“I Lost 45 Pounds on Ozempic, but It’s No Silver Bullet”
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I’ve been on Ozempic for about a year and a half for my type 2 diabetes. My blood sugar levels are normal, and yes, I’ve lost weight. I started taking the drug before its wonder-weight-loss properties hit the news, before Jimmy Kimmel made an Ozempic joke minutes into hosting the Oscars, before thin women who wanted to be thinner began shooting their bellies with that familiar blue pen I use every Wednesday morning. This was also before my neighborhood pharmacy and local Safeway encountered supply issues. Now I call the CVS every month hoping I won’t have to hunt down my prescription elsewhere.
Let’s get the stats out of the way first. I’ve lost 45 pounds since I started taking Ozempic. I’m 5'11", and I’ve always joked that it takes a 35-pound weight loss for people to start noticing. Sadly, I can say this with authority because since my early 30s, I’ve lost and gained a total of 660 pounds. You read that number correctly.
The abridged narrative goes like this. Most of my life, I was a lean, athletic person even if I thought I wasn’t. I gained a total of 110 pounds with my two pregnancies and joined WeightWatchers to drop 55 pounds after each, and then gained and lost another 40 twice after that. Myriad low-carb diets helped me knock off more 40-pound chunks until I’d eat a bagel, and then another, and another. Perhaps this is why I’m not doing any cartwheels over the latest “drop,” my late mother’s term for a big weight loss, as opposed to “the last hurrah,” the treat she would eat before starting a new diet. My last hurrahs can last years.
I used to love it when people commented on a new me. Now I hate it. “How did you do it?” they ask. I don’t want to fuel the Ozempic craze. I don’t want to dangle a magic bullet in front of anyone who does not need the medication, who buys into the Hollywood-ness of yet another diet trick, who is struggling to understand that wellness, wholeness, is an inside job. This new chapter of my story is real and hopeful. So I’m sharing it instead.
I’ve experienced disordered eating and blood sugar fluctuations my entire life, but diabetes cropped up during my first pregnancy. I injected insulin into my thigh while carrying both of my kids. The diabetes went away after each delivery, but the fear of its return loomed. This was 22 years ago. At every annual checkup since, I’ve striven to score A-pluses on my hemoglobin A1C, fasting blood sugar, and weight. In 2018, I failed every test and was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and in 2021, my numbers spiked, and my former doctor prescribed Ozempic on top of pills I’d already been taking.
Now at a normal weight, I’m able to wear every bra in my undergarment drawer. My internist attributed my loss primarily to Ozempic, and she’s partly right. The nausea sure did help shrink my appetite in the beginning. But it takes more than a weekly shot to keep me well. These are the tools I use every single day, maybe every single minute, to manage my health and heal my relationship with my body.
Facing my shame
Hat tip to Brené Brown on this one. The shame I felt when I stepped on my doctor’s scale after a weight gain hobbled me. Didn’t I want to stave off diabetes? Be the healthiest version of myself? Of course I did. Even some of my close friends don’t know that I have type 2 diabetes. The shame runs like a deep river through my family. Some of my most beloved relatives have fat-shamed anyone who has deigned to put on some weight, including themselves. My maternal grandmother starved herself after she remarried. “No, Grandpa and I will split that raisin” was the family joke.
In the short run, sugar dulls my shame because it soothes me like alcohol and weed never have. A doughnut, or four, helps numb the stray emotions, happy or sad, that I absorb. Here! Hand them over! My pattern has been to fix myself a good stiff carton of ice cream to settle myself down. Self-soothing, restriction, and addiction are rooted in my family. My mom once told me that my raisin-splitting grandmother would take her for a hot fudge sundae when my grandfather was using. He could be so cruel, she said.
Undoing family patterns
There is nothing more liberating than the belief that we can transcend our most painful family patterns. Ten years ago, I was compelled to write a novel about the multigenerational ripples of addiction, which led me to a support group to further understand the emotional history of my characters. Five seconds in, I realized I needed to be there. I learned that shame is embedded in any family with a history of substance abuse and that letting go of mine helps spare me from the hamster wheel of diet culture. I’m still learning which emotions are mine, and which I’m mopping up for someone else who never asked me to in the first place. Learning to stay in my lane, detach with love, and grasp the broader emotional context for my impulses brings me the peace I will never find at the bottom of a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. I still have to go to a meeting every single week, though, because managing myself demands ruthless vigilance. Healing is not a straight line, and when I misstep, I promptly forgive myself. Self-shame is too costly.
Rethinking restriction
Shame and restriction are kissing cousins. I feel shame about my body, and the more shame I feel, the more I eat. Then I restrict to lose weight for a physical or a social event. Restricting always leads to overeating, which leads to fear for my health and more self-loathing. Rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat.
Now all foods are on the table, unless I make a choice to remove them. Although I do track my carbs in order to manage my blood sugar, I bake and treat myself to those little Valentine’s Day candy hearts. If I pass on chocolate mousse too many times, I will track down a Hostess facsimile, usually at a 7-Eleven. For me, wolfing down a Suzy Q in my car is akin to downing a bottle of wine alone in your living room after a hard day.
Rewiring my brain
Here’s where it gets good.
Along my journey, I encountered a therapist who hooked me up to a neurofeedback machine during our sessions. The training literally interrupted brain patterns linked to my destructive habits. Later, I met a nutritionist who understood the spiritual and psychological dance of my relationship with food. She taught me meditation techniques, like tapping, to disrupt the fierce urge to hit the pantry. Together, these guides planted seeds I’ve watered. They taught me that I actually have agency. Well, I do if I remember.
And I pray. I ask for grace, for the moment to ask myself if I want to swap my serenity for a piece of cake. Simply pausing to ask that question gives me the space to act in my best interest.
And I write. I’ve learned that I can write a new story for myself.
A big trigger for me is telling the worn story about my success with a diet du jour. My current victory laps derive from second-by-second choices that allow me to repave old neural pathways. There is no such thing as a weight-loss panacea.
I am grateful to my doctor for her care and for prescribing an effective drug for my diabetes. Before I left her practice for insurance reasons, I wrote her a letter that ended like this: “My goals for my body and mind cannot be measured by a scale or a blood test. Let the by-products of my equanimity materialize as they may. Welcome to my renewal. I am exfoliating years of old skin only, hopefully to emerge as my own light.”
Michelle Brafman is the author of the novel Swimming with Ghosts, out on June 13, and a professor at the Johns Hopkins University MA in Writing program.
Swimming with Ghosts: A Novel
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