|
.-') _ .-') _
( OO ) ) ( OO ) )
.-----. ,--./ ,--,' ,--./ ,--,'
' .--./ | \ | |\ | \ | |\
| |('-. | \| | )| \| | )
/_) |OO )| . |/ | . |/
|| |`-'| | |\ | | |\ |
(_' '--'\ | | \ | | | \ |
`-----' `--' `--' `--' `--'
lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Lost and found: Life after Ozempic and other weight-loss drugs was just
the start for these four people
By Carma Hassan and Zoe Todd, CNN
Updated:
9:01 AM EST, Sat November 16, 2024
Source: CNN
Research shows that has used one of the , most of them trying to manage
chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease and others to
help them lose weight.
But of the people taking these drugs – including Ozempic and Mounjaro
for diabetes and Wegovy and Zepbound for obesity – stop treatment
before 12 weeks, before the medicines can provide clinically meaningful
weight loss, studies also show.
Side effects such as diarrhea, vomiting and nausea can prompt some
people to quit the medication. Others stop because they don’t feel
like the drugs are working or because of concerns over price. Although
manufacturers offer assistance programs, they can cost around $1,000 or
more without insurance.
“We call them anti-obesity medications because we are treating the
chronic disease of obesity, and that means that you usually have to
stay on these medications indefinitely,” said Dr. Eduardo Grunvald,
medical director of the weight management program at the University of
California, San Diego. “If people want to stop or try to stop taking
them, I have no problem supporting them. But most people will regain
the weight if they stop it.”
Here’s what people found after they tried the medications.
Finding confidence: Alexus Murphy, 22
Alexus Murphy is still nervous. She paused her Zepbound injections for
a few weeks and is watching her weight like a hawk, worrying about any
hint of weight gain.
“I’m looking for a scale everywhere I go,” she said with a laugh.
The 22-year-old content creator approached her doctor about weight loss
medication in March, before she had breast reduction surgery.
It was her first surgery, and she wanted to lower her BMI to minimize
health risks during the operation and in recovery.
She lost almost 50 pounds over the course of 23 injections – a
five-month journey.
Murphy shared her milestones in on TikTok, fielding questions about
side effects and how she got access to the drug.
“This medicine changed my life for the positive in all aspects of my
social life, in my personal life and just how I show up for myself.
It’s allowed me to be more confident in the spaces that I walk in,”
she said.
But there were downsides, too. She felt fatigued and had nausea and
brain fog while she was on the injections.
“Once I take the medicine, I have to take two days to myself because
it’s just like your body’s working out. Your body’s working out
without you [physically] working out. So even small things like me
going up the stairs or like me carrying things, I will be super overly
out of breath rather than like me now, I’m able to move around, get
up, not feel groggy,” she said.
Murphy also battled hormonal acne for the first time in her life. And
perhaps most frightening, she had several fainting episodes while she
was on Zepbound.
Doctors warned her that her blood sugar was low and that she was
letting herself get dehydrated, so she tried to be more mindful about
her food and water intake.
Murphy now weighs less than she did in middle school and says it has
improved her mental health.
“The breast reduction was a big step, but the weight loss put a
little cherry on top,” she said.
The Houston college student got her medicine at no cost through her
health insurance in her home state of California, Inland Empire Health
Plan, a program for people with Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid
program.
“In this economy, I don’t think I would be able to afford it, and
at that point it would be considered a luxury,” she said.
Still, just before hitting her goal weight, Murphy decided to stop
using Zepbound for a few weeks to see if she could make it the rest of
the way on her own.
“I wanted to prove to myself that I could lose the last 10 pounds
towards my goal weight naturally, just so that I wouldn’t be
dependent on the medicine,” she said. “I don’t have any habits or
anything that I’m addicted to besides social media. So I wanted to
kind of keep it that way.”
She’s been fasting, eating one meal a day and working out three or
four times a week.
But after hitting her weight loss goal while off Zepbound, she felt she
was backsliding and took another dose of the medication.
“I felt swollen, and I was worried about how much I was eating,”
she said. “I couldn’t control eating sweets. I was falling back
into my food habits.”
Murphy feels sure that this latest dose of Zepbound will be her last.
“It’s not worth it because of the acne, and I had other hormonal
side effects,” she said.
And although she hasn’t yet shared her decision to stop taking
Zepbound with her TikTok followers, she hopes her audience will stay
with her.
“I’m hoping that my audience follows me outside of just my [weight
loss] journey and I’m able to encourage people to continue to just
care for their wellness. Whether you’re on the weight loss medicine,
whether you’re not, but just overall being more conscious of your
health, especially girls transitioning from being like a teen to a
young adult,” she said.
