My First Dose of Zepbound!

 

This is my first post on this blog. I'm documenting this crazy journey hoping that I can look back in the upcoming weeks, months, and years and feel inspired. 

To start off with, I just turned 34 years old and I've been "chubby" my whole life, but I officially crossed into the morbidly obese category sometime in the past 5-10 years in between medical school, residency, and post-graduate life. I am a physician, which makes it even crazier that I managed to become this big. Aren't we supposed to be pinnacles of good health after all? My vice is definitely binge-eating especially in times of stress and anxiety...which as a doctor comes nearly everyday. 

After many failed years of diet and exercise and wasting my 20s and early 30s feeling uncomfortable in my own skin, I finally decided that it was try to look into medical management for weight loss. I really did not want to go the surgical route. Thanks to medical advancements, there are now weight loss medications on the market now that are FDA approved. I found a lovely endocrinologist who talked me through all the options and we decided on trying Zepbound, a medication that recently became FDA approved and has shown great results in trials comparable to those seen with bariatric surgery. Given my size, my insurance thankfully covered part of the cost of the medication. Unfortunately there are shortages going on, but after waiting a few weeks I was grateful that my pharmacy finally had the starting dose in stock.

I took my first dose of Zepbound 2.5mg on Friday, May 17th. 

Overnight on Friday into Saturday morning, I felt sick, almost like a flu-like illness. I had chills, body aches, a pretty bad headache, and swollen glands all throughout the night. I could barely sleep. I had to take 600mg of ibuprofen after which I finally felt better. Over the weekend on Saturday and Sunday, I definitely noticed appetite suppresion. I definitely did not eat as much as I normally do on weekends and the best of all - I had ZERO food cravings. Normally, I would crave things like cheeseburger, fries, pizza, Chinese food, a burrito from Chipotle, the McNuggets meal from McDonalds. But I felt ZERO temptation to go out and get these foods. Ten years of binge eating thoughts and all it took was one dose of a medication to make all these food cravings and obsessive food thoughts go away. Pretty fucking magical if you ask me. I don't know if this is all in my head, if it's placebo, or if it's actually real. I'm really hoping that this medication works. From what I've seen in just the past 2 days since I took my first dose of Zepbound, I finally feel good and confident about my ability to beat obesity and finally be at a healthy weight. 

Starting weight: 269.5 lbs 

Goal weight: 130 lbs