if it’s a visible loss, but I can feel it. I also have been in a lot of pain in my back. I searched Google for this issue and back pain isn’t a side effect, but a lot of people are complaining about it.
My clothes are getting too big for me. I used to wear a XXL and I’m down to XL. I’m not going clothes shopping until I’m a large because I don’t want to waste money on XL clothes only to have to replace them in another couple or few months with large. I did however have to get a new pair of shorts for the summer because mine were constantly falling down. They have a drawstring, but I don’t want to have to use that all the time.
So the doctor doesn’t want me to drop down to 150lbs. She said 170 or 180 would be good for me. I told her I was actually 150lbs before I gained all this weight and she said well, as long long as you are healthy, that’s all that matters. My goal is to get down to 165 at least. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get down to 150, so I’m not reaching for that.
I think I’ll write another post when I’m down to about 190 which would be my 75lb weight loss point.
I quit smoking in 1996 because I was trying to be healthy, and I was just getting tired of smoking. I discovered food tasted so much better and I traded one bad habit for another and literally gained 50lbs in the first 2 months, which is the reason so many people won’t quit smoking. Gradually over time the weight went up, and now I am more than 100lbs overweight.
I have tried losing weight in the past and I have logged it here in my blog. I did the Noom app and ate Weight Watchers Smart Ones and one year I lost 70 lb in 6 months. That didn’t last and the weight went up eventually and I gained it all back and then some. I think the problem then was I had lost my motivation because I stopped losing weight and it didn’t seem to want to drop anymore. I just went back to regular eating and eventually overeating again.
In late April we went to the clinic and met our new doctor. She saw from my medical history that my blood sugar has been high and I showed her the “True Manager Air” log for my True Metrix blood sugar gadget and the highs were pretty much 180 to 200 daily. I take a medication called Trijardy for blood sugar because at one point it was in the 500’s. The Trijardy has helped bring it down, but it was still too high. She suggested trying something new.
She told me about a medicine that I can inject into my stomach that will trick my brain into thinking I’m not hungry which will make me eat less and some foods might make me physically sick or give me nausea. I said sure, sounds great. It took a while getting it because the insurance wouldn’t pay for Monjaro, so she changed it to Ozempic.
We went back to the doctor for my follow up appointment which was supposed to be after taking it for a month, but because it was difficult to get the medicine, the follow up was after 3 weeks instead.
Y’all! I cannot even begin to tell you how happy and excited this doctor was for me that I had lost 14lbs after just 3 weeks. She was more excited for me than I was. I really love her. I hope she will be my doctor for a long time. I hate that this clinic goes through doctors like TicTacs.
So she had me on .25 mg to start me out and after she saw I had lost weight, she changed the dose to .5mg. I am wondering if I have not gotten a lot of the side effects on the .25 mg that I might get the side effects from the .5 mg, maybe even more so. Not looking forward to that.
She told me the side effects could be nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation and I forget what else. I can handle constipation and diarrhea because I’ve been dealing with that for a long time anyway. I hate vomiting, but I won’t vomit if I don’t overeat. I don’t mind the nausea because the nausea will tell me hey, maybe don’t eat that. We were actually walking through the grocery store in the bakery department, and something, I don’t know what it was, made me feel so sick to my stomach and I almost retched right there in the store. I couldn’t get away fast enough from that smell. I hope it wasn’t something that I loved.
So, in the past 3 weeks that I’ve been on this Ozempic, I have actually not been very hungry. I’m only eating lunch and dinner because I know I have to eat. So it really does trick my brain into thinking that I’m not hungry. Today we decided to go to Taco Bell and one taco literally filled my stomach. I couldn’t eat another bite after that. Which is great because it was only 170 calories.
I’m eating the Weight Watchers Smart Ones frozen dinners again and I’m snacking on low-fat string cheese and I told the doctor that and she said that’s great. Keep doing that if that’s what works for you. We also buy bags of frozen vegetables from Aldi. They don’t have a lot of calories and they will fill me up and the fiber from the vegetables is probably going to help me with the constipation issues lol. At least I think that’s how vegetables work. I’m not sure.
So the doctor told me that some people have lost over 100lbs taking this medicine and that’s great because I am 100 lb overweight. I was 115 lbs overweight, but now I’m only 100 lb overweight. I don’t expect to get back down to 150 which is what I used to weigh because I have built muscle over the years since I used to weigh 150 lb, but I would like to get back down to at least 160lbs if that’s even possible.
I just can’t stand this weight anymore. It’s like carrying around a child and I don’t even have children. Not being hungry all the time will definitely help me lose weight. The method for which getting this medicine into my body is injecting it into my stomach once a week. The needle is so tiny it doesn’t even hurt, I don’t even feel it. I have to press it into my stomach while pinching my skin (and fat lol) and press the button on the pen to make the medicine go into my stomach, and then I have to wait I think she told me 10 seconds, but I can’t remember so I hold it in for 30 seconds just in case. They said to hold it in for a little bit longer just to make sure that all of the medicine gets inside my body.
Suddenly I finally have motivation to lose weight and continue trying to lose weight until it’s all gone because I have something that will make me not feel hungry all the time. And that’s my problem. I’m hungry literally all the time. We will go to a restaurant and I will come home stuffed and literally an hour later I’m hungry again. I don’t like being hungry all the time. My stomach must have expanded so much that it needs more and more food. By not eating so much food all the time, my stomach will shrink down and I will get full faster by eating normal portions. Once that happens and I’ve lost enough weight, then I will be able to continue living my life and eating like a normal person and be full a lot faster than I do now.
So, I was 265 lbs in April when she first weighed me and as of this writing I weigh 248 lbs. I would like to get down to 160 lbs at least. My blood sugar like I said before was between 180 and 200 and today it was 105. Normal is between 80 and 120.
So my weight loss story will continue and I will update my progress.
Update 7/27/2023: I’ve lost 50lbs total. I’m working on a video and have updated the video.
Xanapus` Lair 