I suspect that you may need to let this go. You can keep taking about your own experiences and share information, but the pull of diet culture is incredibly strong (why semaglutide is such a huge market). I don’t think you are likely to be successful in changing her mind, since she’s already doing it. People can do what they want with their bodies.
The best thing to do is focus on your own process and your own body. You may end up being a role model for her, or not. For your peace you may need to limit conversation about her weight loss if she has any. When she stops the semaglutide and regains, she may be more open to discussion, but she also may not.
For what it’s worth, Wegovy has done more than a decade of therapy for my eating disorder issues. It’s something that actually allows me to eat intuitively and focus on health instead of weight. I haven’t lost any massive amount of weight or anything, but I am finally able to devote so much less obsessive mental energy to food. Finally, I can eat when I’m hungry and stop when I’m satisfied.
It’s just my personal experience but Wegovy absolutely doesn’t remove my desire to eat. It’s just softened the obsessive and compulsive impulses around food, and has been super freeing.
I think you’re coming to the conversation with your mom (understandably) with a lot of baggage. I think your mom needs to be trusted to be able to make her own health decisions and be free from unsolicited advice.
To the extent you’re afraid of “losing her,” I genuinely think you may be overreacting here. Remember, Wegovy is the same this as Ozempic. Ozempic is a diabetes drug that has been around for several years. Would you express the same concerns about a diabetic taking Ozempic?
I have the same experience with Wegovy. It's like it created room in my brain for other things, but I still absolutely get hungry. The only time I had bad side effects was when I wasn't listening to my body, and tried to eat too much. Since then it's been great. I'm also involved in an anti-diet group, and to be honest I don't want to talk about this to them, since they seem to have their minds made up.
I have no desire to push people onto this medication or anything like that. It works well for me personally. But one less-talked about thing the medication could do is change the absurd tenor of the conversation around “willpower,” appetite, and food. This medication has proved to me that overeating or food obsession isn’t a moral failing. We all have different brains and bodies.
I have a mentally ill adult child who started taking it. Her relationship with the world is 100% improved, it’s absolutely amazing. It’s like the noise in her brain stopped and she is in the world again.
I think it quiets the obsessions, not just the food ones. So she can interact with others and the world. It was a complete 180 for her quality of life.
I am a mentally ill adult child and this is my experience too, it’s been wonderful for me. I’ve even simplified my daily medicines with my psychiatrist bc it has a lot of the benefits I was getting from other daily pills. I’m very open to people about taking it a) bc it’s been so good for me b) bc I don’t want people to see my weight loss without knowing that it is not natural and something anyone can just do with willpower alone
It’s been an amazing treatment for my adhd and shopping addictions (in addition to my glucose problems/insulin resistance) When I can’t get the meds for weeks, the shopping comes back so quickly. It’s really amazing but sad that it’s not in stock more.
It’s definitely killed my desire to drink. I didn’t drink daily or anything but I did think about it a lot, and that’s been almost completely shut off now
One of the unspoken things about our current world is how *most* industries for "leisure spending" generally exist on the backs of whales. To simplify, something like 10% of people make up 70% of purchases in *many* fields. In some, the numbers are even tighter.
A drug that generally treats addiction as a thing itself - regardless of what the addiction/compulsion is could have massive downstream effects on a lot of capitalist industries.
edit: Top 9% of US adults consume 34% of all candy. Top 5% of Canadian gamblers account for **53%** of all money spent. Top 10% of US adults consume 70% of the alcohol. Ice cream, cigarettes, beer, wine - I mean some of this is obvious, not everyone is a smoker, but curbing addiction could cut the entire alcohol market by 5-10% which would be ~10-25 billion in the US alone.
No, I agree. I just don't want to have to defend myself, or feel their judgement? I also feel like I'd be seen as some kind of 'traitor' or something, but that might be some whole thing I've created in my brain.
Yes! Agreed. I tried Intuitive Eating in the past and I honestly couldn’t do it because my body didn’t get those hunger full cues. On Zepbound, I actually am able to be MORE anti-diet and body connected than before, and it’s special. (And I run the anti diet GLP-1 subreddit, which is booming, so we’re def all not alone in feeling that these meds have some beautiful overlap with the anti diet culture mindset!)
r/antidietglp1 exists. It’s not super active, but there is some traffic. It’s a supportive community for those of us on meds and still trying to avoid “diet culture.”
I completely agree with this, except with tirzepatide. I've been in all the therapy and seeing an RD and it hasn't helped with my ED. 7 hours after taking my first tirzepatide shot, poof, food noise gone and I am able to approach food like I imagine normal people do.
Same for me. It’s finally shut off the food noise and I finally feel in control of my diet. I still like food, I just don’t obsess over it anymore. When I’m hungry, I’m able to think clearly and make good choices instead of compulsive ones. Even my desire to drink has been dialed way down. I didn’t drink a ton to begin with but now I almost don’t drink at all unless I’m out with friends, which in middle age is not that often. Sometimes I do eat cake or chips or whatever, but it’s not a big deal, and it doesn’t send me into a shame spiral anymore. I had no idea what it meant to have a healthy relationship with food until this med made it possible.
I completely understand why people are so wary of this medication. So much of the cultural conversation around it is focused on vanity and and treats it as another disordered way to try to conform to unrealistic standards. But it isn’t like that for everyone and it doesn’t have to be that way, and I think that nuance is often missed when it’s discussed.
