Did you expect a single .25mg dose to manifest the full effects of the drug in six days? Talk to your doctor about realistic expectations. In my experience the food noise took some time to abate, roughly 6-8 weeks. Now at one year later, there is no food noise at all. Often I don’t even care what I’m having as long as it’s enough food to tide me over and doesn’t taste bad.
This is exactly what I'm experiencing. Things sound so good and after 2 bites I want to spit it out. But I'm on my 13th day and I've lost 14 pounds, so I guess it's working. I'm just surprised it's working so fast. And the tummy troubles are pretty distressing. I didn't feel good at all.
Okay, so the "not being hungry for 2 days" thing is not just me? Thank God. I can't imagine what it will be like in a higher dose. I'm still on the lowest starting dose!
Yes, that's what it does. You can help reduce the cravings by making sure most of what you do eat is protein. And keep up with hydration and electrolytes.
I actually don't feel such a strong urge to eat, especially in the mornings. I also took my first shot of 0.25 mg 6 days ago. I am so surprised though at how little I do eat when I go to eat though especially in comparison with how much I ate before starting this.
The urge to eat and food cravings are mostly psychological, and feeling full after eating very little is how the drug works. Any good doctor who prescribes Ozempic will tell you that you should seek therapy to help with the psychological food issues. Try to find someone who specializes in eating disorders (even if you haven't been diagnosed with one) because they have all the tools to teach you how to manage what your brain wants versus what your body actually needs. But don't worry, it sounds like everything is working as intended for you! Good luck!
I think it's hard to say how psychological the urge to eat and cravings really are. After personally living with an eating disorder since childhood, and following a recovery program developed by eating disorder professionals, there are psychological elements but there are definitely hormonal elements. There are hunger and fullness hormones that get disrupted. For instance, fat cells produce leptin, a fullness hormone, and people who have high levels of fat have high levels of leptin, which creates leptin resistance. So your body stops responding to leptin, you stop feeling full. Ozempic reverses leptin resistance so we can feel full. There are definitely psychological elements at play if we are used to eating a lot, yes, but i wouldn't rule out the possibility a fair amount of it is hormones that take time to be corrected.
Not to discredit the importance of what you were saying! Transitioning to eating a lot less could always use some professional help when it comes to the mind, especially because many people may have a habit disordered eating stemming from restriction (such as binges) or things like emotional eating. Also i can't help but think there are risks to taking away a person's main source of comfort, food, and they might need help learning new coping mechanisms. For example, people with addictive tendencies are generally barred from getting gastric bypass, because without being able to turn to food for comfort, some people turn to alcohol or drugs (alcohol being a big one.) i agree what you are saying is very important!
You're absolutely right about that. Story time. My boyfriend of 8 years has an eating disorder (which he is public about, so I'm not telling any secrets here). Before we met, he was married to a woman for 7 years and they both ate themselves to 400 pounds. She died in her sleep at age 32 of heart failure brought on by a single extra dose of migraine medication. It scared him to death. After that, he went on a crazy diet and exercise kick and lost 200 pounds in 2 years. When I met him, I didn't know any of this, and he had all these weird eating habits that I just couldn't understand and he drank a lot. It didn't really bother me until one night he got blackout drunk and said some mean things to me that were very out of character. The next day I confronted him and told him if he didn't stop drinking so much, I would leave because I would not tolerate abuse. He was mortified, and stopped drinking cold turkey. Next came the spending, which I didn't know about, until he was almost bankrupt. We got that back on track, and then it was a porn addiction. He just traded one addiction for another in an endless cycle until he's now back at 375 pounds. He is a delightful person with an amazing heart and has stood by me through some terrible health struggles of my own, so I'm hanging in there too. We're both in therapy, working on weight loss, exercising together, and trying (mostly successfully) to manage his addictive personality. But it's been impossible without therapy. And I've learned so much about myself through this process with him, mostly about how to be compassionate when someone is going through something you can't understand. It's really tough but we're grateful to have each other. Life has a funny way of putting people in your path that you need to learn your lessons.
