I felt like a failure after 2 weight loss surgeries. Then I tried a GLP-1.
Cleaning his plate — and sometimes a second plate — was a household requirement during Charles's childhood. 'It served me well growing up because it allowed me to get bigger and play sports,' Charles, who did not want to disclose his last name for the sake of privacy, tells Yahoo. And getting bigger, in turn, helped him become a college football player.
But he's been through a lot. The sport left his body 'mangled,' says Charles, who is now 51. Back and neck injuries benched him for part of his college career, and they've continued to haunt him throughout his adulthood, despite nine surgeries and countless physical therapy sessions. Still, when he finished college, Charles was 'physically fit, ripped, 245 or 250 pounds, and I'd never had any obesity problems,' he says. So he wasn't too concerned about working out. But his post-college life was sedentary, and Charles's weight climbed, making exercise more painful and even dangerous.
He tried bariatric surgery in 2009 (two of them, after the first did little for his weight loss and left him with a scarred esophagus from constant vomiting), and lost about 80 pounds. But the physical restriction on his eating did nothing for Charles's food noise and sugar cravings. Then COVID hit. Charles canceled the gym membership he couldn't use and found the stress-soothing snacks he had in the pantry irresistible. His weight crept up again, and his joint pain and sleep apnea were as bad as ever. 'I felt like a failure because I'd had those two bariatric surgeries and here I was in the same situation,' Charles says.
Enter: Zepbound. 'I'm what the community would consider a 'super responder,'' says Charles, who lost his first 92 pounds on the medication in just 29 weeks. But more importantly, the medication has given him 'freedom,' he says. His day-to-day activities might not look that different, but in this installment of Yahoo's series On My Weigh, Charles explains how every moment now feels different.
The weigh-in
Name: Charles
Age: 51
The method: Zepbound, 10 milligrams
The goal: I had a target weight of 225 pounds. But I also had a bunch of health concerns I wanted to address. I was prediabetic and insulin-resistant. I had metabolic syndrome — my blood pressure, cholesterol and triglycerides were all bad. And I wanted to be able to exercise again, without pain, inflammation or more injuries.
Progress report card: I hit my goal weight in 29 weeks! I've lost a total of 117 pounds — including an additional 22 pounds or so after I hit my target weight — and all of my health markers have turned around.
Food noise volume knob: Before starting Zepbound, my food noise was probably at a 10. I have a very strong sugar addiction. Zepbound has given me control over that. Now that I'm not trying to lose weight, just maintain, I take my injection every 10 days, so by day six my food noise can reach a five or six, but I try to mitigate it with fiber supplements and eating more protein.
Day in the life
Rise and shine
Before taking Zepbound, getting up in the morning was always a challenge. I would sleep for five or six hours most nights, but a lot of times it wasn't good-quality sleep. I had sleep apnea, so for 20 years, I slept with a CPAP machine. I'd spend a lot of the night trying to get the right fit for the mask, and not being able to lie the way I wanted to. I would wake up feeling groggy and carry that throughout the day. And I'd often feel drowsy when I was driving, which of course was dangerous.
Thanks to Zepbound, my sleep apnea is gone. I have a lot more energy. I'm sleeping well, especially since getting rid of the sleep apnea and that CPAP machine. It's night and day. I feel more rejuvenated when I get up around 4 or 4:30 a.m. for work. A lot of nights, I'm sleeping eight hours without any issue. I still get excited when I get the notification on my Apple Watch saying, 'You hit your sleep goal.' I love getting that notification.
First bites
These days, in the morning, I'm doing my supplements — things like fiber, multivitamins, probiotics, electrolytes and Mag07 for constipation — and then I make some oatmeal with peanut butter in it for extra protein and fiber. I'll eat some yogurt and have a fiber supplement, which I mix into a drink. That gets me through to lunch, usually.
I was never really a breakfast eater. I'm still not now, but I know that I have to have it to help the medication work. Before, I would often skip breakfast, but I would get a mid-morning sweet tea to satisfy my sugar cravings. Ultimately, that would lead to a lot of overeating in the afternoon because I wasn't regulating my blood sugars the right way.
Get ready with me
It's a lot easier to get ready now that I'm on Zepbound and have lost weight. I'm not out of breath, for one. Even though I hate going shopping, clothes are now easier to find in my size in-store. I'm now able to find more fashionable, with-the-times clothes that fit me better.
But I lost so much weight — and fast! — that I probably went through $3,000 in clothes. There were some things that I took to Goodwill, new with the tags on, because I went past that size to a smaller one so quickly that I never got to wear them. If I had to do this whole journey over again, I'd probably look into some thrift store shopping!