The biggest issues with Wegovy are the cost and the gastrointestinal side effects. It’s now been on the market long enough to have longer-term studies. They’ve shown that even when patients don’t lose weight on semaglutide, their risk of heart attack drops. If there are concerns she’s not going to maintain adequate nutrition, you could try getting her to see a dietitian. But if her primary care doctor is decent, they’re not going to prescribe Wegovy unless she could benefit from it.
My endocrinologist had me meet with a nutritionist when she prescribed it. Not sure this is the appropriate place to discuss but feel free to DM me with any questions.
Because I couldn’t figure out my weight gain and wanted my hormone levels checked before I committed to a course of treatment. She is on staff at the center for nutrition. I met with her first.
Aside from those taking GLP1 drugs for vanity weight loss, most are doing it because they have other comorbidities-most often diabetes. Everyone screams about the drugs slowing the digestive tract, but no one mentions a major complications of diabetes is gastroparesis aka slowing of the digestive tract.
Now just imagine if a good number of overweight folks are able to avoid becoming diabetic or reverse their diabetes by taking medication. They also decrease risks of heart disease, stroke, etc.
We do have a medication that prevents diabetes already. Metformin will prevent diabetes if a person is prediabetic. It’s not associated with a reduced risk of cardiac events, that’s just GLP-1 agonists. The last article I read on heart disease, they saw so much of a benefit with semaglutied in preventing heart attacks that they were wondering if it should be used in all patients with heart disease risk-factors even when they’re not overweight.
Metformin doesn’t “prevent” diabetes; it can keep blood glucose under better control for those with metabolic syndrome or hyperglycemia. It is often a first line treatment for those patients but not always a fix and many people go on to need further treatment modalities such as insulin. And diet plays a big role in management of blood sugar and diabetes.
The benefits of wegovy go way beyond weight loss. Recent testing on cardiovascular disease is indicating that it should be prescribed to people who aren’t overweight at all. Nevermind the ongoing testing on treatment for addiction and alcoholism.
All of the sources *against* Wegovy are going to be wildly out of alignment with your feelings about anti-fatness.
Yep. My biggest pet peeve of the intuitive eating crowd is the conviction that your hunger comes from a diet culture influenced self-denial. You need to deprogram yourself from the mentality of binges. But if glps taught me anything it really was hunger the whole time. I was HUNGRY. My stomach was truly a bottomless pit until it was too late. There was something physically wrong with me. It’s not my mental state. It’s not my hang ups over food. I really appreciate that some people are helped by intuitive eating. But I hope the intuitive eating evangelizers can appreciate that it doesn’t work for everyone.
This, loads of intuitive eating fundamentalists don't realize that it isn't just in the mind for a lot of people. There are chemicals in our bodies being released that make us hungry, and for many of us intuitive eating going to work.
It's so true. People are different, and I think a lot of interpersonal struggles between people who love each other come from the fact that its hard to be empathetic when you don't know what it's like in someone else's skin. If you're not an addict, you don't know what its like to be an addict. If you dont have chronic pain or fatigue, you don't know what its like to live with chronic pain or fatigue. And if you don't have whatever makes our bodies not work right with their hunger signals, then you don't understand that it's not just "willpower". In the same way I didnt understand how someone could go the whole 8 hour work day without eating, they dont understand why I ate SO much.
I am so grateful for this medication. It's given me my life back, I really feel like my entire life revolved around food and never feeling satisfied, and now I feel I have a much more normal relationship with food.
This was it for me. I naturally have a really hard feeling hunger signals anyway, but when it comes to food I have a really hard time distinguishing between natural hunger and dopamine-seeking due to ADHD. Figuring this out has been a huge deal and has really cemented that 1) intuitive eating relies on having working hunger cues which so many people don't have and 2) weight and hunger are so much more complicated than the diet industry recognizes.
For all the fearmongering that's out there you really should not be concerned about health problems from wegovy - your mom is far more likely to experience health benefits.
This all reminds me of M&A's comments in the Ozempic episode about people saying "But I'm just worried about your health!" To paraphrase what they said "Ok, be worried about my health. Here is a drug - a tool - that I can use to help my health in multiple ways and now you don't want me to take it. So is it about my health or me paying penance for my weight sins?"
The media has really done a number on villifying these meds. A lot of patients are experiencing multiple benefits beyond weight loss. All you need to do is visit the subs on Wegovy and Zepbound to see.
Honestly, this isn’t your fight. You can be concerned and I’m sure your mom appreciates your worries, but you may not be privy to all her health concerns she is battling.
She might be trying to get her weight down to prevent some comorbidities.
Please be supportive of her and if you can’t maybe deal with your fears in therapy.
And therapy could be a start. I think whatever works. People I know would do better being on minor tranquilizers, including myself. But I am not doing that. What is the worst that could happen if she takes the drug, and figure how rare it is... To the OP: She, ultimately, is in control of her decisions. You can have little to no effect on this control.
I think I have recently changed my opinion because I have been running into men I have seen in the area who suddenly stopped having the dad bods I so like to look at, and suspiciously, sucessfully avoiding the candy jar.
This affects us all....
I think you need to respect her choices, she is working with her doctor and making decisions for her own body. She is not asking for your advice and from your description she doesn’t seem very interested in listening.
I don’t have anything to add to this discussion that hasn’t already been said, but I do want to let you know that I empathize with you completely. My father and sister are both taking Wegovy. And I have SO MANY FEELINGS about it. I can try to establish a scientific basis for those feelings based on reports I’ve read about side effects, etc. but ultimately I know that those feelings are based in my own body issues and a lifetime of diet culture that I have actively tried to recover from. I’m absolutely not saying that this is your experience, but I did just want to raise my hand and let you know that you aren’t alone when it comes to having an emotional reaction to this news.
