Zepbound, One Year Later (and related thoughts)

My one year of Zepbound anniversary passed a couple of weeks ago without any real notice or celebration on my part. I started the drug on January 7, 2024. I‘ve blogged about my experiences on Zepbound a few times before in the last year, and so far, so good. Mostly.

The good news is I’ve lost about 40 pounds so far. My goal is to lose another 20 pounds, which, according to the problematic BMI scale, would just barely move me into the category of “overweight” from where I am now, which is “obese.” I know, I know, it probably doesn’t matter a whole lot if I manage to get my BMI from a 31 to a 29, but still, it’s a goal.

Anyway, I’m feeling pretty good. The last time I had blood work done as part of my yearly check-up was back in June and after I’d lost about 25 pounds. My various numbers had improved (I moved out of the “pre-diabetic” category, for example), so I’m assuming that all of that would be even better now. The main side effect I have from Zepbound are all “tummy issue” related, and I still do have a bit of that, especially for a day or two after I inject myself. But it’s still not a big deal. And the stuff I wrote about before is still true: it’s easier to exercise (though I haven’t been “running” as much lately, now that I think about it), I find myself eating healthier (I mean besides just eating less), I’m enjoying the fact that I have had to once again buy some new clothes that fit better, and so forth.

The bad news is I’ve only lost about 6 pounds since the beginning of October. I think there are two reasons for this. First, I think it’s fair to say my main remaining food weakness is sweet things. My cravings for fatty things like a Big Mac are way down, but I still like candy. So fall and winter were rough with all the leftover Halloween candy (especially since we literally only had 3 very small kids with their parents knocking on our door out here in the new house!), with pies and just excesses at Thanksgiving, cookies and cakes and stuff at Christmas, etc.

Second, I think I’ve reached the limits of the drug’s effectiveness alone. As I wrote about back in May (after I had lost about 20 pounds), the reason why Zepbound was working for me was I just wasn’t as hungry, so I didn’t eat much between meals and when I did sit down for dinner or lunch, I ate less. So it didn’t feel like I was trying at all.

But at this point, if I’m going to lose another 20 pounds, I am going to need to try. For me, “trying” means being more in an “I’m on a diet” mindset in the sense cutting back even more on calories, eating even better, doing more at the gym, all that kind of stuff. I think the Zepbound helps with that too. Besides quieting the so-called “food noise,” it also helps me to better recognize when I’m eating just to eat, versus eating when I’m actually hungry. One of the ways it does this is if I do find myself hungry nowadays, it’s almost certainly because I actually do need to eat something.

But enough about only me. What else is in the news about GLP- 1 drugs and Zepbound and the like? Here’s a few articles that struck me as interesting in recent months.

  • From something called The List comes “Elon Musk’s Holiday X Post Surely Got Under RFK Jr.s Skin (& Caused Trouble for Trump.)” Apparently, Elon has lost a bunch of weight from these drugs too. Among other things, Musk posted on X “Nothing would do more to improve the health, lifespan and quality of life for Americans than making GLP inhibitors super low cost to the public. Nothing else is even close.”

    RFK Jr. is no fan of these drugs at all, and he’s quoted in this article (from other sources) saying “If we just gave good food, three meals a day, to every man, woman and child in our country, we could solve the obesity and diabetes epidemic overnight.”

    Funny enough, I think both of these fascist meatbags full of shit are correct. As I’ll get to next, these drugs have all kinds of benefits, including a lot of things well beyond weight loss. The two main barriers for making them more available are the injectable format and the high costs. Also no question that Kennedy is right too: good food isn’t going to solve these problems “overnight,” but I get his point. But for me (and I’d bet 99% of GLP-1 users), it’s not an either/or thing– the drugs help me eat better.
  • There were several MSM articles about a study that was published in Nature Medicine called “Mapping the effectiveness and risks of GLP-1 receptor agonists.” That link to Nature Medicine only works at all if I access it through the EMU library, so your results will vary. Anyway, the study used the US Department of Veterans Affairs database to study hundreds of thousands of patients who had used these drugs, primarily for diabetes. As Time summed it up, patients taking “GLP-1 medications had a lower risk of a number of health conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, addiction, seizures, blood-clotting problems, heart conditions, and infectious diseases, compared to people taking the other types of diabetes treatments. The people taking the GLP-1 drugs also had increased GI-related issues, low blood pressure, and arthritis, as well as certain kidney conditions and pancreatitis—most of which are already known side effects of the medications.”
  • I have a news alert for Zepbound, and I see a lot of articles like this one: “The Best Obesity Drugs Aren’t Even Here Yet,” from Gizmodo. Take that with a smaller piece of cake (if you will), but the success of Ozempic and other drugs like this have fueled a bit of a gold rush in research. Soon there are going to be versions of these drugs that are more effective, and, with any luck once they are available in pill form, versions that will be a lot cheaper.
  • And last, I guess Oprah got into a bit of trouble the other day. From Page Six, “Oprah Winfrey faces backlash for making bold claim about ‘thin people’ after taking weight-loss drug.” Read the whole thing, but I guess you can see the “bold claim” in this snippet on Instagram:

I mean, I am not in the business of defending Oprah, especially since she originally denied that she was taking these drugs to lose weight. And I’ve never been a skinny person, and of course people end up being skinny (or fat) for all kinds of different reasons. But I have had conversations similar to this with skinny (or not overweight at least) people, and I think what Oprah is saying here is right– at least for about half of the thinner/very in shape people I know well. One very skinny guy I know told me one time he has to remind himself to eat some days, and I assure that has never been a problem for me.

But I will say there is one other category of skinny/very fit people I have known over the years: the person who got a serious medical wake-up call. I’m talking about having a doctor say if you don’t make some seriously big changes in diet and exercise, you’re gonna die a lot sooner than you should. I think this category is much smaller than the category of “I never feel that hungry,” but I can see why these people might not like Oprah implying they don’t have will power or “work” at it.

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