a mini soap-box moment on a tired Sunday...

SW ⟫ 207.7 | CW ⟫ 171.9 |

Ozempic: ⟫ 1 mg

Well, good news, apparently I can have chicken again! Such a small thing to bring such joy! We had KFC for dinner yesterday – I had three pieces of chicken, some fries and two cookies. I didn’t really want anything else all day, so that was pretty much it so I don’t think it could be considered too bad.

I read an interesting post on Reddit where someone was trying to express how they have lost nearly 90 lbs (or thereabouts) without changing up their diet. They don’t calorie count, do macros or anything like that and they are losing weight. The point they were trying to make (I think) was that using Ozempic has fixed something in their body – for years, they have dieted the traditional way with limited success. They know all of the usual dieting tricks, what you’re meant to eat, etc. They made the point that they are eating processed food, not exercising more than they were before, and the weight is coming off for the first time in forever. A few people piled on, saying that if they didn’t take this opportunity to change their eating habits, the weight would just come back once they stopped using the medication.

But I think those people missed the point. This person wasn’t advocating sitting on your butt, eating take out every day and wishing the weight away – they were trying to explain how they have done everything their doctors have asked of them in the past, and the weight still hasn’t shifted. Using semaglutides has made them realise that there is something fundamentally wrong with their body’s chemistry which made weight loss by ‘traditional’ methods nearly impossible. And that for some people, using these drugs is going to be a life-time thing and that there’s no shame in that. We take aspirin for our heart, blood pressure medication – all kinds of things we use each and every day and we’re not vilified for it, but because it’s weight loss medication, some people seem to think you should want to come off of it as soon as possible and make masses of changes whilst you’re taking the medication so that the weight doesn’t come back afterwards because you haven’t learned anything.

The point was also made that there are slender people out there who eat like this every day – they eat take out every now and then, some of them are couch potatoes, some of them eat well and exercise – but those that don’t follow these ‘fat people’ rules are not vilified or shamed for it. Nobody looks at them and says their weight is their fault. Because quite often, it isn’t. It’s genetics, body chemistry, luck. I’m not saying that there aren’t people out there who work hard for their health and fitness, but not all slender people do. And if we recognise that, if we accept that part of it really is luck of the draw, then can we just stop trying to make fat people feel like lazy, useless, worthless human beings because of how their body works?

I’m not talking about the stereotypical view of the fat person who eats nothing but garbage – I’m talking about the people who’ve tried every diet out there, attended every slimming club, cried themselves to sleep because they feel like such a failure, when a lot of the time it really just isn’t their fault.

I thought it was a powerful message. I understand that some people won’t get it – will think that it’s another excuse being made, but the reality of it is that if that were the case, semaglutides wouldn’t be working for people the way that they are. And maybe we could get rid of one of the last acceptable phobias/isms – fat-phobia, fatism. We can stop looking down on fat people, thinking of them as lacking in willpower. Most of the fat people I know and knew in the past were far from lacking in willpower. I know people who gave up solid food for over a year to lose weight; I know at least three people who have had weight loss surgery – all of that, everything involved in that took willpower. And yet, so many of them failed, regained the weight, are struggling.

I vaguely remember reading about a study where a doctor was saying that people using semaglutides shouldn’t be dieting in the traditional sense – they should be allowing the drugs to make the changes to their chemistry and working with it that way. That these drugs finally enable some people to hear that ‘I’m full’ signal in ways they never did before. Buzz words like ‘food noise’ are important because there is finally a recognition that not everyone suffers from that. Some people don’t have that constant need/desire to eat – that some people’s brains work better than others in this instance.

Okay, off my soapbox. I’m shattered. I’ve written a short story for my writing day and I have an ARC to read and review. I think all of us need a quiet day and I want to make the most of that. I didn’t get to sleep until around 6.30 am and woke up just after 10 am so am really, really tired. Tomorrow, I want to try to use my resistance bands again and build up to using them every other day. I don’t want to do anything excessive – the last thing I need to do is exhaust myself and/or push myself too hard. But it would be great to try and be more active, tone up my arms initially and then as I get stronger, begin working on my legs too.

So it’s time to shut down the laptop, chill out with a cat and do some reading!