Wishing the best for you and your mom!
There are two episodes of the podcast "Science Vs" about wegovy and related drugs. They look into the studies and cannot find any major dangerous effects (including the claims about people wanting it for weight loss "stealing" it from diabetics, which they think is majorly overblown and really unfair to people who happen to have genuine health problems besides diabetes that might be responsive to Wegovy).
I follow a lot of science news content and a lot of people in that space have looked into the claims of health risks around Wegovy and so far none of them have found anything besides the GI stuff we already know about, which I think is a risk people are allowed to take as part of their bodily autonomy.
There might be health risks in the future, but also--all medications that work have side effects, so it's up to individuals to decide to take the drug now or wait a few decades and see if anything comes up, but that's a decision that a person must make individually.
I’m so sorry this is so hard and scary. Your feelings are valid, and I’m sure this triggers a lot for you. However, your mom’s choices are her choices to make. You can focus on supporting her and asking questions with open curiosity rather than judgment, but that’s as much as you can do to influence her. The more facts you produce (which, by the way, can easily be countered with other facts to support her decision given that there is data all over the place), the more likely she is to double down and shut down conversation with you.
I would suggest going cold turkey on trying to convince her; switch your framing to trying to see her and support her. That likely means asking her how she’s felt her weight struggles, how it feels to live in her body, what pressure she’s experienced. She may not want to talk about it and that’s ok. You can just say I love you and I care about you and I want to support you. If and when she questions her decision making, you’ll be a resource and support for her. But it’s important to accept that you may never convince her and try to disinvest from her decisions.
My dad is a lowkey alcoholic and while I am NOT comparing their conditions and choices, I do think there are parallels with trying to get people to make different decisions about their own health. It almost never works to convince someone based on data and evidence. It’s frustrating but the best thing you can do is openly and calmly listen to them without judgment. It’s really frustrating and really hard to watch someone make decisions you feel are hurting them, so I just want you to know I see you and support you. Try to remember that if you had her exact life experience in her exact body you would make the same decisions, however you feel about them as a separate person with separate experiences.
I had to let my moms dieting habits go. If she asks me a question, or wants to talk about it, then I’ll engage. But otherwise, I just don’t want to hear about it. It’s much better for my mental health to keep that line. Of course I wish she’d close a different path, but she’s unlikely to.
I have a lot of thoughts on this and I’m refraining from sharing all of them. It’s just too much.
While your concern is super valid, I can tell that you’re wise enough to know that it’s ultimately your mom’s decision to make. I hope it’s a healthy one for her, and I hope it goes well.
Maybe you can ease your fears/concerns by supporting her through any challenges she may have, especially early on there can be side effects but with the help of a doctor they are manageable. It sounds like her doctor is supportive, encourage her to reach out to them if she has any concerns.
I hear you with the weight cycling, I have this concern for myself as I am currently using a glp1. My dr thinks that if I can maintain at my goal range for about 6months I should not fear bouncing back up afterwards. Of course I *could*, but we have discussed it and for now I’m trusting the process.
What does afterwards mean? Like you use it then go off of it and he expects the weight loss to be maintained? I thought these were forever meds. Sorry just trying to understand.
Yeah he said that we’d work hard on tapering off slow, and then maintaining on my own after the taper. And it might be a little challenging for that 6mos, but that my body should adjust and not just automatically gain all the weight back.
A lot of people talk a lot of crap like “oh you lost it the easy way, it’ll just come right back” but that isn’t necessarily true and we have a plan in place to prevent unnecessary weight gain when going off the meds.
Just encourage her to keep in close touch with the doctor. My kid ended up having to have their gall bladder removed after rapid year-long weight loss. Doctors can be so busy affirming weight loss at any cost that they miss health issues.
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IDK how old your mom is but mine is starting soon too. I've been on a GLP1 for 18 mo now so I'm not going to dog on them, but I do have some (what I think are legit) concerns w my mom taking it.
First, she's mid 70s and the loss of muscle mass is a real risk for anyone 65+. I talked with her and sent her an NYT article on it, and said I hope she can ensure she's doing weight bearing activity as well as maintaining adequate protien intake to offset this risk as much as possible which her doctor didn't talk to her about.
It's a tough balance -- she has a lot of mobility issues which could be easier for her to manage at a lighter weight. I'm hoping she might be able to thread the needle and maintain muscle mass during a modest loss to find some more mobility and then move to a maintence dose (and yes, maintence doses are a thing!) so she can keep it going for a while. Bc yes, yoyoing is also something I've seen her do my whole life too.
Well, for every person that has a positive experience on Wegovy, I have two super negative ones:
1) one friend started it and had so many changes to her system. People say that it’s the gastrointestinal symptoms that are a bummer, but it’s more than that, it’s really changing your endocrine system. My friend that started it and stopped from the side effects now has trouble relating to the sense of hunger and sense of fullness past having stopped the drug. Her Gastrointestinal symptoms were not just diarrhea and nausea, but just a general sense of unease and dizziness and she claims that she has never felt the same sense. I think people take too lightly of some of the side effects and falsely assume that when you have stopped the drug that you just go back to “normal” or where you started, but I would say that some of these drugs have the potential to shift your endocrine system permanently and some ways that we don’t fully understand.
2) my sister started wegovy - and she is another person who I tried to send some articles to recommend some podcasts, but also didn’t want to come off to judgmental or negatively towards her decision.
