Chin Chats: My Experience With GLP-1 Wegovy - What Worked, What Didn’t, and What I Learned

Spencer Moore (: 00:22

Hi there, welcome back to Chin Chats. You these are episodes where I can dig a bit deeper outside of the interviews that I do and share some of the things that I have going on in my life. I've had chronic health issues for quite a while and this is where I get to kind of share what I've gone through and what I've learned.

Please remember, I'm not a medical professional. This is never medical advice. It is just my perspective, a different perspective. And I do hope that that does So today I'm going to be talking about the GLP-1 drugs, specifically in my case, Wegovy because that is the one that I've been taking for the past few months through the summer.

I'm excited to kind of explain to you what I've gone through, what the side effects have been for me, why I decided to take it in the first place, and what my plans are for continuing to take it in the future. This week on at The Hairy Chin I've been talking a lot about eating. ⁓ The last episode that I released was a really beautiful conversation with a Pilates studio owner here in Barcelona, Laura Ceppelli and she spoke about her recovery of disordered eating.

And I also talked in my newsletter last week about some support and some resources for disordered eating. Eating is complicated. A lot of people have complicated relationships with food. one of the interviews I did earlier this year was with Alana Kessler. She's a registered dietitian

She had a really great perspective about food in our interview. It was called Emotional Eating and Food Freedom. And she really leads with, it's not about the food. It's about your relationship with the food. It's about these programmed ideas that you have and how you cope with things. And I really do love that perspective because I think it's very valid and very true.

we put a lot of emphasis on food and we put a lot of pressure on ourselves around food. And sometimes it's helpful to think that it's really not about the food. It's about our relationship with food. I've found that for me, that's given me a little bit more calm. ⁓ I really hate using the word control, but I feel that's given me a bit more calm.

I am one of those people out of many that has had a complicated relationship with food. It started when I was very young. I remember eight, nine years old, kind of sneaking off into the closet to eat cookies and I'm really struggling with quantity of food. I've been a real overeater most of my life and throughout the years my weight has

has shown that if you look in my closet, you'll see a lot of clothes. And the reason you see so many clothes is because I have so many different sizes. So I have pants that range from a size two to a size 10 or 12 and all the numbers in between. had a lot of fear of getting rid of those clothes because my weight has gone up and down all of my life.

⁓ I've had periods where I've been much smaller, periods where I've been much bigger. The happiness has not been correlated with either. So it's not to say that when I was smaller I was happier. ⁓ It's just, it's been a journey for me with food and overeating, Now in terms of the context of this conversation and a GLP-1, I did not start taking

the GLP-1 because of that. It was not with a goal to lose weight. In fact, I wasn't in the weight category to need the GLP-1. My BMI is a bit higher than normal. It's kind of borderline, but it's not obese. was a conversation that I had with my doctor because of other symptoms that I was having

I've had side effects of real inflammatory disease in my body the past few years for actually quite a long time. We're talking migraines and very, very severe eczema. ⁓ In the past few years, I've developed more and more symptoms of endometriosis. And this year I was given an MRI and ultrasound.

where they did find it. Now this year I've had the worst symptoms that I've ever had of endometriosis. And I really didn't know so much that these were symptoms of it until it started getting really bad and I ended up having to go to the emergency room and in and out of lots of different doctor's appointments. And basically during my period I was just out of commission.

I couldn't get off the sofa. I was in a lot of pain. I was having to take some pretty strong pain medication. It was also happening during ovulation. So two times a month, I was just really just not able to function because of the pain. so, you know, these were red flags and I was dealing with my doctors about this. I was on an estrogen blocker from the early stage breast cancer.

gave me tamoxifen, which blocks estrogen in your body. And that's when these symptoms really just took off and became very difficult to deal was challenging to get a diagnosis of the endometriosis because, you know,

I'm a complex patient. They call me here a hot potato, the patata calentita. ⁓ They don't know who to give me to. They don't know what to do with me because I just have a lot of different systems in my body that just don't quite work well. it's complicated. I also have a very complicated history that started when I was very young. So I'm just one of those patients that doctors either love me or they hate me because I'm just.

