This is my journey to become a healthier me. It began on January 26, 2010 and stalled out... I got a type 2 diabetes diagnosis on March 30, 2022 and started to focus on my health again. On November 8, 2022 I added Ozempic to my toolbox to help me shed some pounds and inches!

Sunday, December 4, 2022

Dealing with Underlying Issues

 So one of the things I've seen written about on the Ozempic Facebook groups is that using the medication means we aren't dealing with our underlying issues. How can we deal with the whys of gaining weight if we aren't hungry?

Well, I got a lovely object lesson in this yesterday, so I wanted to share my thoughts. We all have our own unhealthy patterns that have contributed to us weighing more than we'd like, and ultimately if we don't work on those, we're going to end up right back where we started.

Yesterday I had a very stressful situation arise, and I started to follow my normal pattern. I was too upset to eat dinner on time, and then found myself feeling like I needed to eat but I no longer had the energy to make something. So, I followed my usual pattern of ordering takeout. 

That being said, I still made better choices than I might have in the past- I ordered a sub and it was relatively healthy, clocking in at 680 calories and loaded with veggies (except lettuce which apparently has become a luxury item!). I did eat the whole thing though, even though I felt like I had enough after eating half, and I'm not proud of that.

The key moment though was that I wanted dessert after eating my sub. Normally this would be the start of a binge for me. So I said to myself, okay- what do I want? There is a lot of junk food in my house right now with Christmas coming. Several kinds of cookies, glazed nuts, various types of chocolate and candy. I thought about all of them and pictured myself eating them.

Do you know what I realized? My body didn't actually want them. None of them really sounded appealing after all- the pull was all mental. Ozempic helped me separate those two and realize that if I didn't actually want it, it wasn't going to be satisfying. I was just going to repeat the pattern of eating something I didn't really want and then probably wouldn't feel good afterwards, either physically, mentally, or both. I think that would have been a much more difficult realization without the help of Ozempic, and it would have taken willpower to get past the craving when it was really not necessary. Willpower works when we choose to fight ourselves on things we actually want; we shouldn't have to use it on the ones that we really don't. Especially when willpower fatigue is a thing.

Side effects or no side effects, I'm starting to feel like Ozempic is a wonderful tool that is giving me the space and distance to work on myself and solve my issues with weight. And that's what I'm hoping to take forward when I'm off the medication one day in the future.

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