Finding inner peace: Steven Ray, 37
Life after weight-loss medications has been smooth sailing, Steven Ray
says.
In fact, he just got back from a cruise where he was able to walk
around confidently without a shirt – a first for a man who, growing
up, felt so self-conscious about his weight that he wore a t-shirt in
the pool.
Ray, 37, used compounded semaglutide through a wellness clinic.
Compounding is the process of making copies of drugs that are
commercially available. It’s allowed by the US Food and Drug
Administration during a shortage – which, until recently, applied to
the GLP-1 drugs due to .
Ray lost over 40 pounds in four months and quit the medicine cold
turkey after hitting his goal, with his prescribing doctor’s
blessing.
The Houston-area father of two said he’s been able to maintain his
weight loss, hovering at around 168 pounds since his last injection in
May.
The FDA doesn’t review compounded versions of GLP-1 drugs for
safety, effectiveness or quality, and the agency has received in people
who used compounded semaglutide.
Ray was willing to take his chances.
He was “tired of being fluffy” and wanted to be a better role model
for his kids, so Ray checked out a wellness clinic to learn more about
whether weight-loss injections were for him.
“At the end of the day, you have to take care of yourself,” he
said. “You have to be healthy to help people.”
Aside from a little acid reflux and some stomach cramping, Ray says,
he’s grateful he didn’t notice many side effects from the
weight-loss drugs.
His blood sugar, cholesterol and testosterone levels have improved. And
maybe just as important, he now feels great about himself. His kids
have noticed the changes, too.
“I make it a point to make better decisions for them so they can live
a healthier life,” Ray said.
To maintain his weight loss, Ray prioritizes portion control, making
swaps like ordering a kids’ meal at fast food restaurants and eating
off a small plate instead of a regular dinner plate.
“The way that I see this medication is, it’s a lifestyle change.
And this is the crutch that is helping you to adjust to your new
lifestyle,” Ray said.
Finding strength: Becky Bell, 69
Becky Bell used to tell people that she would never run, even if
someone was chasing her with a gun.
Now she’s got two 5K race bibs and has signed up for another race on
Thanksgiving Day.
Bell, who lives in Woodstock, Georgia, said she had tried to lose
weight using different diets over 25 years. But after her husband died
in 2014, she says she practically “fell apart.”
“I just didn’t want to do anything but eat,” she said.
She was living a solitary – and sedentary – life. In 2020, her
doctor prescribed Ozempic to help her lose weight and prevent her
prediabetes from progressing.
“I was very close to being 300 pounds. I knew I had to do something
because I have some bad heart history in my family that told me I
needed to do something to keep from dying of a heart attack,” said
Bell, 69. “I needed to get my health back on track.”
Ozempic was the first step toward her goals, but she had some
reservations. She didn’t want to take it forever. And while taking
the drug, she lost her desire to eat.
“It was really too good at suppressing my appetite, to the point
where I was told by my doctor that I was almost malnourished because I
wasn’t getting even a thousand calories in daily while I was on
Ozempic,” she said.
Bell felt very sick while on Ozempic, she says, with nausea and low
energy. She wanted to sleep all the time. She would often have dizzy
spells, especially when she was getting up from sitting or lying down,
and even fainted a few times.
In October 2023, after losing 70 pounds, she stopped using Ozempic
because of the side effects. Then, when gym owner Max Nazaire
approached her about joining Safe Haven, a fitness studio for adults
over 50, she decided it was worth a shot.
“I lost the weight, but I felt like I was still fat, because I
wasn’t working out,” she said.
Now, after a year of mountain climbers and squats at the fitness
studio, Bell has more than just muscles to show off.
“Working out here, the people that come here give you so much
encouragement,” she said. “I feel like it’s my family now.”
The sense of community is important for her, and joining the gym has
given her a place to go and a reason to get out of the house.
Nazaire says he sees a lot of clients like Bell: people who had to stop
using weight-loss medications, due to the side effects or because of
the cost, and are now looking to maintain or continue with their
weight-loss efforts.
“The first thing we do is, we make sure that they’re practicing
really great lifestyle habits. And when we talk about lifestyle habits,
making sure that they’re getting enough nutrients to be able to
facilitate sustained weight loss. It’s always about sustainable
weight loss,” he said.
Bell can be found at Safe Haven four or five days a week. She’s lost
25 more pounds in the past year, for a total of nearly 100 since she
started Ozempic in 2020.