I'm not gonna fit into a 15 minute appointment. And some doctors really like the challenge and other doctors just think I really don't want her to be my problem. And I've been told that. happened with the endometriosis is I was seeing my oncologist, I was explaining the symptoms that I was having. referred me to an me see if I can say this. endo...

gynecologist, I didn't know that this hybrid really existed. So I was excited to be sent to this specialist because I was having so many issues at the time. And I was also

ravenously hungry. I couldn't stop eating. I had this appetite that just would not quit. And it was making me really stressed. It was making me very stressed about food, about food choices. As I mentioned, I've, you know, I've always kind of had this bigger appetite most of my life and I've struggled with, with binge eating. so this was stressful for me because I've done a lot of work over the years. I've worked with therapists.

worked on myself to try and heal my relationship with food, to try and, you know, kind of come to an understanding in a way of, ⁓ you know, realizing that we have to eat food to live, but it doesn't have to be this really stressful relationship of feeling like you can't eat what you want or feeling like you can't enjoy food. ⁓ There's a lot of work that's been done there. So this past year, I would say,

After I stopped the estrogen blocker and I came off of it, my hormones were really just doing a lot of different things and I was really struggling. Mentally, it was very challenging for me. I was gaining weight quite rapidly. I believe in the year after I stopped the estrogen blocker, I put on about 15 pounds.

It's hard when you feel like you don't really have a lot of control over what's happening in your body. And that's really how I felt. So I ended up with this endogynacologist. We did some tests and it came back that I had leptin resistance. Now leptin is a hormone that your body releases to tell you it's hungry and that it's time to eat. And mine was quite high. And so this would explain why I was just so hungry.

And even after I ate a whole meal, I just really, I felt like I hadn't eaten. And I felt like I needed to eat all day, every day. And it was getting really challenging. I was also having a lot of other symptoms of inflammatory disease in my body. I was having a real increase in migraines, which actually now have been diagnosed as vestibular migraines. They come with vertigo, which is about as fun as it sounds.

And also really severe eczema, which I've had since I was a child. It's nothing new for me, but this was getting to a point where it was just getting really out of control. My mobility was really challenged and life was just getting really, really stressful. So the endogoncologist decided that I wasn't having symptoms of PCOS, which I had been diagnosed with years ago.

those kind of come and go for me. So I wasn't having this big flare of PCOS and my hormones were quite imbalanced, but she felt that I would be better managed under an endocrinologist. In my 30s, I had been diagnosed with some thyroid issues. I was taking synthroid for a few years. My thyroid has actually regulated itself quite well.

now I'm no longer taking the Synthroid, which is really exciting for me to come off of a treatment that doesn't normally happen for me. So that to me felt very positive, but she felt that an endocrinologist would be the best next step for me. So I then went to another clinic and I saw a wonderful endocrinologist. I actually, took her advice over one that I had been seeing over the past years. He was a a male doctor and

I would get really frustrated. This is a bit of a tangent about thyroid, but just to mention Every time he did my thyroid panel, it wasn't a panel. He would only test the TSH level. And I would ask him to test T3, T4, all of them, to do a full panel, and he just wouldn't do it. He would say it wasn't necessary. The only information he needed was a TSH. I would ask him. He would say, well, maybe we'll see. He would write the prescription. I would go get the blood test. And when it would come back, it would only be the TSH.

And I just got really fed up with having to fight to have blood tests done. I just, wanted the information. I've had issues with my thyroid for years. And so I got really frustrated. So when this doctor recommended an endocrinologist that was within my network, I thought, great, let's make the change. So I did. I ended up at a new clinic.

And she was wonderful and she does a full thyroid panel testing. It's covered under my insurance. It was a good switch for me. They also have a dietitian in the

And we started working together. believe we had about a month, maybe a month or so, I worked with her. And things were not really changing. I was getting more stressed. I was getting more swollen. I was having more symptoms. I really felt like my life was just...

really struggling. And I remember I went in to see her in an appointment and I just cried the whole appointment. just, I was so overwhelmed and stressed. And I said that food had become so stressful for me because I just didn't know how to eat. I didn't, I just felt so overwhelmed. And so she said, let me talk to the doctor.

because they're in the same clinic and they collaborate. so the next week I had an appointment with the endocrinologist and I went in and she said, I really think I would like to try you on a very low dose of a GLP-1. she said, look, you're not in the weight category. You don't have type two diabetes. However, there is a lot of information. There's a lot of ⁓ feedback that we're getting.

about lowering inflammation in the body Because at that point, I was putting on so much weight, my mobility was really limited because of my eczema.

