INTRO Hello all...hope I learn a lot from you guys

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lastresort

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Hey everyone,

I came to this place because I've run out of other options for dealing with my weight.

I'll try to keep this short. Back in my mid 20s I dropped a lot of weight simply by cutting back on food. That was it. 110 lb came off within a year. Sounds great, right?

Then grad school happened and I put nearly all of it back on. I won't bother asking why — it doesn't matter now. I figured I could do the same thing again, this time adding exercise into the mix.

That plan went nowhere.

In 2021 I was told I have hashimotos and hypogonadism. From what I understand, having both at once makes weight loss far more difficult. Since that diagnosis, I've managed to drop 20-30 lb at a time, but then I'd hit a wall and stay there for months on end. Pushing a bigger deficit wasn't an option — with hypothyroidism that would have backfired.

So I gave Zepbound a shot. It cost me $6000 out of pocket. Turns out I was in the group it simply doesn't work for. Not even 1 lb came off, despite exercising and eating at a deficit (a gentler one, as my endocrinologist advised).

I never thought I'd go anywhere near a grey market drug, but I'm past 30 now and I'm scared I'll never get healthy again. I was recently diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea and fatty liver (no scarring at least, thank god), and I can only see things getting worse unless I sort out my weight — even if that means using something questionable.

Which brings me here... just like my username says, this is my last resort. If reta doesn't work for me... I honestly don't know what I'd do.

Thanks for sticking with my sob story.
 
There's a ton of material on this site—you can easily get lost in it for hours. Before I ever gave my first peptide a try, I put in a good 3 months of looking into things. Glad to have you here!
 
Glad to have you here! Your background sounds quite fascinating. Reta has been a great support to me and plenty of others. I'm sure it will do the same for you.
 
Welcome! Medications are an option, but eating foods that keep you full is the healthier, more sustainable (and less expensive!) route, and you may be able to maintain your weight without them. Given that you had the willpower to do it previously, doing it again shouldn't be difficult for you, though it can be sustainable with the correct and species-appropriate diet. This video can give you a sense of what one of the options looks like:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8_WeDz1uXw&t=3718s
 
Hello, and thanks for opening up — I think plenty of folks on here will recognize pieces of your journey.

To start, dropping 110 lbs back in your 20s is a major achievement. It proves you are capable of doing it, even though your situation is not the same today. When Hashimoto’s, hypogonadism, sleep apnea, and fatty liver all stack up, the metabolic odds get stacked against you — so struggling more with weight now isn’t a personal failure, it’s a sign the rules of the game shifted.

It also says something that you kept going after something like Zepbound didn’t pan out, particularly given how much you paid yourself. Many people would have thrown in the towel at that point.

And you’re far from the only one in this spot. A lot of members of this community turned to peptides only after hitting identical dead ends with diet, exercise, and even prescription GLP-1s. For some who didn’t do well on other options, Reta has played out differently, so here’s hoping it works better for you too.

Something that comes through clearly in what you wrote is that you’re going about this carefully and keeping your health conditions in mind, which matters. With issues like sleep apnea and fatty liver, even a modest amount of weight loss can begin to move metabolic markers in the right direction fairly fast.

This isn’t the end of the line — it’s just a different tool you’re testing. Hopefully people here can help you swap experiences, work through problems if they come up, and pass along what’s worked.

Best of luck as you begin, and please do keep us updated on your progress.
 
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