lessthanhalf
I Just Joined!
I only found this forum a few days ago and have been doing a lot of reading. Fantastic resource of information, a lot of it I wish I knew a year ago.
In my fifties male , struggled with obesity since 7 yo. About 3 years ago I had got to 145kg and walking more than 50 meters was exhausting , my business had died during covid lockdowns and was stuck living at my ex's house. I knew about glp-1's but having no income they were just too expensive. So I used what I knew and went on a low calorie, low calorific density, very high protein diet. Lean meat , fruit, vegetables, lot of high meat content soup. Finally got down to about 80kg and walking 3 or so km a day. Then comes the hard part which is not putting it all back on, which sadly I have done before. The hunger gets worse the more weight you lose and keeping that under control long term is not something I have ever succeeded at.
And unfortunately there had been some damage with early stage heart failure, proteinuria, peripheral neuropathy, high coronary calcium score etc . Cardiologist said I was 96th percentile for cardiovascular risk for my age ( after I had lost the weight ) which is not great and putting the weight back on would likely be the last thing I ever did, So if anyone reading this is over 40 and still is or has been very overweight make sure you get your blood pressure, glucose and cholesterol checked at least.
About a year ago I worked out that I could just barely afford low dose ozempic here for about $40 a week, and it helped with being permanently hungry but I was very sensitive to the dose due to nausea which might not happen for a day or a few weeks after a dose increase. But, for the first time ever I experienced eating half a plate of food and feeling too full to eat more. I spent a lot of time trying to up the dose but the higher the dose the more nausea, malaise and tiredness. I manually plotted out serum levels over time on paper to try to work it out and experimented and eventually worked out .22mg per 2 days worked ok, still some nausea and tiredness but less hunger, even 1 click increases in dose were enough to make the nausea much worse. The glp dose plotter I found last week would have been super useful . I had read pretty much every paper and abstract I could find but it hadn't occurred to me to look on forums where lots of people had already worked out different dosing schedules. I guess my internet use is still in the 90's.
My GP (Doctor) suggested I try tirzepatide . I knew it was more effective for weight loss and might have less nausea but the price is much higher. So after lots more calculations and info from subreddits I worked it that it was not much dearer depending on how convert oz to tir doses which there is no definite science on that I could find other than 1mg semi = 2-5 mg tir. So bought the most expensive medicine I have ever bought by far at $700, hoping it would last 4 months or so, ( In Aus most medications are subsidised and about $40 at worst ). So far it does not seem to reduce appetite quite as well as ozempic .84 mg/week at about 6-7 mg / week which is a lot worse than I had expected , but the nausea and malaise are more or less gone. I titrated the dose up by 1-2 mg per day or 2 until it seemed to have an effect on hunger. Too early to tell in 2 weeks whether it works better for weight. So I guess I can try combining them in very low doses using the gip agonism of tirzepatide to counteract the nausea from semaglutide, or find a less expensive option. I have to stop the semaglutide for at least a month or 2 as I have weird rash on my neck and chest for the past 6 months that might be a very atypical drug rash and ozempic is one of the last remaing possible drug allergy causes that I have not excluded. Then I found this site, in a roundabout way trying to work out how all those people on reddit were taking retatrutide when it was not out yet. Sorry for the long ramble.
In my case I think the risks of going grey are lower than the risks of putting the weight back on.
In my fifties male , struggled with obesity since 7 yo. About 3 years ago I had got to 145kg and walking more than 50 meters was exhausting , my business had died during covid lockdowns and was stuck living at my ex's house. I knew about glp-1's but having no income they were just too expensive. So I used what I knew and went on a low calorie, low calorific density, very high protein diet. Lean meat , fruit, vegetables, lot of high meat content soup. Finally got down to about 80kg and walking 3 or so km a day. Then comes the hard part which is not putting it all back on, which sadly I have done before. The hunger gets worse the more weight you lose and keeping that under control long term is not something I have ever succeeded at.
And unfortunately there had been some damage with early stage heart failure, proteinuria, peripheral neuropathy, high coronary calcium score etc . Cardiologist said I was 96th percentile for cardiovascular risk for my age ( after I had lost the weight ) which is not great and putting the weight back on would likely be the last thing I ever did, So if anyone reading this is over 40 and still is or has been very overweight make sure you get your blood pressure, glucose and cholesterol checked at least.
About a year ago I worked out that I could just barely afford low dose ozempic here for about $40 a week, and it helped with being permanently hungry but I was very sensitive to the dose due to nausea which might not happen for a day or a few weeks after a dose increase. But, for the first time ever I experienced eating half a plate of food and feeling too full to eat more. I spent a lot of time trying to up the dose but the higher the dose the more nausea, malaise and tiredness. I manually plotted out serum levels over time on paper to try to work it out and experimented and eventually worked out .22mg per 2 days worked ok, still some nausea and tiredness but less hunger, even 1 click increases in dose were enough to make the nausea much worse. The glp dose plotter I found last week would have been super useful . I had read pretty much every paper and abstract I could find but it hadn't occurred to me to look on forums where lots of people had already worked out different dosing schedules. I guess my internet use is still in the 90's.
My GP (Doctor) suggested I try tirzepatide . I knew it was more effective for weight loss and might have less nausea but the price is much higher. So after lots more calculations and info from subreddits I worked it that it was not much dearer depending on how convert oz to tir doses which there is no definite science on that I could find other than 1mg semi = 2-5 mg tir. So bought the most expensive medicine I have ever bought by far at $700, hoping it would last 4 months or so, ( In Aus most medications are subsidised and about $40 at worst ). So far it does not seem to reduce appetite quite as well as ozempic .84 mg/week at about 6-7 mg / week which is a lot worse than I had expected , but the nausea and malaise are more or less gone. I titrated the dose up by 1-2 mg per day or 2 until it seemed to have an effect on hunger. Too early to tell in 2 weeks whether it works better for weight. So I guess I can try combining them in very low doses using the gip agonism of tirzepatide to counteract the nausea from semaglutide, or find a less expensive option. I have to stop the semaglutide for at least a month or 2 as I have weird rash on my neck and chest for the past 6 months that might be a very atypical drug rash and ozempic is one of the last remaing possible drug allergy causes that I have not excluded. Then I found this site, in a roundabout way trying to work out how all those people on reddit were taking retatrutide when it was not out yet. Sorry for the long ramble.
In my case I think the risks of going grey are lower than the risks of putting the weight back on.