“I am so tickled that I am into a large. I’ve gone from 3X when I
started this journey to a large,” she said. “I don’t even
remember the last time I was in a large shirt size.”
Occasionally, she sees a commercial for Ozempic and briefly considers
going back on it. But ultimately, she’s not tempted to go back on the
medication.
“Aside from the exercise, the confidence that I have in myself is
just so much more than I ever thought I would have,” she said.
“It makes me love myself.”
Finding balance: Dustin Gee, 37
Dustin Gee was flipping through vacation photos when he realized that
he didn’t recognize himself anymore. What should have been a dream
trip to Peru in January 2023 with his husband had been a struggle.
“I love traveling, and I’ve always been really active and been to a
lot of cool places, but this is the first time I’ve been to a place
where I just felt like – I knew I didn’t feel completely like
me,” Gee, who lives in Bellingham, Massachusetts, said.
Gee had gained about 30 pounds, and for the first time, he noticed
mobility issues. He found that he would rather stop for ice cream than
explore Lima through long, rambling walks.
“It was kind of really in that moment that I went back through family
photos and different milestones in our journey from the day we got
licensed to become foster care parents and just said, ‘Where did I
go?’ And so that really set me on a path to having serious
conversations with my doctor and starting to explore serious steps to
begin to lose weight,” he said.
Gee, 37, had one big reason behind wanting to lose weight – well,
actually, three: his sons, Cristian, Emanuel and Jackson, whom he and
husband Alex had been fostering since 2020. The family had an adoption
date set for spring, and Gee refused to meet that milestone feeling
“bound and drained.”
He talked to his doctor about his concerns and got some tips about
managing stress as a parent, ways to cope with emotional eating and how
to plan for physical activity. He also got a prescription for Wegovy.
Gee started using the drug in February 2023 and had lost 30 pounds by
the adoption date in May.
“It makes it even more meaningful just knowing that at that same
time, while we were making such a critical decision in our life as
parents and as a family, to also know that, for a set period of time
leading up to that, I was also making big decisions and commitments
towards my health,” Gee said.
His concerns went beyond his appearance. He was also worried about his
blood sugar and cholesterol levels, especially because obesity and
heart disease run in his family.
Between February and September 2023, Gee lost about 45 pounds on
Wegovy. He stayed on the drug for a full year before deciding he was
ready to look at lifestyle changes and possibly quit the medicine.
He started following the , which has a health program designed to
accompany GLP-1 drugs, in February.
Gee liked how the program helped him build good habits to maintain his
weight loss, and he enjoyed tracking his meals, setting his intentions
and logging his weight in the app every day.
He decided to give himself another year on Wegovy while using the
program to help reshape his mindset.
Gee lost another 5 to 7 pounds in the first two weeks and now works as
an ambassador for the program. He switched to a maintenance dose of
Wegovy in September and aims to be completely off it by February.
“For me, at this stage in life, I feel much more confident and really
kind of excited to go off of it. … I don’t view it as a challenge
but as just this next step of holding myself accountable and continuing
to make great strides and be present for my family,” Gee said.
The key to sticking to his routines is structure.
“When you can build routine, you can build consistency, and that’s
what results in a sustainable, maintainable lifestyle. But as a family
with three active boys and different routines, right, we live our lives
off of structure,” Gee said. “So a lot of the choices I’ve made
have been things that didn’t need to be a drastic shift to make my
lifestyle one way but instead work for the lifestyle that I have and
doesn’t allow me to easily get derailed from that.”
He also relies heavily on support from his husband to help keep things
on track and his sons to keep him on his toes.
“We can be active. We can go out of the house and kayak all day or go
on long walks,” Gee said.
“I try to do my best to talk with them about the changes that I’m
making and why, and that’s because we want to be healthy, and that
with that comes the ability for us to be a happier family and to enjoy
our time together,” he said.
Gee regularly does low-impact cardio and strength training and gets in
walks as often as he can through the workday with a treadmill desk.
“I just always try to put on like a sneaker for the day. It doesn’t
necessarily need to be a workout shoe, but I find that that just helps
me too, because I can do this [treadmill], walking around the house,
walking to get the mail, choosing to walk when I can over taking a
simpler route,” he said.
He plans to stick with the Mayo Clinic Diet program, which is now a
part of his lifestyle.
“At this point, I’m ready, and part of me wants to move into this
next chapter knowing that I can rely on myself entirely and not
necessarily on the weight loss medication,” he said.
CNN’s Tal Yellin contributed to this report.
|