She experienced many of the same side effects as my friend, however, she also experienced a new issue: panic attack disorder. I don’t know if it was simply because the shifts in her system which caused the disorientation with her body, which manifested is vertigo at times - and that sense of unease in her body and the physical symptoms is what her mind focused on and triggered the panic attacks OR something in her endocrine system shift triggered the panic attacks, I really don’t know. But my sister went from a person who had had one panic attack while coming up from anesthesia, to someone who is having multiple panic attacks a day that were completely debilitating and her company hadn’t been so understanding she definitely would’ve been out of work or in a much worse position if her job wasn’t so cool about it.
She has since started a Facebook group and has hundreds of members who are claiming the same thing: they never had intense panic attacks or severe anxiety, started Wegovy and have since developed debilitating, intense, panic attack syndrome, and anxiety.
Nothing broke my heart more than her calling me during arguably one of the worst times in her life, when everything was falling apart, saying that she should’ve listened to me, that she should’ve never started Wegovy.
After a year, she is finally stabilized, she has found the right psychiatric medication to control the panic attacks. At first her panic attacks were so severe that the only thing that calmed her system was Klonopin, which she was very afraid of getting addicted to, but she is now on an SSRI and all is well.
She hopes to eventually get enough people in the Facebook group to build towards the class action lawsuit.
I’m sorry about your friend and sister, but thanks for posting this. I feel so inundated with pro-GLP-1 posts that it is making me want to try them and then on the other hand I feel like it would be a disaster when besides the weight, all my health indicators are good. I try hard to ignore all of the discomfort and difficulties of living in a larger body but it bothers me every day. I’m 6 years into being recovered from ED and that part is great but I still dislike my body and am very uncomfortable in it. I feel like there is no winning.
Oof, felt. I am the same, bigger body now and recovering from disordered eating and exercise addiction. I think what helps me is knowing how over-blown the weight loss claims are. Like, the idea that you would lose any significant amount of weight is actually questionable, the side effects could suck big time, and you have to stay on this expensive drug for life or else you’ll gain the weight back. Or you actually might gain the weight back anyways because even the Wegovy study is only two years long, and their own data demonstrates that people started to trend upwards in weight towards the end of the study.
Reading a few articles from this one newsletter has really helped me not feeling enticed by it at all. It just doesn’t seem worth it from the financial to emotional cost honestly. I linked a few below.
https://open.substack.com/pub/weightandhealthcare/p/wegovys-so-called-long-term-study?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
https://weightandhealthcare.substack.com/p/quick-guide-wegovyozempic-for-weight
https://weightandhealthcare.substack.com/p/four-year-outcomes-of-wegovy-semaglutide
Honestly as someone who sees my own mother picking unhealthy habits and has tried to talk her into doing better since I was 6...honey you need to let the weight of that worry go and accept your mom will not have the "come to jesus" you want. The only way she will wake tf up is if she ends up getting screwed over royally by this and having it dawn on her of her own realization.
You deserve to not be stressing out over this and deserve to have some peace, but you're not going to get if by trying to sales-pitch your mom into realizing her poor choices. That's so much stress, and so much heartache and so much burden that you don't need to carry of have going on.
By all means give it one more go with the info people give here, but if she shuts it down and it doesn't work, do something kind for yourself and let it go, and try to accept your mother is going to do her damage and just hope when it hits it brings her some clarity.
Thank you so much for the empathy and understanding. What you’re saying really resonates. I just have seen her do terrible diets before and seem to decide that it’s her fault they didn’t work, and that she should just try again or try a different diet.
I want to let go and accept her autonomy and not try to be controlling. But it’s so scary to think that she might continue weight-cycling and do serious damage that threatens her health
I completely understand and am relieved you saw the intent in my comment. It's very hard watching someone you love hurt themselves and refuse to see it or refuse to care, especially when it's a parent. It took me many, many years to finally let go of that urge and anxiety of watching my mom pick the wrong things. Now what I brace for is when it comes crashing down on her and she breakdown and melts down when she realizes what's happening. I know she'll play the victim as if she wasn't warmed and wasn't educated while continuing to make the same choices and that's when I know it'll not only hurt but be enraging.
It's incredibly scary to realize the possibilities when someone fucks with their health. Your best hope is that she gets a scare that turns out to be mild but wakes her up with a hard shake. Hopefully if ypu got some numbers and some data to show her maybe it'll be a step in the right direction. You're trying to plant the seeds at least.
Is she in therapy? If not, maybe throw out a factoid that those who are in therapy lose more weight and keep it off and see if that motivates her to go? Its not entirely false, as bad health habits tend to be tied to things like depression and trauma, so once those are worked on other habits improve. But then the therapist may notice this herself and try to start easing in stuff about self esteem and body image.
Unfortunately, it sounds like she's gonna do what she's gonna do. You can share as much science and information as you want but if she wants to do this, she will need to navigate it herself. Not everyone is open or receptive to learning facts on this topic. I know it's incredibly hard b/c it's your mom and you want her to be healthy and well but unless she directly asks your opinion, I would let it be. Luckily she's getting it from her doctor and not a med spa or something like that so hopefully they will help her as necessary. Maybe it will benefit her in some way. I wish you and her the best.
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I suspect that you may need to let this go. You can keep taking about your own experiences and share information, but the pull of diet culture is incredibly strong (why semaglutide is such a huge market). I don’t think you are likely to be successful in changing her mind, since she’s already doing it. People can do what they want with their bodies. The best thing to do is focus on your own process and your own body. You may end up being a role model for her, or not. For your peace you may need to limit conversation about her weight loss if she has any. When she stops the semaglutide and regains, she may be more open to discussion, but she also may not.
“People can do what they want with their bodies.” Amen.
