I am officially obese and have been since more or less forever. I am also mildly diabetic and have been on insulin (10 units of Levemir a day) for about a decade. I lost a tremendous amount of weight--around 75 pounds--seven years ago as a result of a two-week hospital stay. Toward the end I was joking with the docs that I was going to write a book called "The Alexandria INOVA Diet: How I Lost 75 Pounds Lying Flat On My Back." I've kept that weight off owing in part to taking 60mg of Torsemide--a powerful diuretic--daily.
All of which is by preface to my own Ozempic experience. I went on Ozempic last January (2023) and decided to go off it in December. I was on the 1ml dose for most of that time, and I took my weekly shot as part of my daily pharmacopeic intake. Incidentally I was shooting up in the arm and not in the belly as you mention, which apparently didn't have any adverse effects. In any event nobody told me different and I don't even know if that's what the instructions say: all I know is, Ozempic uses the same injector pens and disposable needles as Levemir, no doubt owing to the fact they're both Novo-Nordisk products.
During that time, I lost about another twelve pounds. That's it. And after six month of not being on Ozempic, I've regained about half that--but only half. I suspect that the reason is the mechanism by which the doctor explained to me--and there's articles on the web that confirm this--Ozempic causes weight loss: it slows down the rate at which your stomach digests food, meaning you fill up faster and stay full longer.
So, why did I go off it? Simple enough: I found it to be like a chemical form of lap-banding. To be clear, I am not lap-banded myself, but I know a couple of people who have undergone the procedure and they all say the same thing: lap-banding doesn't reduce your desire for food, it just keep you from ingesting more than a few ounces at a sitting. If you eat too much at one go, you experience uncomfortable sensations of fullness and in some cases it may cause reflux.
So instead of eating three squares a day, my lap-banded friends started eating a half-dozen or more smaller meals a day. After a while--as is pretty much universally the case with diets of all sorts (you mention this)--they weighed as much or more as when they'd started.
I experienced some of those same sensations, and I found it very unpleasant, the more so that food is one of the few sensual pleasures left to me in this life. As I like to say, I might not live to be a hundred if all I ate was dry toast and all I drank was plain water...but it sure would feel that way.
So I decided the game was not worth the candle, and thus I went off the drug. Since apparently these effects on your stomach are permanent, I surmise I've kept part of the weight off for that reason. But that is pure speculation on my part.
I make no recommendations and my experience is but a single data point. But I share it with you to give you some real-world experience with which to weigh what you read about this drug.
Thank you for the real world description of what being on Ozempic is like.
Also, "Ozempic causes weight loss: it slows down the rate at which your stomach digests food, meaning you fill up faster and stay full longer." Yes, that is absolutely correct.
As to the arm, not the stomach, I can't say this definitively, but my guess would be if you're getting a subcutaneous injection, it doesn't make a huge amount of difference where you inject it as long as it's into body fat.
"...if you're getting a subcutaneous injection, it doesn't make a huge amount of difference where you inject it as long as it's into body fat." Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And now that I think about it, when I was first introduced to self-medicated Levemir that's exactly what they told me: find some spot on your body where you can "pinch an inch" and shoot yourself up there. And the upper arm and the circle of fat around my waistline were the two prototypical sites: I just never shot up in the belly and I'd completely forgotten it was an option. Wups! :-)
I am officially obese and have been since more or less forever. I am also mildly diabetic and have been on insulin (10 units of Levemir a day) for about a decade. I lost a tremendous amount of weight--around 75 pounds--seven years ago as a result of a two-week hospital stay. Toward the end I was joking with the docs that I was going to write a book called "The Alexandria INOVA Diet: How I Lost 75 Pounds Lying Flat On My Back." I've kept that weight off owing in part to taking 60mg of Torsemide--a powerful diuretic--daily.
All of which is by preface to my own Ozempic experience. I went on Ozempic last January (2023) and decided to go off it in December. I was on the 1ml dose for most of that time, and I took my weekly shot as part of my daily pharmacopeic intake. Incidentally I was shooting up in the arm and not in the belly as you mention, which apparently didn't have any adverse effects. In any event nobody told me different and I don't even know if that's what the instructions say: all I know is, Ozempic uses the same injector pens and disposable needles as Levemir, no doubt owing to the fact they're both Novo-Nordisk products.
During that time, I lost about another twelve pounds. That's it. And after six month of not being on Ozempic, I've regained about half that--but only half. I suspect that the reason is the mechanism by which the doctor explained to me--and there's articles on the web that confirm this--Ozempic causes weight loss: it slows down the rate at which your stomach digests food, meaning you fill up faster and stay full longer.
So, why did I go off it? Simple enough: I found it to be like a chemical form of lap-banding. To be clear, I am not lap-banded myself, but I know a couple of people who have undergone the procedure and they all say the same thing: lap-banding doesn't reduce your desire for food, it just keep you from ingesting more than a few ounces at a sitting. If you eat too much at one go, you experience uncomfortable sensations of fullness and in some cases it may cause reflux.
So instead of eating three squares a day, my lap-banded friends started eating a half-dozen or more smaller meals a day. After a while--as is pretty much universally the case with diets of all sorts (you mention this)--they weighed as much or more as when they'd started.
I experienced some of those same sensations, and I found it very unpleasant, the more so that food is one of the few sensual pleasures left to me in this life. As I like to say, I might not live to be a hundred if all I ate was dry toast and all I drank was plain water...but it sure would feel that way.
So I decided the game was not worth the candle, and thus I went off the drug. Since apparently these effects on your stomach are permanent, I surmise I've kept part of the weight off for that reason. But that is pure speculation on my part.
I make no recommendations and my experience is but a single data point. But I share it with you to give you some real-world experience with which to weigh what you read about this drug.
Thank you for the real world description of what being on Ozempic is like.
Also, "Ozempic causes weight loss: it slows down the rate at which your stomach digests food, meaning you fill up faster and stay full longer." Yes, that is absolutely correct.
As to the arm, not the stomach, I can't say this definitively, but my guess would be if you're getting a subcutaneous injection, it doesn't make a huge amount of difference where you inject it as long as it's into body fat.
"...if you're getting a subcutaneous injection, it doesn't make a huge amount of difference where you inject it as long as it's into body fat." Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And now that I think about it, when I was first introduced to self-medicated Levemir that's exactly what they told me: find some spot on your body where you can "pinch an inch" and shoot yourself up there. And the upper arm and the circle of fat around my waistline were the two prototypical sites: I just never shot up in the belly and I'd completely forgotten it was an option. Wups! :-)