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Originally Posted by Cali Panthers Fan
Also, side note (not so side note looking at it now), I'm seriously thinking of taking Wegovy to lose weight. I'm currently at 285 lbs., and it's been getting worse over time. I was already fairly large at 250 a few years ago, but then having kids adds weight due to lifestyle changes, and then a pandemic made things even worse. I noticed the issue about 2 years ago and began correcting diet. It's not perfect, but I eat a very healthy diet and moderate portions...no change in weight.
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I was a lot bigger than you and I ran into basically the same problem.. despite tracking my food and supposedly being in a calorie deficit I couldn't lose much. I think part of it was still not eating healthy enough and lack of consistency, but I also think part of it was low base metabolic rate, I naturally don't move much, and prone to binging / emotional eating.
I was on Ozempic for a while (more to try and help control Diabetes) and I will say it definitely does help if you can tolerate it. I found it really reduced my meal sizes and I lost probably 15-20lbs on it.
It really did help to be able eat smaller portions. Rather than ordering a large pizza, eating it all, and still feeling hungry I could only order a medium and only eat half for example.
Getting older by itself will naturally cause weight gain too.
If you haven't tried it I would highly recommend tracking your food in detail. When I first started doing that I found there was quite a bit of calories hidden in sauces and drinks and oils. And I got a much better idea of the actual portion sizes and calories in things. It's super annoying at first but I think it's worth doing.
But ultimately I plateaued on Ozempic and about as far as I thought I could go on improving my diet and I had only lost about 20lbs from my peak weight.
All of this was in the context of the bariatric program where they prepare you for bariatric surgery so I constantly met with a dietician and diabetic educator and all that.
I eventually decided to go ahead with the surgery as I felt I probably couldn't make much more progress and it was a choice between life altering surgery and the poor quality of life I had and maybe/probably a shorter life.
I had the surgery in October of last year and I've lost over 70lbs since then, down over 90lbs from my peak weight 3 years ago, and after the initial steep drop due to liquid diet while healing it's been pretty healthy and steady 1.5 / 2 lbs a week.
I find it's been a big reset button on things like hunger and cravings and binging. I find it WAY easier to make better choices. I would say that before I was maybe a 4-5 on mental health and since then I've bumped up to a 6 just looking forward to some things that I can do now again and am just starting to plan.
I'm not advocating for the surgery, it is a drastic change and I was a lot bigger than you.. and there is some risk. I haven't really had any issues at all (which is how it goes for the vast majority of people) but some people do have issues especially if someone doesn't take their instructions seriously. And it's not a silver bullet, you have to work at eating properly still, making your own food is lots of work, but it's a very powerful tool.
But for me the benefits finally outweighed the risks. At this point I regret not doing it sooner.
On the flip side of things lots of people are happy and healthy at a bigger weight.. quite a while ago I was seeing someone about mental health and while I blamed my weight a lot I did come to realize that it was only a factor that compounded things. I was able to improve quite a bit getting help with those other things. But not going to deny that dropping 90lbs really helps.
Sorry for the giant post, tl;dr version is if you want and can try a weight loss med then go ahead. I mean the worst case is that it doesn't work or you don't tolerate it and you stop.