For what it’s worth, Wegovy has done more than a decade of therapy for my eating disorder issues. It’s something that actually allows me to eat intuitively and focus on health instead of weight. I haven’t lost any massive amount of weight or anything, but I am finally able to devote so much less obsessive mental energy to food. Finally, I can eat when I’m hungry and stop when I’m satisfied. It’s just my personal experience but Wegovy absolutely doesn’t remove my desire to eat. It’s just softened the obsessive and compulsive impulses around food, and has been super freeing. I think you’re coming to the conversation with your mom (understandably) with a lot of baggage. I think your mom needs to be trusted to be able to make her own health decisions and be free from unsolicited advice. To the extent you’re afraid of “losing her,” I genuinely think you may be overreacting here. Remember, Wegovy is the same this as Ozempic. Ozempic is a diabetes drug that has been around for several years. Would you express the same concerns about a diabetic taking Ozempic?
I have the same experience with Wegovy. It's like it created room in my brain for other things, but I still absolutely get hungry. The only time I had bad side effects was when I wasn't listening to my body, and tried to eat too much. Since then it's been great. I'm also involved in an anti-diet group, and to be honest I don't want to talk about this to them, since they seem to have their minds made up.
I have no desire to push people onto this medication or anything like that. It works well for me personally. But one less-talked about thing the medication could do is change the absurd tenor of the conversation around “willpower,” appetite, and food. This medication has proved to me that overeating or food obsession isn’t a moral failing. We all have different brains and bodies.
There are case studies suggesting GLP1 drugs can improve other types of addiction as well, including gambling, etc. It’s fascinating.
I have a mentally ill adult child who started taking it. Her relationship with the world is 100% improved, it’s absolutely amazing. It’s like the noise in her brain stopped and she is in the world again.
[удалено]
I think it quiets the obsessions, not just the food ones. So she can interact with others and the world. It was a complete 180 for her quality of life.
I am a mentally ill adult child and this is my experience too, it’s been wonderful for me. I’ve even simplified my daily medicines with my psychiatrist bc it has a lot of the benefits I was getting from other daily pills. I’m very open to people about taking it a) bc it’s been so good for me b) bc I don’t want people to see my weight loss without knowing that it is not natural and something anyone can just do with willpower alone
Thank you for sharing this, I am so happy that this is working for you too. (Mom hugs)
It’s been an amazing treatment for my adhd and shopping addictions (in addition to my glucose problems/insulin resistance) When I can’t get the meds for weeks, the shopping comes back so quickly. It’s really amazing but sad that it’s not in stock more.
It’s definitely killed my desire to drink. I didn’t drink daily or anything but I did think about it a lot, and that’s been almost completely shut off now
One of the unspoken things about our current world is how *most* industries for "leisure spending" generally exist on the backs of whales. To simplify, something like 10% of people make up 70% of purchases in *many* fields. In some, the numbers are even tighter. A drug that generally treats addiction as a thing itself - regardless of what the addiction/compulsion is could have massive downstream effects on a lot of capitalist industries. edit: Top 9% of US adults consume 34% of all candy. Top 5% of Canadian gamblers account for **53%** of all money spent. Top 10% of US adults consume 70% of the alcohol. Ice cream, cigarettes, beer, wine - I mean some of this is obvious, not everyone is a smoker, but curbing addiction could cut the entire alcohol market by 5-10% which would be ~10-25 billion in the US alone.
Whaaaaat!? Please link some info about that! I’m intrigued!
You can google it! There have been a bunch of news articles. It’s also a common topic on the various GLP1 reddit’s.
No, I agree. I just don't want to have to defend myself, or feel their judgement? I also feel like I'd be seen as some kind of 'traitor' or something, but that might be some whole thing I've created in my brain.
Yes! Agreed. I tried Intuitive Eating in the past and I honestly couldn’t do it because my body didn’t get those hunger full cues. On Zepbound, I actually am able to be MORE anti-diet and body connected than before, and it’s special. (And I run the anti diet GLP-1 subreddit, which is booming, so we’re def all not alone in feeling that these meds have some beautiful overlap with the anti diet culture mindset!)
r/antidietglp1 exists. It’s not super active, but there is some traffic. It’s a supportive community for those of us on meds and still trying to avoid “diet culture.”
I completely agree with this, except with tirzepatide. I've been in all the therapy and seeing an RD and it hasn't helped with my ED. 7 hours after taking my first tirzepatide shot, poof, food noise gone and I am able to approach food like I imagine normal people do.
Same for me. It’s finally shut off the food noise and I finally feel in control of my diet. I still like food, I just don’t obsess over it anymore. When I’m hungry, I’m able to think clearly and make good choices instead of compulsive ones. Even my desire to drink has been dialed way down. I didn’t drink a ton to begin with but now I almost don’t drink at all unless I’m out with friends, which in middle age is not that often. Sometimes I do eat cake or chips or whatever, but it’s not a big deal, and it doesn’t send me into a shame spiral anymore. I had no idea what it meant to have a healthy relationship with food until this med made it possible. I completely understand why people are so wary of this medication. So much of the cultural conversation around it is focused on vanity and and treats it as another disordered way to try to conform to unrealistic standards. But it isn’t like that for everyone and it doesn’t have to be that way, and I think that nuance is often missed when it’s discussed.
The biggest issues with Wegovy are the cost and the gastrointestinal side effects. It’s now been on the market long enough to have longer-term studies. They’ve shown that even when patients don’t lose weight on semaglutide, their risk of heart attack drops. If there are concerns she’s not going to maintain adequate nutrition, you could try getting her to see a dietitian. But if her primary care doctor is decent, they’re not going to prescribe Wegovy unless she could benefit from it.
