Grieving the end of the Wegovy era

Today I'm grieving my decision to stop Wegovy. I have done six injections of the 1mg dose and the diarrhea is no longer manageable with Imodium. It's explosive and disruptive to my sleep and makes it really hard to get work done, be it in the office, in the OR, or on call. So, I've decided to stop it. I messaged my obesity medicine doctor, who wants me to trial Saxenda. I just worry it'll do the same thing because it's in the same class of medications. But, I guess I should at least give it a try. I will probably wait another week or so before starting because I want to get the Wegovy out of my system for a bit first.

Given that I'm making this change, I figured it's also a good opportunity to think of other things that'll make me more successful in my weight loss. As much as I hate the idea of it, I think I need to get back to calorie counting and taking food photos. I had told myself smaller portions and making better food choices was good enough, but if I really want this, I think this'll help jumpstart more weight loss. I am already killing it at the gym, so I don't have much to add there.

Anywho, here's breakfast from today! I'm getting dressed for the gym shortly and then I have tons of errands to run. I'll do a weigh in on Wednesday.

Aaand because I can't help myself, here are kiddo photos from the weekend:

Dual citizenship

I finally bit the bullet and got a new gym membership. With my work discount, it cost $8.49 a month. I really like this new gym for weight training, but it's a bit crowded and there is no natural light. So, I decided to keep my other gym membership too and now I've got two gym memberships. Given the reasonable cost of the second one, I feel like there's no reason to make the choice between the two of them as they both have perks and drawbacks. Now I've got dual gym citizenship...ish?

Today was a postcall day. I wanted to use the day for some productivity, but I was really tired so it was a fight to get out of bed. But, I did it. I picked up a Target order, went to the gym, did physical therapy, picked up a Walmart order, came home and showered and met with our Disney planner to try to coax Nasur into a Disney cruise. It worked. We're set to go in January 2024 and I'm pretty excited about it. I think the kids will have a great time and they better, for the price tag. We're also bringing along my mom and she's never been on a cruise, so I'm hoping it's a fun virgin sailing for her too.

As for a wegovy update, I have been managing the diarrhea with Imodium. I've done a month now at the dose that really upsets my stomach and I am still trying to figure out what I want to do moving forward. 

Going in the right direction

I have lost about 33.4 pounds since recommitting to this whole weight lose shindig. Obviously i'd like to keep going and since the Wegovy has really helped, the hesitation to change things up is STRONG. So, we'll see? I have messaged my obesity medicine doc to get her thoughts and am waiting to see what she says.

Courage and shame

So, let's start with some good news: It may just have been a GI bug! My symptoms have completely resolved already. In the past, the diarrhea lasted for days, so let's cross all things crossable that I can continue to take Wegovy. It's been really helpful to me and I was bummed that the solution may have just been to scrap that and try something else. But, bonus, I lost 6.6 pounds since my last weigh-in with all the explosions. I'll take it!

In other good(ish) news, I finally worked up the courage to tell Nasur that I was blogging again and that I wanted to talk to him about everything. That took a lot of courage for me because I have a lot of shame surrounding my weight. Nasur has never seemed to care about my weight, but when I met him, I was significantly less heavy than I am now (like 210 pounds). I've also completed a residency, had 2 children, developed a lot anxiety, and become an attending, sooo...

Back to the shame note. I'm not sure when I developed such a sense of shame about my body and my weight. I remember growing up and we never really talked about weight in my household. My doctor never said anything at doctor's visits, either. And honestly, I don't know if it would have changed anything. It's not like I was blissfully unaware that I was overweight. I distinctly remember being 200 pounds in like 7th or 8th grade. I also remember having a very hard time finding clothes that fit that weren't matronly because the stuff in bigger sizes was always meant for older women. That's probably a major reason why I hate shopping to this day. Nevertheless, the point of this rambling is to say that I am ashamed of letting myself get this big again. I'm ashamed of how I'm probably known as the fat one in my group of friends. I'm ashamed of the fact that there are things I simply don't fit in because of my size. It's embarrassing because I feel like it's my fault. Now, my obesity medicine doctor would tell me that it's not entirely my fault. Could I make better food decisions? Yes. Could I exercise more? Sure. But, one of the things I found really helpful in working with her is that she pointed out how much less disordered my eating is when on these medications. I don't binge. I eat reasonable portions. I snack less between meals. And she emphasized that it's okay that I need a medication to help me with that. So, now I have to be okay with that. And by talking to Nasur, I'm working towards being okay with myself too. Unfortunately, it appears Nasur now has the GI bug, so he's out of commission tonight. So, despite all this courage I worked up, the conversation still hasn't happened because I sent him off to bed. Here's hoping I'm courageous tomorrow!