Make a move
I was a college football player, so when I was young, I was used to being physically fit, ripped and 245 or 250 pounds.
But football tore up my body and made exercise difficult. When I would start to work out again, something would start hurting, and I'd end up needing surgery, physical therapy or both. The more I was inactive, the harder it became to be active because of the condition of my body.
Before starting a GLP-1, I would just walk around my neighborhood as much as I could, just to have some kind of activity. But the combination of losing weight on Zepbound and the effects it has on inflammation in your joints has lessened the pressure on my back, hip and knees, so I'm finally able to stay active. During my active weight loss, I went to the gym five to six times a week. Now I'm going three times a week after work, and I do both cardio and weightlifting.
Dose time
When I started taking Zepbound in January of 2024, I was working a hybrid schedule, and one of my three days of the week at home was Friday, so that was always injection day. If I had any side effects of the injection, I would have the weekend to recover. Thankfully, I never had anything other than constipation, and I've been able to manage that with over-the-counter medications. Now, I'm spacing my shots out 10 days apart, so I can maintain the weight I'm at without food noise coming back.
Let's do lunch
Before Zepbound, lunch would probably be a big juicy burger and some fries and a regular soda or something of that nature; something greasy and unhealthy. Now, it's not necessarily that I'm eating anything a lot more healthy, but sometimes I just eat half of a sandwich and I won't get anything sweet to drink.
When I was going through the active weight loss phase of my journey, I was more focused on a keto-like diet, so I went to In-N-Out Burger and would get the Flying Dutchman keto patty, or I'd get a Chipotle keto bowl. It took a while after that to loosen up and say, 'Hey, I can eat these regular foods and not just eat too much of them.' It was a matter of me relaxing and stopping my black-and-white thinking. With food, I knew I could sabotage myself if I wasn't careful. But I now have faith in the medication to not allow me to sabotage myself with overeating.
Happy hour
I'm a big bourbon and whiskey drinker — or, at least I was.
The top of my refrigerator is now filled with liquor that I see every day and don't touch. I used to drink socially with friends or family who came over, or when I got home on a Friday after a particularly bad week. Now I look at it and think, 'I should probably drink that sometime,' but I never do. Zepbound just took away my alcohol cravings — though I don't know if I'd really call them cravings before.
One of my favorite hobbies is barbecuing. I have a smoker in my backyard that I used to fire up at least once a month to cook brisket or pulled pork or ribs. I don't even think about it anymore. It smells and tastes good, but I don't get the same enjoyment from it. There's a sense of dullness that the medication provides, which is why they're looking into it for treating addiction. But I did fire up the smoker for the Fourth of July, and I did have a good time feeding people — it's just not like it once was.
For fun, I'm just trying to live life. I recently became a grandfather, so my wife and I go see our grandbaby, and we like to travel. Recently, we went to Sedona and the Grand Canyon. We're hiking and doing stuff I wouldn't have been able to do before, and now I do them with ease.
Dinner bell
Dinner is whatever my wife is making. She usually cooks something like the Just Bare chicken from Costco, or some salmon or skinless chicken thighs with broccoli or other veggies. But sometimes, particularly if I had a big lunch, I'll get home and say I'm not hungry. She gets mad and says, 'Well, I'm not making anything anymore!'
My wife and I have this funny dynamic. She's petite, and she was always trying to put on weight while I was trying to get the weight off. So before I started taking Zepbound, I tried to make healthier things for myself, but would often end up eating what she ate. During the COVID period, it got to the point where my wife was hiding snacks away. That's how out of control I was. COVID was stressful, and my wife has lupus, so I was worried about getting COVID and giving it to her. With everything shut down, I couldn't work out, and the accessibility of food at the house — it was just too much.
Now, my wife sets her snacks out in the open because I don't really bother with them. I can eat whatever she makes — I'm just not going to eat as much of it. I can push the plate away, which I never did before. My dad was one of 12 kids, and his parents came from the South during Jim Crow and the Great Depression, so you ate because you didn't know when your next meal was coming. So I grew up in a household where you couldn't leave the table until your plate was cleared.
Let's get the bill
I'm one of the lucky ones whose insurance covers my Zepbound. Because of my coverage combined with the Eli Lily savings card, I'm only paying about $25 for a three-month supply.
We're definitely buying less food because we're not eating as much. A lot of the money that we save on groceries is spent on supplements that help me with my weight loss and health journey. Those cost around $150 a month — that's probably the biggest expense in conjunction with my weight loss journey right now.
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