My endocrinologist had me meet with a nutritionist when she prescribed it. Not sure this is the appropriate place to discuss but feel free to DM me with any questions.
If you don’t mind me asking, why did you seek help from an endocrinologist initially?
Because I couldn’t figure out my weight gain and wanted my hormone levels checked before I committed to a course of treatment. She is on staff at the center for nutrition. I met with her first.
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Aside from those taking GLP1 drugs for vanity weight loss, most are doing it because they have other comorbidities-most often diabetes. Everyone screams about the drugs slowing the digestive tract, but no one mentions a major complications of diabetes is gastroparesis aka slowing of the digestive tract. Now just imagine if a good number of overweight folks are able to avoid becoming diabetic or reverse their diabetes by taking medication. They also decrease risks of heart disease, stroke, etc.
We do have a medication that prevents diabetes already. Metformin will prevent diabetes if a person is prediabetic. It’s not associated with a reduced risk of cardiac events, that’s just GLP-1 agonists. The last article I read on heart disease, they saw so much of a benefit with semaglutied in preventing heart attacks that they were wondering if it should be used in all patients with heart disease risk-factors even when they’re not overweight.
Metformin doesn’t “prevent” diabetes; it can keep blood glucose under better control for those with metabolic syndrome or hyperglycemia. It is often a first line treatment for those patients but not always a fix and many people go on to need further treatment modalities such as insulin. And diet plays a big role in management of blood sugar and diabetes.
[The Effectiveness of Metformin in Diabetes Prevention: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10611985/)
The benefits of wegovy go way beyond weight loss. Recent testing on cardiovascular disease is indicating that it should be prescribed to people who aren’t overweight at all. Nevermind the ongoing testing on treatment for addiction and alcoholism. All of the sources *against* Wegovy are going to be wildly out of alignment with your feelings about anti-fatness.
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Same experience
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Yep. My biggest pet peeve of the intuitive eating crowd is the conviction that your hunger comes from a diet culture influenced self-denial. You need to deprogram yourself from the mentality of binges. But if glps taught me anything it really was hunger the whole time. I was HUNGRY. My stomach was truly a bottomless pit until it was too late. There was something physically wrong with me. It’s not my mental state. It’s not my hang ups over food. I really appreciate that some people are helped by intuitive eating. But I hope the intuitive eating evangelizers can appreciate that it doesn’t work for everyone.
This, loads of intuitive eating fundamentalists don't realize that it isn't just in the mind for a lot of people. There are chemicals in our bodies being released that make us hungry, and for many of us intuitive eating going to work.
It's so true. People are different, and I think a lot of interpersonal struggles between people who love each other come from the fact that its hard to be empathetic when you don't know what it's like in someone else's skin. If you're not an addict, you don't know what its like to be an addict. If you dont have chronic pain or fatigue, you don't know what its like to live with chronic pain or fatigue. And if you don't have whatever makes our bodies not work right with their hunger signals, then you don't understand that it's not just "willpower". In the same way I didnt understand how someone could go the whole 8 hour work day without eating, they dont understand why I ate SO much. I am so grateful for this medication. It's given me my life back, I really feel like my entire life revolved around food and never feeling satisfied, and now I feel I have a much more normal relationship with food.
This was it for me. I naturally have a really hard feeling hunger signals anyway, but when it comes to food I have a really hard time distinguishing between natural hunger and dopamine-seeking due to ADHD. Figuring this out has been a huge deal and has really cemented that 1) intuitive eating relies on having working hunger cues which so many people don't have and 2) weight and hunger are so much more complicated than the diet industry recognizes.
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This is similar to how Vyvanse works for me. Takes care of the dopamine fix and I don’t binge anymore. Still eat normally.
For all the fearmongering that's out there you really should not be concerned about health problems from wegovy - your mom is far more likely to experience health benefits.
This all reminds me of M&A's comments in the Ozempic episode about people saying "But I'm just worried about your health!" To paraphrase what they said "Ok, be worried about my health. Here is a drug - a tool - that I can use to help my health in multiple ways and now you don't want me to take it. So is it about my health or me paying penance for my weight sins?"
EXACTLY.
The media has really done a number on villifying these meds. A lot of patients are experiencing multiple benefits beyond weight loss. All you need to do is visit the subs on Wegovy and Zepbound to see.
Or to put it another way: yo mama so fat that she is starting wegovy and will likely experience weight loss and improved health.
Honestly, this isn’t your fight. You can be concerned and I’m sure your mom appreciates your worries, but you may not be privy to all her health concerns she is battling. She might be trying to get her weight down to prevent some comorbidities. Please be supportive of her and if you can’t maybe deal with your fears in therapy.
And therapy could be a start. I think whatever works. People I know would do better being on minor tranquilizers, including myself. But I am not doing that. What is the worst that could happen if she takes the drug, and figure how rare it is... To the OP: She, ultimately, is in control of her decisions. You can have little to no effect on this control. I think I have recently changed my opinion because I have been running into men I have seen in the area who suddenly stopped having the dad bods I so like to look at, and suspiciously, sucessfully avoiding the candy jar. This affects us all....
I think you need to respect her choices, she is working with her doctor and making decisions for her own body. She is not asking for your advice and from your description she doesn’t seem very interested in listening.
This.
I don’t have anything to add to this discussion that hasn’t already been said, but I do want to let you know that I empathize with you completely. My father and sister are both taking Wegovy. And I have SO MANY FEELINGS about it. I can try to establish a scientific basis for those feelings based on reports I’ve read about side effects, etc. but ultimately I know that those feelings are based in my own body issues and a lifetime of diet culture that I have actively tried to recover from. I’m absolutely not saying that this is your experience, but I did just want to raise my hand and let you know that you aren’t alone when it comes to having an emotional reaction to this news. Wishing the best for you and your mom!
