Our thoughts on Wegovy/Ozempic

Before I found coaching I would have done anything to lose the last 12 pounds.

I was never super overweight but obesity and diabetes run in my family. You can learn more about my personal struggles with health and weight here.

In college, I often felt out of control around food. Back then (in the early 1990’s), it was all about eating fat free. Fat free bagels with fat free cream cheese, fat free pumpkin bread.

Alcohol was fat free. I ate my weight in Snackwell cookies and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t losing any weight. I didn’t eat an ounce of fat.

Now we know why.

Diet culture creates food confusion and makes us think there’s a right or wrong way.

What makes it even harder, eating is fuel for our bodies. It’s not like alcohol where you can just decide not to drink. We have to eat.

And for the most part, we now know what to eat to be healthy (more whole foods, less processed foods).

What I am more curious about is why we eat.

Sure, it’s fuel which we need.

We also eat when we’re anxious, frustrated, stressed or angry.  We eat for comfort when we’ve had a long, hard day. We eat for entertainment when we want to celebrate with family and friends, or when we’re bored.

We have lost the ability to gauge when we are actually hungry.

And we’ve trained ourselves to eat at certain times of the day and even when we aren’t really hungry we eat because it’s time. We snack because it’s habit or when the pantry calls our name.

With so much working against us to lose weight, taking medication seems like an easy choice.

Gut peptide prescriptions have become revolutionary for controlling appetite, hunger, satiety and fullness.  Medications like semaglutide (Wegovy, Ozempic) block ghrelin (a hormone in the stomach that makes your brain send hunger signals that make you want to overeat) and activates leptin (a hormone in the fat cells that increases metabolism which makes your stomach feel full and reduces your interest in eating).

For those who need to lose 30 or more pounds, the medicines may make sense.

We’ve had several clients make the decision to try semaglutide (Wegovy, Ozempic) while working with us - we’ve coached them through deciding. And their results have been incredible. They were able to lose significant weight on the medication.

And because they were also working with us to be healthier, they became aware of their own eating habits, built time in their schedules to move their bodies, and learned how to process their emotions (as opposed to eating them) — all which may decrease the chances they’ll gain the weight back if and when they go off the medication.

Are YOU trying to decide?

What we want to offer is that no matter what you choose - to take medication to lose weight or to lose weight more organically - you need to manage your mind along the way to change your relationship with food and create healthy habits for the rest of your life.

Learning to make decisions that serve you - and following through is what coaching is all about. It’s how our clients become women who actually enjoy the life they work so hard to create.