The weight was affecting the eczema, which is on my feet. ⁓ It was just, it started to feel like the ball was rolling down the hill and gaining a lot of momentum. So I was nervous to start a GLP-1. I have to say that point earlier this year, information about GLP-1 was, it's this miracle drug, but also, wow, there are a lot of side effects and people are having a lot of complications.

You know, approach was very conservative. She wanted to start me at the lowest dose

and she wanted to keep me there. She did not want to increase my dose. And she said, you know, I would like to see what happens if we put you on this low dose and we kind of see how things go. as I mentioned, I was not in the weight class. This was not used for me to lose weight. It was used to help manage inflammation in my body and also help me with, this real stress that I was dealing with of the leptin resistance and the really increased hunger.

started me on the GLP-1. She started me at 0.25 milligram injections once a week. And she gave me one month of a pen that had four doses in it. And she said, come back in a month. And let's check in with you and see how you are. injections. I believe my injection day was on Tuesday.

And it's interesting about GLP-1s. So they do lower your appetite. There are a lot of things that happen in your body when you take a GLP-1. So there are things that are involved with insulin. There are things that are involved in the liver with sugar. It does slow digestion of food. So the food hangs out in your stomach longer, and it can make you feel less hungry because it's not passing so quickly. And it can reduce your appetite.

It also has interactions, and if it's not used correctly, it can really be quite dangerous. So the chair of the National Obesity Forum, he was quoted saying, although these drugs were hugely effective for those who need them, if you take them and you break the rules, you run the risk of serious complications or death. So it's not to take lightly.

my experience of taking this, the first week of taking it, I had some nausea, I had some fatigue. ⁓ One thing that I did not know about this drug that I don't think a lot of people talk about is that yes, while it does lower

your hunger, it also lowers your thirst. So it's very easy to get dehydrated when you take these drugs, and that's exactly what happened to me. And it didn't happen on purpose. I normally drink a lot of water. So I had been taking this for about two weeks. I didn't realize I wasn't drinking as much as I thought.

I didn't really see a lot of differences until one day I started getting back pain, like lower flank pain. I was really tired. I was really sluggish. I really just was not feeling well. And I actually asked ChatGPT, could this be a side effect of the medication? Do I need to see a doctor? I was quite concerned about it. And I can talk.

at another time about kind of using chat GPT for medical advice. It doesn't give you medical advice, but sometimes it can lead you in a good direction. And in this case it did for me. It said, you're probably dehydrated. Perhaps you need to drink something with electrolytes. And so I ended up starting drinking electrolyte drinks and it was like night and day for me. It was really interesting to see how much it had changed. Now I also realized that

the food stays in your stomach longer. You're not as hungry in terms of putting food in your body. You just don't really have this interest. So the same goes with liquid. if you drink a lot of water at one time, it's gonna make your stomach feel quite uncomfortable. So that was interesting to me and that was a side effect I did not know about. I don't think a lot of people had talked about it.

I had read a lot and learned a lot about eating smaller meals, eating lower fat meals or less fried food and things like that because they do sit in your stomach longer. So I actually recently just made a mistake this fall of eating black beans, too many black beans. So look, my favorite food is Mexican food. I could eat black bean enchiladas every single day. I love them and I made them here at home.

and I ate them three days in a row and too big of portions, to be honest. was just, it was too much. And I really paid the price for about a week. My stomach was off because there was beans sat in my stomach and it was just too much food. Now, look, I've been on Wegovy on and off for the past six months.

Some weeks I took injections, some weeks I didn't because I was on a lot of medications this summer for really severe eczema. At one point I was on an immunosuppressant and that caused me lot of nausea. So during that treatment I did stop the Wegovy because I just, couldn't manage both of the medications. The Wegovy still sometimes gives me some nausea. I've never increased my dose. I've stayed at .25 and

What I've noticed is yes, I did lose weight. The first month I lost weight and quite rapidly the first few weeks, I do think that because I got very dehydrated, I do think that some of that was a water loss and not necessarily fat loss. I never have increased my dose. I've stayed at the 0.25 the whole time.