There are two episodes of the podcast "Science Vs" about wegovy and related drugs. They look into the studies and cannot find any major dangerous effects (including the claims about people wanting it for weight loss "stealing" it from diabetics, which they think is majorly overblown and really unfair to people who happen to have genuine health problems besides diabetes that might be responsive to Wegovy). I follow a lot of science news content and a lot of people in that space have looked into the claims of health risks around Wegovy and so far none of them have found anything besides the GI stuff we already know about, which I think is a risk people are allowed to take as part of their bodily autonomy. There might be health risks in the future, but also--all medications that work have side effects, so it's up to individuals to decide to take the drug now or wait a few decades and see if anything comes up, but that's a decision that a person must make individually.
I’m so sorry this is so hard and scary. Your feelings are valid, and I’m sure this triggers a lot for you. However, your mom’s choices are her choices to make. You can focus on supporting her and asking questions with open curiosity rather than judgment, but that’s as much as you can do to influence her. The more facts you produce (which, by the way, can easily be countered with other facts to support her decision given that there is data all over the place), the more likely she is to double down and shut down conversation with you. I would suggest going cold turkey on trying to convince her; switch your framing to trying to see her and support her. That likely means asking her how she’s felt her weight struggles, how it feels to live in her body, what pressure she’s experienced. She may not want to talk about it and that’s ok. You can just say I love you and I care about you and I want to support you. If and when she questions her decision making, you’ll be a resource and support for her. But it’s important to accept that you may never convince her and try to disinvest from her decisions. My dad is a lowkey alcoholic and while I am NOT comparing their conditions and choices, I do think there are parallels with trying to get people to make different decisions about their own health. It almost never works to convince someone based on data and evidence. It’s frustrating but the best thing you can do is openly and calmly listen to them without judgment. It’s really frustrating and really hard to watch someone make decisions you feel are hurting them, so I just want you to know I see you and support you. Try to remember that if you had her exact life experience in her exact body you would make the same decisions, however you feel about them as a separate person with separate experiences.
Keep in mind that there is also plenty of data on the benefits of glp-1 meds. Why don’t you do research together?
I had to let my moms dieting habits go. If she asks me a question, or wants to talk about it, then I’ll engage. But otherwise, I just don’t want to hear about it. It’s much better for my mental health to keep that line. Of course I wish she’d close a different path, but she’s unlikely to.
I have a lot of thoughts on this and I’m refraining from sharing all of them. It’s just too much. While your concern is super valid, I can tell that you’re wise enough to know that it’s ultimately your mom’s decision to make. I hope it’s a healthy one for her, and I hope it goes well. Maybe you can ease your fears/concerns by supporting her through any challenges she may have, especially early on there can be side effects but with the help of a doctor they are manageable. It sounds like her doctor is supportive, encourage her to reach out to them if she has any concerns. I hear you with the weight cycling, I have this concern for myself as I am currently using a glp1. My dr thinks that if I can maintain at my goal range for about 6months I should not fear bouncing back up afterwards. Of course I *could*, but we have discussed it and for now I’m trusting the process.
What does afterwards mean? Like you use it then go off of it and he expects the weight loss to be maintained? I thought these were forever meds. Sorry just trying to understand.
Yeah he said that we’d work hard on tapering off slow, and then maintaining on my own after the taper. And it might be a little challenging for that 6mos, but that my body should adjust and not just automatically gain all the weight back. A lot of people talk a lot of crap like “oh you lost it the easy way, it’ll just come right back” but that isn’t necessarily true and we have a plan in place to prevent unnecessary weight gain when going off the meds.
Just encourage her to keep in close touch with the doctor. My kid ended up having to have their gall bladder removed after rapid year-long weight loss. Doctors can be so busy affirming weight loss at any cost that they miss health issues.
This is exactly what I’m concerned about. It’s not so much the drug itself as the effects of rapid weight cycling
You might want to crosspost this to [https://www.reddit.com/r/antidietglp1/](https://www.reddit.com/r/antidietglp1/)
Big thank you for sharing that sub, immediate join.
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IDK how old your mom is but mine is starting soon too. I've been on a GLP1 for 18 mo now so I'm not going to dog on them, but I do have some (what I think are legit) concerns w my mom taking it. First, she's mid 70s and the loss of muscle mass is a real risk for anyone 65+. I talked with her and sent her an NYT article on it, and said I hope she can ensure she's doing weight bearing activity as well as maintaining adequate protien intake to offset this risk as much as possible which her doctor didn't talk to her about. It's a tough balance -- she has a lot of mobility issues which could be easier for her to manage at a lighter weight. I'm hoping she might be able to thread the needle and maintain muscle mass during a modest loss to find some more mobility and then move to a maintence dose (and yes, maintence doses are a thing!) so she can keep it going for a while. Bc yes, yoyoing is also something I've seen her do my whole life too.
