About Attitudes.
I gained a lot of it, starting slowly in my forties, holding steady (mostly) in my fifties. Then I gained a boatload. More like an ocean liner load. Weight gain and weight loss are not the simple equation we have had drilled into us. Shame is a large part of this. If you are overweight, or Oden help you, obese, there is a shroud of shame around you and your round body. I know this well. I was a small person into my early forties, then something went awry. One day I existed, the next I did not. If you are fat..... you are lazy, you eat too much, you need to eat less and move more. Then, viola`, all will be well. Nonsense.
I have hormonal problems. I am insulin resistant. I am not diabetic, just on the cusp. With insulin resistance, the insulin has difficulty getting glucose into the cells, so instead the body stores the excess glucose as fat. This is why so many Type 2 diabetics are overweight, with much of the weight in the belly. This becomes metabolic syndrome: risk of heart disease, diabetes and stroke.
I was prescribed Ozempic in 2022 for this reason. Because my A1c was just under diabetic, insurance wouldn't pay for it. At that time it was a little over $1000/month. Nope. Shortly after this the drug became well-known and somewhat notorious in many circles. It also became available in compounded form, bringing the cost way down. The drug itself is semaglutide. In short, what it does is assist insulin to push glucose into the muscle and liver cells instead of it turning into fat. It becomes energy.
All this to say I have been on a very low dose of compounded semaglutide. I have never increased the dose because the low dose is working. The drug is doing what it is supposed to. My A1c is much lower, I have more energy, not a lot, but more. And....I have lost sixty pounds. Unbelievably, to me, I still have 30 - 40 pounds left to lose before I get out of the overweight category. I am out of morbidly obese, but still obese. I'm in my 70s, I am tired of lugging this weight around. I know I am at risk of diabetes and heart disease for certain, since both parents died from heart failure and my father was an insulin dependent diabetic. Both parents had the metabolic syndrome body shape. As do I.
There is a lot of chatter that people using this drug are cheating, taking the easy way out. I say, people may think what they want, I am not going to be aiding in my death or at the very least, spending the rest of my life in discomfort because of misguided opinions. I will likely be on a lower maintenance dose for perhaps life. I can live with that. Literally.