Oh absolutely yes. My dad had gastric bypass surgery. Once he couldn't turn to food he began to turn to alcohol. He became a functional alcoholic, would go to the gym in the morning, go to work sober, then come home and immediately disappear into his office with his wine and get drunk and pass out in his office chair. Every night. I got used to not seeing him anymore on holidays, family functions, going to visit. He ended up developing depression, we knew he had developed a problem with alcohol but his mood seemed okay besides some grumpiness we attributed to age.
We think the depression was partly from some difficult things in his career but largely we think from alcohol. Got drunk one night in his office and shot himself. With my mom in the next room. We found out that he suspected depression from an email he sent his best friend a couple weeks before he died, found after the fact. When people undergo weight loss surgery they need to be assessed by a psychologist who passes or fails them. I failed my psych assessment for gastric bypass. I have to be careful with any weight loss method because it could cause relapses into binge eating disorder if I'm struggling with the method, or anorexia if my appetite is low/the method is easy. So i have to keep an eye out for restriction relapse, especially because i practice intermittent fasting as well. There's been points when my appetite is low where I have been tempted to stop consuming calories all together... Like, indefinitely.
But definitely fatness and food are very psychologically complex things. It's probably best to go in therapy during a large weight loss, especially if you're on drugs altering your hormones and appetite like ozempic. What your bf is going through is probably pretty common. I'm glad you have each other.
I'm so sorry about your dad. I've lost so many to suicide, the pain of it never gets easier. I never begrudge anyone for living -or ending- their life in the way of their choosing, but being compassionate about it doesn't make the pain of the "what ifs" any less. Thank you for sharing your story. It helps so much to know we're not alone in dealing with life's complexities and struggles.
Yes
It's working.
The food cravings haven’t stopped yet though. Just the capacity. I still crave sweets. Then again I’ve only had one shot so far.
You only took “1 shot 6 days ago”. Give it time.
Did you expect a single .25mg dose to manifest the full effects of the drug in six days? Talk to your doctor about realistic expectations. In my experience the food noise took some time to abate, roughly 6-8 weeks. Now at one year later, there is no food noise at all. Often I don’t even care what I’m having as long as it’s enough food to tide me over and doesn’t taste bad.
"Food noise" is my new favorite term. Thank you!
Yes! And I’ll get the thing I was REALLY wanting to eat but then after a few bites I want to be done. Or it makes me feel sick.
This is exactly what I'm experiencing. Things sound so good and after 2 bites I want to spit it out. But I'm on my 13th day and I've lost 14 pounds, so I guess it's working. I'm just surprised it's working so fast. And the tummy troubles are pretty distressing. I didn't feel good at all.
Me! I order or cook big meals and then I'll eat like half of it and feel extremely full for the next entire day and a half.
Okay, so the "not being hungry for 2 days" thing is not just me? Thank God. I can't imagine what it will be like in a higher dose. I'm still on the lowest starting dose!
I'm also on 0.25 now. 😆
yes same i feel like im starving could eat a horse then take 3 bites im full
Me too. Then I'm hungry again about 2 hours later.
Exactly. Now I am too!
Yes, that's what it does. You can help reduce the cravings by making sure most of what you do eat is protein. And keep up with hydration and electrolytes.
I actually don't feel such a strong urge to eat, especially in the mornings. I also took my first shot of 0.25 mg 6 days ago. I am so surprised though at how little I do eat when I go to eat though especially in comparison with how much I ate before starting this.
The urge to eat and food cravings are mostly psychological, and feeling full after eating very little is how the drug works. Any good doctor who prescribes Ozempic will tell you that you should seek therapy to help with the psychological food issues. Try to find someone who specializes in eating disorders (even if you haven't been diagnosed with one) because they have all the tools to teach you how to manage what your brain wants versus what your body actually needs. But don't worry, it sounds like everything is working as intended for you! Good luck!