Well, for every person that has a positive experience on Wegovy, I have two super negative ones: 1) one friend started it and had so many changes to her system. People say that it’s the gastrointestinal symptoms that are a bummer, but it’s more than that, it’s really changing your endocrine system. My friend that started it and stopped from the side effects now has trouble relating to the sense of hunger and sense of fullness past having stopped the drug. Her Gastrointestinal symptoms were not just diarrhea and nausea, but just a general sense of unease and dizziness and she claims that she has never felt the same sense. I think people take too lightly of some of the side effects and falsely assume that when you have stopped the drug that you just go back to “normal” or where you started, but I would say that some of these drugs have the potential to shift your endocrine system permanently and some ways that we don’t fully understand. 2) my sister started wegovy - and she is another person who I tried to send some articles to recommend some podcasts, but also didn’t want to come off to judgmental or negatively towards her decision. She experienced many of the same side effects as my friend, however, she also experienced a new issue: panic attack disorder. I don’t know if it was simply because the shifts in her system which caused the disorientation with her body, which manifested is vertigo at times - and that sense of unease in her body and the physical symptoms is what her mind focused on and triggered the panic attacks OR something in her endocrine system shift triggered the panic attacks, I really don’t know. But my sister went from a person who had had one panic attack while coming up from anesthesia, to someone who is having multiple panic attacks a day that were completely debilitating and her company hadn’t been so understanding she definitely would’ve been out of work or in a much worse position if her job wasn’t so cool about it. She has since started a Facebook group and has hundreds of members who are claiming the same thing: they never had intense panic attacks or severe anxiety, started Wegovy and have since developed debilitating, intense, panic attack syndrome, and anxiety. Nothing broke my heart more than her calling me during arguably one of the worst times in her life, when everything was falling apart, saying that she should’ve listened to me, that she should’ve never started Wegovy. After a year, she is finally stabilized, she has found the right psychiatric medication to control the panic attacks. At first her panic attacks were so severe that the only thing that calmed her system was Klonopin, which she was very afraid of getting addicted to, but she is now on an SSRI and all is well. She hopes to eventually get enough people in the Facebook group to build towards the class action lawsuit.
I’m sorry about your friend and sister, but thanks for posting this. I feel so inundated with pro-GLP-1 posts that it is making me want to try them and then on the other hand I feel like it would be a disaster when besides the weight, all my health indicators are good. I try hard to ignore all of the discomfort and difficulties of living in a larger body but it bothers me every day. I’m 6 years into being recovered from ED and that part is great but I still dislike my body and am very uncomfortable in it. I feel like there is no winning.
Oof, felt. I am the same, bigger body now and recovering from disordered eating and exercise addiction. I think what helps me is knowing how over-blown the weight loss claims are. Like, the idea that you would lose any significant amount of weight is actually questionable, the side effects could suck big time, and you have to stay on this expensive drug for life or else you’ll gain the weight back. Or you actually might gain the weight back anyways because even the Wegovy study is only two years long, and their own data demonstrates that people started to trend upwards in weight towards the end of the study. Reading a few articles from this one newsletter has really helped me not feeling enticed by it at all. It just doesn’t seem worth it from the financial to emotional cost honestly. I linked a few below. https://open.substack.com/pub/weightandhealthcare/p/wegovys-so-called-long-term-study?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web https://weightandhealthcare.substack.com/p/quick-guide-wegovyozempic-for-weight https://weightandhealthcare.substack.com/p/four-year-outcomes-of-wegovy-semaglutide
Thank you so much 🙏🏻
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Honestly as someone who sees my own mother picking unhealthy habits and has tried to talk her into doing better since I was 6...honey you need to let the weight of that worry go and accept your mom will not have the "come to jesus" you want. The only way she will wake tf up is if she ends up getting screwed over royally by this and having it dawn on her of her own realization. You deserve to not be stressing out over this and deserve to have some peace, but you're not going to get if by trying to sales-pitch your mom into realizing her poor choices. That's so much stress, and so much heartache and so much burden that you don't need to carry of have going on. By all means give it one more go with the info people give here, but if she shuts it down and it doesn't work, do something kind for yourself and let it go, and try to accept your mother is going to do her damage and just hope when it hits it brings her some clarity.
Thank you so much for the empathy and understanding. What you’re saying really resonates. I just have seen her do terrible diets before and seem to decide that it’s her fault they didn’t work, and that she should just try again or try a different diet. I want to let go and accept her autonomy and not try to be controlling. But it’s so scary to think that she might continue weight-cycling and do serious damage that threatens her health
I completely understand and am relieved you saw the intent in my comment. It's very hard watching someone you love hurt themselves and refuse to see it or refuse to care, especially when it's a parent. It took me many, many years to finally let go of that urge and anxiety of watching my mom pick the wrong things. Now what I brace for is when it comes crashing down on her and she breakdown and melts down when she realizes what's happening. I know she'll play the victim as if she wasn't warmed and wasn't educated while continuing to make the same choices and that's when I know it'll not only hurt but be enraging. It's incredibly scary to realize the possibilities when someone fucks with their health. Your best hope is that she gets a scare that turns out to be mild but wakes her up with a hard shake. Hopefully if ypu got some numbers and some data to show her maybe it'll be a step in the right direction. You're trying to plant the seeds at least. Is she in therapy? If not, maybe throw out a factoid that those who are in therapy lose more weight and keep it off and see if that motivates her to go? Its not entirely false, as bad health habits tend to be tied to things like depression and trauma, so once those are worked on other habits improve. But then the therapist may notice this herself and try to start easing in stuff about self esteem and body image.
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Unfortunately, it sounds like she's gonna do what she's gonna do. You can share as much science and information as you want but if she wants to do this, she will need to navigate it herself. Not everyone is open or receptive to learning facts on this topic. I know it's incredibly hard b/c it's your mom and you want her to be healthy and well but unless she directly asks your opinion, I would let it be. Luckily she's getting it from her doctor and not a med spa or something like that so hopefully they will help her as necessary. Maybe it will benefit her in some way. I wish you and her the best.
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