Diarrhea as a weight loss tool: Don't recommend it, but highly effective

Distressed

Me: Here I go, winning at this weight loss thing

GI system: The fuck you are

Me: Calm down there, slugger

GI system: The fuck I will

Me: Please?

GI system: Get fucked

<Entering GI distress mode>

For those of you just joining this broadcast, I've been taking ozempic/wegovy since about September of last year. Hit a major road block in December when I went up to 1.0mg and had literally 20-30 episodes of explosive diarrhea daily for 5-6 days. I stopped taking it and started all over in January and slowly titrated up my dose so as to avoid it this time around. Soooo, that didn't work. In case that wasn't painfully obvious by the above communication. 

That being said, Reyah had a GI bug two days ago, so it could also be that. I also majorly upped my fiber to try and avoid diarrhea with this increased dose, so maybe that backfired on me? Who knows, but suffice to say, work was not fun and a lot of explosions occurred. Thankfully, I was able to hold things in for between patients and then scurry home as fast as possible and take some zofran and lay in bed. Nasur has done all the evening duties so I could just worry about exploding when needed. Really hope this improves by tomorrow otherwise clinic will be miserable.

Send happy thoughts to my GI system!

Breakfast pre-GI distress

Lunch while distressed

Tried to settle my tummy with some toast - did not work

One-week Challenge and Getting Back on the Train

Since I last blogged, I really didn't make much of an effort to eat any better. I kinda figured I'd wait until after Thanksgiving, which would allow me to eat whatever I wanted without guilt tripping myself. So, I did just that. I also let myself skip the gym more than necessary, telling myself [again] that I'd wait until after Thanksgiving. Now, however, I'm working on getting back on track for two reasons: 1) I can feel the effects of not exercising (I'm waaaaay cranky all the time) and 2) Nasur's fiancé visa was approved (!!!!!) and I want to feel like I look at least a little better when I see him next.

So, I've begun intermittent fasting again and going back to the gym. This week was my first week back to the gym after a two-week hiatus and today was my first appointment with my personal trainer in a month. I don't think we did anything super remarkable, but I felt like death afterwards. It may have been because I've been having diarrhea since yesterday, but when I got home, all I wanted to do was lay in bed forever. However, I only laid in bed for an hour because my friend Adam and I had planned to go to see the Nutcracker at the Detroit Opera House. I've never actually seen that ballet live before and it was a great performance. Afterwards, we braved the cold to go get some sushi, which was worth it. Since getting home, the diarrhea has picked up in frequency and decreased in viscosity. It's pretty miserable. I'm hoping it magically resolves overnight because I have a lot I want to accomplish tomorrow.

In other news, I'm going to do a one-week challenge for the gym to really get myself back on the train. I work every single day from the 7th until the 30th, so I figure I'll work really hard for this first week and taper my gym visits to 3-4 times a week as I get more and more and more exhausted. So, the challenge starts tomorrow! Wish me luck! 

Some recent eats/dog photos:

Cold spaghetti - yum!

Breakfast

Bailey

Bailey, Mayzie (and Katniss in the background)

My go-to sandwich

Letting my bowels do their thang

So today was a shitty day. Literally. I had diarrhea all day Sunday and then last night post-workout, I had diarrhea again. That happens sometimes when I eat right after working out so I didn't think anything of it until today when my bum exploded...in the toilet. Don't worry. No one was harmed in the making of this blog post. 

The good thing was that instead of 3 hours of lecture this morning, we had 15 minutes of evaluations so I was able to go home from 9:30 to 1. I let my bowels do their thang, napped for a bit, and then headed back to the office. My stomach was kind enough to get its shit together while I was seeing patients, but once I headed home, it kicked up again.

Because my stomach still wasn't feeling it, I walked to the nearest redbox, rented some movies, grabbed some diet 7up and a bagel and walked home to spend my evening on the couch flu-style. I watched Epic and Olympus Has Fallen. I also ate some popcorn because I was still hungry and I figured plain popcorn wouldn't rile anything up.

Now I'm heading to bed and hoping for a better tomorrow. Perhaps both my bowels and the government will get it together for tomorrow. I'm going to go ahead and bet on my bowels ;-)

Breakfast (this was pre-explosion)

Dinner (post-explosion)