And I did see significant changes in the pain I had monthly during my period and my ovulation. My ovulation pain almost went away and my period pain changed drastically. I also had much less blood flow and clots in my period, which are very, very heavy, especially if you have something like endometriosis or fibroids or something like that. I saw a significant decrease in that.

as I've mentioned, I'm a hot potato patient. I have a lot of variables and I have a lot of complications and I tend to be very reactive. So this is just, this is me explaining my experience of it. I think that, you know, every individual is gonna react differently. There's just so many variables of what we all carry with us in our bodies and how we react to things.

I am still currently taking the the Wegovy shots. I don't expect to continue taking it through the rest of the year. ⁓ It's not a forever drug for me. It's not a forever treatment for me. The goal is to come off of it. I will say that

Taking the Wegovy did help mentally for me quite a lot because it did quiet anxiety and that stress that I had around making food choices because it was just a bit easier to make those food choices, to be honest. While I said that it lowers your thirst, it also does lower your interests. And for example, alcohol for wine, I haven't had any.

kind of cravings or desire to drink a lot of alcohol this year since I've been on this drug. So that has lowered significantly as well for me. Not to say that I drank a lot earlier, however, ⁓ there were times where I thought, wow, I would just love to have a glass of wine or I would love to to dinner and have dinner and a glass of wine. And that just really...

was quite eliminated, to be honest. I just one glass of wine and it was like, I'm good. I don't want anymore. And maybe not for a few days or a week. So my alcohol consumption really, really lowered while taking the drug. Oprah Winfrey talked about taking a GLP-1, I think this year in an interview that she did. And at first she had denied that she had taken one. She's lost quite a bit of weight. And then she said, look, yeah, I did. And then she said that it really

it turned off the food noise that she had in her brain. And that really took off and that word really started trending up this food noise. Now, I think that it's interesting, the food noise, because I do think that there are some biological processes that can cause us to have more food noise and to be hungrier. In my my hormones were quite off.

and I was leptin resistant and I was just starving all the time. And that really did put me mentally in a really challenging place. I also think that there's two sides to that food noise coin. One is how our bodies are processing and hormones and things like and the other side to that is the emotional side of food because

You know, as I mentioned at the beginning, as Alana Kessler said, it's not about the food. It's about your connection to the food, your attachment to the food, you know, how you cope with life and whether or not you're using food as a coping mechanism. I do think all of these are very important in this conversation because I believe that the danger of GLP-1s is take the drug, the interest.

in food really does diminish. This food noise really does kind of go away. You feel quite liberated of, I can just make a choice and eat and then I'm done. And I don't have to have what I'm craving for. These cravings really do dissipate. But when you go off the medication, they come back.

I noticed the month that I was on the immunosuppressant and that I came off the Wegovy, I started having more cravings. I am a pizza girl through and through. I grew up eating pizza every Friday night. And when Friday comes around, I want a pizza.

And sometimes I want a pizza on a Monday and a Wednesday. And then the alternate days I want black bean enchiladas. That's kind of what I would love to eat every day. And while I was taking the injections, I really didn't have so many cravings for it. I thought, well, maybe, but perhaps I want a salad and just one piece or two pieces. Whereas in the past I would maybe eat four or five pieces. But when I came off the medication, I didn't want the salad anymore. I wanted the pizza. And I wanted four or five pieces of it.

So, you know, I do think that the emotional aspect of it is always very important and I do think it's left out a lot of this conversation that it's a bit of a band-aid.

like I said, we have two sides of the coin, so you have the biological side, you have what's happening in the body, the processes, the imbalances or things like that that are happening.

And then you have the emotional side. They both need to be addressed. The medication will hide both of them while you're taking it. But when you come off of that medication, they may still be there. Now for me, from the body side, ⁓ I'm no longer leptin resistant. ⁓ I have lowered significantly some inflammation in my body. I'm still on a journey. This drug did not solve all of my problems.

It did not make me lose a significant amount of weight. I stayed at quite a low dose. And in fact, the month that I came off of it, my weight went up some, my appetite went up some, I gained back some of the weight that I had lost. And that's okay, because for me, this wasn't about losing massive amounts of weight. This was trying to get my body functional so that I can live and do things in life that I want to do, accomplish things and not be in pain.

