Weight No More - Part 2: Using GLP1 Medication to Help Me with My Journey

Before the age of heavily publicised medications such as Wegovy and Mounjaro, there were the days of Saxenda and Ozempic. Saxenda is a once-per-day injection, and Ozempic was the predecessor to Wegovy; same drug, different licensing names.

I started on Saxenda, which seems like an age ago. The 22st me was apprehensive but desperate at the same time. I read up about the medication for weeks, attended training for introducing Saxenda into my clinic, and attended multiple webinars, but still, I was nervous, and I saw this on the faces of many of my patients when I started to offer this service.

Injecting myself once per day with the newest exciting drug on the market for weight loss, when the obesity industry was in its infancy, was hailed fifty percent brave by some and fifty percent cheating by others. But what I came to understand after a few months was that I was the guinea pig for patients and followers on social media, watching with great interest to see if anything fell off me or if I grew something new.

I was also under the illusion, when I first investigated starting this drug, that this was a miracle drug that was going to simply melt the fat away. How wrong was I? This drug, and the other drugs like it, including Wegovy and Mounjaro, are meant to create an environment where I, and many others, can take control of our nutrition. Using these medications to melt fat or starve the fat off me was absolutely nonsense and unsustainable.

I hated dieting, tried and failed a thousand times. However, because these medications basically turned the food noise off in my head, which is my way of saying my fat brain was turned off, understanding that the basics of fat loss are energy in vs. energy out was easy. Creating a five hundred calorie deficit each day sounds easy. However, putting this into practice with willpower alone at 22st was not black and white; there was a massive grey area for me. From providing an obesity service for nearly four years, moving from Saxenda and Ozempic to Mounjaro and Wegovy, everyone has a grey area.

Would you believe it? Despite the medication working very well, I still ate absolute rubbish, just less of it. I still had so much to learn and needed to break down my lies, excuses, and change my environment. I started the process to change my lies: I was strong, young, and healthy. I was actually none of these things. I wasn’t strong, I was young in years, but not in metabolic health. I needed to shed my excuses. I wasn’t important, especially being a small fish in a massive pond, and changing my environment meant stepping into a world of training.

To be continued, transferring to Wegovy from Saxenda, and the introduction of nutrition and training.

 To learn more about how we can help you on your weight loss journey, click here.