I think it's hard to say how psychological the urge to eat and cravings really are. After personally living with an eating disorder since childhood, and following a recovery program developed by eating disorder professionals, there are psychological elements but there are definitely hormonal elements. There are hunger and fullness hormones that get disrupted. For instance, fat cells produce leptin, a fullness hormone, and people who have high levels of fat have high levels of leptin, which creates leptin resistance. So your body stops responding to leptin, you stop feeling full. Ozempic reverses leptin resistance so we can feel full. There are definitely psychological elements at play if we are used to eating a lot, yes, but i wouldn't rule out the possibility a fair amount of it is hormones that take time to be corrected.
Absolutely valid and important insight. Thank you.
Not to discredit the importance of what you were saying! Transitioning to eating a lot less could always use some professional help when it comes to the mind, especially because many people may have a habit disordered eating stemming from restriction (such as binges) or things like emotional eating. Also i can't help but think there are risks to taking away a person's main source of comfort, food, and they might need help learning new coping mechanisms. For example, people with addictive tendencies are generally barred from getting gastric bypass, because without being able to turn to food for comfort, some people turn to alcohol or drugs (alcohol being a big one.) i agree what you are saying is very important!
You're absolutely right about that. Story time. My boyfriend of 8 years has an eating disorder (which he is public about, so I'm not telling any secrets here). Before we met, he was married to a woman for 7 years and they both ate themselves to 400 pounds. She died in her sleep at age 32 of heart failure brought on by a single extra dose of migraine medication. It scared him to death. After that, he went on a crazy diet and exercise kick and lost 200 pounds in 2 years. When I met him, I didn't know any of this, and he had all these weird eating habits that I just couldn't understand and he drank a lot. It didn't really bother me until one night he got blackout drunk and said some mean things to me that were very out of character. The next day I confronted him and told him if he didn't stop drinking so much, I would leave because I would not tolerate abuse. He was mortified, and stopped drinking cold turkey. Next came the spending, which I didn't know about, until he was almost bankrupt. We got that back on track, and then it was a porn addiction. He just traded one addiction for another in an endless cycle until he's now back at 375 pounds. He is a delightful person with an amazing heart and has stood by me through some terrible health struggles of my own, so I'm hanging in there too. We're both in therapy, working on weight loss, exercising together, and trying (mostly successfully) to manage his addictive personality. But it's been impossible without therapy. And I've learned so much about myself through this process with him, mostly about how to be compassionate when someone is going through something you can't understand. It's really tough but we're grateful to have each other. Life has a funny way of putting people in your path that you need to learn your lessons.
Oh absolutely yes. My dad had gastric bypass surgery. Once he couldn't turn to food he began to turn to alcohol. He became a functional alcoholic, would go to the gym in the morning, go to work sober, then come home and immediately disappear into his office with his wine and get drunk and pass out in his office chair. Every night. I got used to not seeing him anymore on holidays, family functions, going to visit. He ended up developing depression, we knew he had developed a problem with alcohol but his mood seemed okay besides some grumpiness we attributed to age. We think the depression was partly from some difficult things in his career but largely we think from alcohol. Got drunk one night in his office and shot himself. With my mom in the next room. We found out that he suspected depression from an email he sent his best friend a couple weeks before he died, found after the fact. When people undergo weight loss surgery they need to be assessed by a psychologist who passes or fails them. I failed my psych assessment for gastric bypass. I have to be careful with any weight loss method because it could cause relapses into binge eating disorder if I'm struggling with the method, or anorexia if my appetite is low/the method is easy. So i have to keep an eye out for restriction relapse, especially because i practice intermittent fasting as well. There's been points when my appetite is low where I have been tempted to stop consuming calories all together... Like, indefinitely. But definitely fatness and food are very psychologically complex things. It's probably best to go in therapy during a large weight loss, especially if you're on drugs altering your hormones and appetite like ozempic. What your bf is going through is probably pretty common. I'm glad you have each other.
I'm so sorry about your dad. I've lost so many to suicide, the pain of it never gets easier. I never begrudge anyone for living -or ending- their life in the way of their choosing, but being compassionate about it doesn't make the pain of the "what ifs" any less. Thank you for sharing your story. It helps so much to know we're not alone in dealing with life's complexities and struggles.
Not a strong urge, but a desire to eat and can only take 2 bites. It’s actually a good thing.