LetsGoWolves
Explorer
Hey everyone! I'm Mike, 57 years old, and I've spent the better part of my life trying to shed pounds. My experience runs the gamut — from old-school meal logging and planning, to phentermine, to several different GLP-1 medications. Football left me with a collection of injuries, and these days I'm the proud owner of a metal hip.
Starting from my top weight of 380 pounds, phentermine helped me drop roughly 75 — until my hip surgery forced me to pause. Once I'd recovered and tried again, I turned out to be one of those people whose body simply stopped responding to phentermine's signals, so it no longer did anything for me.
That's when my MD put me on semaglutide — right in the middle of the shortage. Given my size, he felt confident I could begin at 1.7 mg. For 3 days after that first dose, the smell of any food made me vomit, but I stuck with it for a couple of months. The 2.4 mg dose, however, was more than I could take. We paused, and then my insurance quit covering GLP-1's altogether. After 6 months of struggling again with tracking and exercise — and regaining about 40 of the 80 pounds I'd lost — I located a compounding pharmacy within my budget and restarted semaglutide, this time titrating up slowly. That round took off about 30 pounds. Then I heard our insurance would cover Zepbound, so it was back to the MD to give it a try.
Zepbound has been remarkable for my OSA, but my weight loss has slowed to roughly 2 pounds/month. And when we signed up for next year's benefits, we learned that GLP-1 copays for weight loss on our plan are jumping from $25/month to $200/month.
I work in health care, by the way. It's incredibly frustrating that a hospital system would rather pay for the long-term consequences of obesity than for GLP-1 therapy.
Outside of weight loss: I've been a hospital pharmacist for 23 years, I'm married, and we have 3 sons. In February of this year, after my mom passed away, we moved into my dad's house to care for him as he battles Alzheimer's. So when I'm not at the hospital, I'm at home keeping an 81 year old man in line.
Starting from my top weight of 380 pounds, phentermine helped me drop roughly 75 — until my hip surgery forced me to pause. Once I'd recovered and tried again, I turned out to be one of those people whose body simply stopped responding to phentermine's signals, so it no longer did anything for me.
That's when my MD put me on semaglutide — right in the middle of the shortage. Given my size, he felt confident I could begin at 1.7 mg. For 3 days after that first dose, the smell of any food made me vomit, but I stuck with it for a couple of months. The 2.4 mg dose, however, was more than I could take. We paused, and then my insurance quit covering GLP-1's altogether. After 6 months of struggling again with tracking and exercise — and regaining about 40 of the 80 pounds I'd lost — I located a compounding pharmacy within my budget and restarted semaglutide, this time titrating up slowly. That round took off about 30 pounds. Then I heard our insurance would cover Zepbound, so it was back to the MD to give it a try.
Zepbound has been remarkable for my OSA, but my weight loss has slowed to roughly 2 pounds/month. And when we signed up for next year's benefits, we learned that GLP-1 copays for weight loss on our plan are jumping from $25/month to $200/month.
I work in health care, by the way. It's incredibly frustrating that a hospital system would rather pay for the long-term consequences of obesity than for GLP-1 therapy.
Outside of weight loss: I've been a hospital pharmacist for 23 years, I'm married, and we have 3 sons. In February of this year, after my mom passed away, we moved into my dad's house to care for him as he battles Alzheimer's. So when I'm not at the hospital, I'm at home keeping an 81 year old man in line.
