Ozempic: Please Stop Making Me Feel Bad for Taking My Medication
Ozempic is also not the same thing as insulin, which is often a medical necessity for diabetes type 2, while GLP-1 meds are supplemental treatment that helps increase insulin sensitivity. Even doctors don’t believe in declaring that certain groups “require” these drugs more than others. “It’s really difficult to say someone needs a medicine more than another person when they both have indications for these medicines,” Spencer Nadolsky, DO, an obesity and lipid specialist physician and the medical director of the online weight-management program Sequence, tells Glamour. “Both those with type 2 diabetes and with obesity have immense benefit from these medicines. I don’t think it’s fair to say one group is taking away from the other.”
You might also be wondering why I don’t just diet and work out the “old-fashioned way.” If so, I think it’s very cute of you to assume that I, along with everyone else on these meds, haven’t spent our whole lives trying to do just that. Before starting Wegovy, I spent 18 months working with an endocrinologist on drastic lifestyle and diet changes, and I mean drastic: I cut out sugar and carbs, started running, and sliced my daily caloric intake by at least half. Did my AC1 levels improve? No! Sometimes they even got worse, while my weight stayed exactly the same. Such has been the case for me during my entire life, and for many other patients currently taking GLP-1 agonists (the umbrella medical term for injections like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro).
“People fail to understand that obesity isn’t just caused by what you eat, but by internal workings of your body. If it was something I could control, I’d be controlling it without medication,” says Diana Edelman, a 43-year old food and travel writer taking Mounjaro. “It’s so incredibly difficult to lose weight without Mounjaro—I was biking 14 miles a day, eating clean, whole food and plant-based meals, and it was nearly impossible to budge the scale. So many people have this idea that people who are obese are lazy and don’t care, and it’s just false.”
Similarly, if I don’t strictly monitor my calorie intake and burn at least 600 calories with cardio a day, I actively gain weight. What my body requires to maintain its status as a regular, fully functioning healthy body is equivalent to what I imagine some athletes live like. It always felt so unfair; living the lifestyle of a body I could and would never have. And this wasn’t and isn’t about weight, per se: I just wanted to feel good, and I never did. And it, quite frankly, sucked.
But the worst part of it all? The food noise. I was always thinking about food, especially since, as noted above, I had to live in a state of slight starvation just for maintenance. This resulted in a lot of bingeing, which only made me feel worse in the long run. And yes, I tried therapy (and have been in it since I was 18); lots of us have. “I have struggled with my weight my entire life, deeply suffering from binge-eating disorder. I tried diet, exercise, and therapy for my disordered eating—nothing could shut off the food noise in my brain,” Selena*, a 33-year-old taking Mounjaro, tells Glamour. “GLP-1 medication has given me back control over my life. My mental health has never been better than the past four months taking this medication.”
Diana experienced the same. “For the first time ever, the food noise stopped—I don’t think about food all the time anymore, and my binge-eating disorder went away,” she says. “It’s released me from the chokehold food has always had on me, from the fear of gaining weight because I ate one thing that isn’t considered healthy, and it’s helped me develop a far healthier relationship with food and how I judge myself for what I eat.”
I couldn’t agree more; in fact, some nights I cry because I feel so free. Going to dinner with friends is no longer stressful, and I stopped mapping out snack stations upon leaving the house. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I was finally able to stop taking Klonopin for panic attacks after starting this drug, which is something I hadn’t been able to do in 12 years. I’m deeply embarrassed to admit any of this, and to acknowledge that food has so much power over me that I have to inject my left thigh every week with medication that makes my brain work properly. I wish I weren’t embarrased about this, but I am. And considering how people taking GLP-1 meds are treated, it’s not like you can blame me.
