Dropping the Covid 19
Sometimes I hate this but that's ok
Well it’s almost the end of January, and I’m coming up on an important date. Not my birthday, the 14th, or my party, which was the 21st. On the 27th, this Friday, I get to visit my doctor for a check-up on how my new prescription has been going.
Anyone who knows me knows that I have struggled with my weight since… I guess the 5th grade? Looking back at myself, when I was teased and tormented for being fat, I now realize I was a perfectly healthy kid who was being teased and tormented for being extremely cute and all the other kids were jealous (or so I have made myself believe, now). But I wasn’t clinically overweight, and I wasn’t in any kind of health jeopardy. I played soccer in the spring and fall, and was on the swim team in the summer. I exercised a lot. I probably ate just as unhealthy as any other 90’s kid, with our steady diet of pizza and Coke, but what really got to me was that feeling that I’d never be the beautiful thin 90’s girl of my dreams. I wanted to be Kelly Bundy. In many ways, I still do.
Of course, I’d never be a svelte white woman, but I didn’t know that at the time. So I started “dieting” as young as 10, with diet Coke and Slim Fast shakes. My mom hated this for me, and told me every single day that I was being ridiculous, but how could I accept that when I was surrounded by high-cut swimsuits worn by stick-thin women who were considered the ideal? Barbie was skinny. I wanted to be Barbie. I wanted the world that was promised to beautiful women.
By the time I got to high school, the mixed messages of “I’m fat and I can deal with it” and “I’m fat and I hate myself” combined and I put on enough weight to be considered clinically obese. Keep in mind, I’m 5’ tall, so that doesn’t exactly take much. At my heaviest, I was 180lbs, and dreading the day I’d get to 200, because I truly believed I eventually would. I don’t have a lot of photos of myself from back then, because I was so embarrassed of myself that I’d hide behind my “uniform” of an XL t-shirt and jeans.
That isn’t to say that I didn’t have self esteem, though. I truly believed I could be whatever I wanted, just as a fat girl. I had boyfriends who abused me enough that I went down the path of weight loss to please them, and in college dropped weight so fast that it fucked with my entire brain. I went from a size 16 to a size 10 in college using Atkins, and was so afraid of gaining that weight back that I learned to eat as little as possible through my 20’s and eventually got down to a size 6, which I never dreamed of.
The funny thing is, I still thought I was fat. At my thinnest, I was around 122lbs with tiny bird bones. I had skinny arms and my husband mentioned feeling uncomfortable at the sight of my ribs. I thought all that was AWESOME, until I hit my 30’s and it all began to crumble.
The 30’s
When I hit 30, I made it a huge party. I hate being sad about birthdays. I rejoice in growing older and wiser, but I wasn’t rejoicing when the weight kept resurfacing. My years of eating little were taking vengeance on me by way of hypoglycemia. I had destroyed my body’s ability to maintain a reasonable blood sugar and wound up getting nauseous if I didn’t eat often. I started eating more carbs, trying to eat like a normal human being, and the weight crawled back. My doctors weren’t too concerned until a few years ago, when I hit 160lbs, which means I put on over 30lbs in less than 10 years. This is while I was running 5ks, going to the gym, eating more healthy homemade meals, and being as health conscience as humanly possible for someone who works a full-time job.
Then covid hit. Depression hit. I was stuck in a condo for over a year, and by the time we finally sold it and moved out, I was at the heaviest I’d been since high school. I talked to my doctors and they suggested going on Metformin, since my PCOS was probably screwing around with my insulin. I took it for over a year and it didn’t really help with my weight at all. I was pretty much resigned to be that size forever until one fateful day when I saw a TikTok about Mindy Kaling.
I’ve liked Mindy since she wrote for the Office, and was pretty excited to see a thicc brown woman on TV. Seeing her drop all this weight had me kind of surprised, until I found the conspiracy theory surrounding it - supposedly she lost all this weight on Ozempic.
For those of you who don’t know, Ozempic is a medicine originally created for diabetics to help regulate their insulin release. When you eat carbs on Ozempic, it makes your body release more insulin. It also restricts your appetite. Since I’m insulin resistant due to my PCOS, I decided to ask my doctor about it. She was totally fine with giving me a prescription based on my history, which was shocking because according to the internet, it’s very hard to come by.
As of this post, I’ve been on Ozempic for nearly 4 weeks. I’m on the smallest dose, .25mg, which is the starting dose. You’re supposed to start low and increase the dosage every 4 weeks until the actual maintenance dose of 2mg. I’m happy to follow that advice because this medicine has completely turned my life and brain upside-down when it comes to food.
Now, I love food. LOVE FOOD. I always have, and I’ve always loved trying new things and going on food adventures. The problem is that the more I restricted, the more my brain thought about food. It was always in my mind. I needed late night TV snacks, even if they were healthy, and my constant blood sugar issues made me have to eat every 3 hours.
A Brand New Drug
Ozempic changed all of that. Where I was once so focused on food I couldn’t think about anything else, now I have almost no appetite. I can’t eat more than a few bites. The giant slices of pizza I used to enjoy from Benny Capolago’s? I can maybe eat half. Or a quarter. I can’t eat more than 1200 calories a day, and I have tried. More than one beer makes me so sick I spent the evening of my birthday party puking my guts out. Last night I tried ordering Chinese takeout (to celebrate the new year, of course), and I couldn’t eat it until today. I’ve lost around 8lbs, which doesn’t seem like much, but for someone with a frame like mine it’s a huge deal.
The thing is, not being able to eat a lot has both made me sad and overjoyed. I can eat carbs like a regular person now, which means I can eat things like grapes and fruit without getting huge blood sugar spikes and crashes. I don’t have to worry about feeling nauseous or sleepy because I haven’t eaten in a few hours. I feel like I’m finally free of my food obsession, and with it, my love for alcohol. I can’t drink more than one drink a day, something both my liver and brain are probably rejoicing over.
So this Friday, I’m excited to see my doctor for an update. I’m excited to show her that this medicine has been such a miracle, and that I’d like to continue to be on it for as long as it takes for these effects to stay forever. I don’t miss the food obsession, or the shame and discomfort that came when I binge ate. Being able to eat whatever I want without overeating or feeling guilt and shame? YES PLEASE.
I’ve heard the rumors around Ozempic, by the way. The “Ozempic parties” celebs are supposedly throwing, where they inject each other (terrible idea..). The idea that Kim Kardashian used it to drop of a ton of weight. I don’t know if any of this is true, but it wouldn’t surprise me. That said, I don’t envy anyone who tries going on Ozempic without knowing the side effects. Some people starting at the full dose have had to go to the hospital. I’m taking it very low-and-slow here, following all of the instructions, and being satisfied with a very slow weight loss.
But yeah, I’m 39 now, and for the first time in a long time, I’m not ashamed with myself. My goal is to be as happy with myself as humanly possible and welcome the summer with the sluttiest outfits I’m capable of wearing. No more hiding behind big shirts or loose fitting jeans. 2023 is gonna be the year I let myself live, and I owe a lot of that to this medicine. PRAISE OZEMPIC. ALL HAIL SCIENCE. I’M BUYING CUTOFFS!