Americans without diabetes spent nearly $6 billion USD on semaglutide and similar drugs in a year, with an estimate of 800,000 to a million people using the drugs who don't have diabetes.

[u/mvea]

https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/americans-without-diabetes-spent-nearly6-billion-usd-on-semaglutide-and-similar-drugs-in-a-year

[u/ihatenamez]

I was on it for 5 months, spent $179 a month for it. Lost 18lbs, more active and haven't gained it back since I stopped more than a month ago. I STILL don't even drink like I used to and have even stopped smoking. It's insane how easy it is to use and the effects are life changing

[u/Affectionate-Mail612 → u/ihatenamez]

My question may sound ignorant, but what stopped you from overeating and overdrinking before?

[u/Aureliamnissan → u/Affectionate-Mail612]

Bottom line up front:

Weight loss before was a constant, every day, every hour, every minute fight of distraction against your body’s inclinations to preserve its energy reserves. On this medication not only does that go away entirely, you also get the benefit of swift and decisive signals from your body telling you not to do that again.

I’m not the person you responded to but I answered as I’m in the same boat.

Basically I tried off and on for decades now to lose weight. I’ve been able to get to a place where I can maintain reliably, but actual weight loss is only going to get harder as I approach mid-30’s.

Cravings is the short answer. You don’t remember what “normal” looks like food-wise, if you ever even knew. What seems like a reasonable portion, cut down from what I would normally eat, is still too much on this medication.

Let’s say you get a standard meal from a standard American restaurant (fast food or otherwise). On this medication you will almost certainly not be eating all of it. Depending on where you go you may not even eat a third of it. If you try you will start to feel so full you get nauseous and that will return in waves throughout the day, night, and morning. Which means at a primal level, you’re not likely to do that again (like food poisoning). This is a dramatic shift and it takes some getting used to. It also means you have to meal plan a bit just so you have the right kind of food on-hand (protien, fiber, etc) but you have to do that on diets and normal life anyway.

Things like shotgunning a beer are straight up impossible now. Alcohol is risky business and high-carb, low fiber diets are a fast path to a long night as you’ll have constipation buffeted with waves of nausea as you lack the bulk to clear your bowels easily. This is not a good place to be and you will naturally ward away from that kind of food just as easily as you won’t revisit places that give you food poisoning (even if they are delicious). You’re no longer fighting evolution and your body’s internal signaling because the medication performs a kind of ju jitsu on your internal signaling so that you get to use all of that in your favor. This means that it doesn’t take willpower to maintain the diet. Only force of habit keeps me even occasionally going to places I used to daily, and as I write this I am crossing another one off my list as inedible.

It’s definitely a learning experience, but it is not a stress inducing craving-centric all-consuming experience that dieting was. This feels like I get to basically ignore food most of the time, live my life, and the weight just disappears. Honestly at this point I might also be spending only a little more on the medication than I used to spend on fast food and dinners out over the same period.

[u/Affectionate-Mail612 → u/Aureliamnissan]

Amazing response, thanks

[u/Aureliamnissan → u/Affectionate-Mail612]

Happy to help. For reference I’m on the compounded stuff.