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Not that easy, and I'm speaking as a whale with Type II diabetes who was put on both Ozempic (until I couldn't get it because people like you were snapping it up to lose ten kilos) and Trulicity. Ozempic I wasn't on long enough, or at high enough doses, to see any results, but at the initial dosage I tolerated it well but did not see loss of appetite, etc. happening, and those were the touted effects of "this makes losing weight so easy!"
Trulicity I had to stop because the side effects were so bad. Yeah, I lost some weight - due mostly to vomiting and diarrhoea from the gastro-intestinal effects, again not from any curbing of appetite.
And both are not 'miracle cures' as you are supposed to also do the traditional "diet and exercise" accompanying taking the drug, not relying on it alone to lose weight.
There also seems to be problems becoming apparent, now that these drugs are being used by the public at large. Even when using 'as directed', the warning leaflet warns about the risk of pancreatitis and other serious side-effects.
So if you're hoping for quick weight loss - yeah, it may do so. But you'll (1) be expected to diet and exercise alongside it, so give up the greasy biryani and (2) be on it for life - stop taking it, the weight piles back on. Most responsible medical advice would be "you only need to lose ten kilos, stop eating the greasy comfort food and become more active" but if you can manage to wangle it, you may not like the side effects. The major mechanism of action of these drugs is to slow stomach emptying (so you feel fuller for longer, thus don't eat as much and as frequently) and that can be accompanied by everything from flatulence to stomach paralysis.
As for a "cure for obesity" - it seems to work for a lot of people, but not all people, and it probably works best the least amount of weight you have to lose. There's no easy, painless way to lose weight, diet and exercise and life-long changes in eating habits are expected to accompany it (so bye-bye comfort foods forever).
Cure for gambling/alcoholism/addiction? I'm very dubious, I don't see how this links up with the reported mechanism of action. It may be that people have a cluster of behaviours (e.g. they drink and smoke when they eat, and if they're not eating as much/frequently, so they're drinking and smoking less) but I do wonder. I need more evidence on this, rather than "I read somewhere that someone said someone else said they were cured of being an alcoholic by taking Ozempic").
It would have been better to put you on a higher dose than give up on it altogether, though it's a shame the starting dose didn't work for you.
Trulicity, while in the same class of drug, isn't one that's licensed for the purposes of weight loss, just for the management of diabetes. Which is perfectly fine, but a failure in that regard is unexceptional.
Besides, as a Catholic, I'm sure you're aware that not everyone is so lucky as to encounter a "miracle", but Ozempic works for most people, with minimal side effects, and that's good enough for me, even if it isn't efficacious in literally everyone.
For every person like you who drew the short straw, there's who knows how many who did what no amount of advice to exercise or diet achieved.
It doesn't just make your digestion slower, it also makes you less hungry too, in an unrelated manner.
My mom's liver is failing, and no amount of attempts to diet or the tough love people have given her has helped. If she doesn't lose weight, I don't like her odds of making it another decade.
Is life worth living? Depends on the liver.
My case is far more discretionary, and as life has demonstrated, I am capable of losing weight the hard way. I'd still very much rather not, and when it gets cheap enough I'd much rather just take a pill. I, like millions or billions of others, am more than willing to pay for convenience.
Expected? Certainly. Do you need to? Not really. It curbs your hunger my itself, and doctors have been impotently suggesting the above to billions who listen and nod intently and go back to having a cheeseburger. The drug makes the burger unappealing. At that point you're not fighting yourself, you're just doing what you want to, naturally or not.
You should be gratified to hear this came as precisely much a surprise to you as it did to the manufacturers and inventors of the drug.
Doesn't mean it's not true, the human body is fucking weird.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-new-weight-loss-drugs-like-ozempic-treat-addiction1/
The research is very much in the preliminary stages, yet it's promising.
Yet the weight loss, which is by far the most important thing the drug does, is indisputable.
Supply chain issues. The chemist was able to get a month's supply of the starting dosage, but when the doctor was upping me to the higher one no dice - they couldn't get it. So that's when my doctor switched me to Trulicity and the side effects were so bad I said "hell with this, I'm not staying on this one".
I read all the wonder stories and was hoping this would happen for me, but nope. Burgers were just as appealing as before. Granted, had I been able to get onto the higher dose for a longer time, who knows? But I think I wouldn't be that lucky. If someone can invent a reliable, guaranteed, "this will kill your appetite" drug that doesn't involve paralysing your intestines or invoking streaming diarrhoea, I'd greatly appreciate that. The only time I haven't been able to eat is when I was so sick, the nurse literally couldn't get a measure of my blood sugar with the 'stick and test strip' meter, and they made me drink sugary energy drink to get the numbers up.
I really, really, really wonder about the addiction results. It'd be grimly funny in that cosmic irony way if it actually does have something to do with the mechanism of addiction, and all the people telling fatties like me "look porker, losing weight is easy: just stop stuffing your face with junk" had to admit that maybe food too is addictive for some people. But probably not, and something weird is going on there.
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If you truly are obese, have Type II diabetes, and can't get access to Ozempic, have you considered a ketogenic diet?
I've been doing it for a couple months now, and the results have been incredible on both my waistline and on the scale. And I'm loving the food too. So delicious.
For me, the need is not that huge. I was only slightly overweight before and I'm doing it mostly out of vanity and for sports performance. For you, the benefits of a keto diet could be life-changing.
I know that pretty much everyone who is overweight wants to poo poo the keto diet, giving excuses not to do it, and reasons why it won't work for them. But it does work for almost everyone who tries it. I'd give it a shot!
I am back on the 'restricting carbs' diet, having fallen off the bandwagon from the early days. The only problem is, I fucking love carbs.
Bread. Having, say, a bread roll with the salad for lunch sends my blood glucose soaring (and since I'm doing regular testing now, I can track what happens when). Same with noodles, rice, pasta, potatoes... so I have to severely cut back on those.
No problem, I can eat as much protein and veggies as I like, right? Except meals don't seem 'right' without carbs, plus I get hungry within hours so I'm not really reducing what I eat as much as I am now obsessing over "I have to wait minimum two hours after eating to measure my blood sugar to be sure it's within the limits so I can eat again". It's crazy and I don't know why my physiology seems to work like that, but that's how it is.
This is surprising to me. That's the big benefit of keto for me. I don't really get hungry.
When you first start, there's a big difference between 100 carbs/day and 20 carbs/day. Gotta get to ketosis first and then you can relax a bit. But hunger shouldn't be a problem. If you go full carnivore, you'll feel stuffed all the time and have trouble getting even 2000/calories a day.
Personally, I love the keto bread products that are available as well. Not nearly as good as real bread, and expensive as fuck, but it definitely fills out the meal.
By the way, I sympathize. Everyone's body is different and reacts to carbs differently. You seem to have gotten a bad roll of the dice. I hope you find a solution that works for you!
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Ditto from me on basically everything you said.
Under the theories that power Keto, most of the food that's easily available in the Western world is completely terrible for you. Eating food that's terrible for you and also taking a drug that probably makes it have less of an effect for life seems like a worse idea than just eating better food.
I advocate a gradual approach to moving onto Keto. Start by making a list of everything you eat. One at a time, replace each thing with something more Keto, ideally starting with the worst. Keep going until you notice positive effects. The usual standard of 20g of carbs a day is probably not necessary to get down to if you're not trying to lose hundreds of pounds of weight. If you can stay under 100g or so of carbs a day and not notice at least some positive effects, then it's probably not going to work for you.
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