So the weight to me has not been the success of taking the medication or the measure of success of taking the medication. For me, it's done a great job. Now, as I mentioned, my goal is to come off the medication by the end of this year and I plan to do so slowly. you can also microdose some of these doses. So, you know, that's potentially a plan.

I do think that the emotional side of the coin is very important. think, you know, for me, it's been a nice break from the food noise as Oprah calls it. You know, even though it's not so much about the food, the conversation, you know, the obsession or the cravings or the desire, it gives you a break from that. You do feel free in a way, but it's not fixing the problem.

If that's the problem, doctors break from it, but it will not resolve those issues. And I think that's a really important part of this conversation. Now, I've read a lot of articles, I've read a lot of different opinions about this drug, and I really do believe that it's down to the individual of how they use it and what they do with it.

you know, I really love neuroscience. I really love this idea that our brains can change. You know, there's a really, me, outdated opinion that people can't change. and a neuroscience for me has been, I think really enlightening in a way because it's proof that our brains can change.

It's proof that we can create new pathways. However, the brain going to use the path of least resistance always. So, you know, if our mechanisms or these coping mechanisms are, know, to eat food when we feel bad and that makes us feel better for a time, our brain is going to say, well, that's the path of least resistance. However,

neuroscience now shows us that we can build new pathways. It takes longer. It's a slower process. It's a harder process. But we can build those new pathways that then become the path of least resistance. And so our brain says, actually, you know, the binge eating actually didn't make us feel better. ⁓ Now we can eat this way, and this makes us feel better. And so then that's the path that your brain follows. So

The way I see GLP once is that it does give your brain kind of this rest so that you can build these new pathways. You can make better choices and you can create a support system to help you manage food and exercise and healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle. I think that's a great way to use the drug. Understanding that

It's not forever. And that when you come off the drug, you are then relying on yourself and your body to continue making those healthy choices. The drug kind of gives you a head start, in my opinion. It carries you a bit of the way. And then it lets you down and says, all right, now it's up to you to keep going. That to me is how I view the drug.

and how I view it as I come off of it is that it's up to me to continue making healthy choices about food and helping to manage the inflammatory diseases that I have in my body I also think that life is best lived in moderation. And so, you know,

having the pizza on Friday night or having the glass of wine or whatever works for I find that it really is individual and nobody can tell you what is best for you. You really have to live and try and experiment and see what works best.

I'm trying to think of any more side effects or what else has happened to me as I've taken the

I will say that when I did first start taking the drug, it's to be kept in the refrigerator, the one that I have, the pen, the Wegovy, and it gets cold in the refrigerator. And when I would inject it, it would burn quite badly for a while. And I would inject it at nighttime because I had read that injecting at night, ⁓ if you did get nauseous after the injection, then you're sleeping and you don't really notice that side effect so much. And normally it dissipates after a few hours, the nausea.

So I would inject at night and I remember maybe the first or second time that I injected, it was burning and stinging for quite a while, I would say at least an hour. what I did is I would take it out of the refrigerator maybe 30 minutes before the injection so it would warm up a bit and the liquid would get a bit more room temp and then put it back in. You don't want it out of the fridge for too long but for that amount of time it can warm up a little bit.

And another way is you can rub it in your hands to kind of warm it up from your body heat. And that did help at the injection site when I would inject it. So I found that to be helpful. also feel very fortunate that I found a doctor that was very conservative that looked at me as a whole picture.

She knew that I am very sensitive to medications and I typically like to start at the lowest dose of any medication that I can if there's an option for that. And her goal from the beginning was let's try and get your inflammation under control.

let's try and help with the leptin It was kind of part of the deal that I would work with a dietician I was taking the drug. I'm really appreciative for that. I know that there are a lot of people that increase their doses quite quickly, that get to a very high dose and they lose a lot of weight. For me, this wasn't about the weight.

And I think that if I had been motivated by weight, this would have been a very different experience for me. have been motivated by feeling better and by improving the whole body. You know, the weight loss for me was a side effect.

this does make it very easy to lose weight, but it really, it's not about the food and it shouldn't be about the weight. It should be about living in a healthier body, feeling better, longevity, movement, and managing mental health because, you know, obesity can really...

affect the way that your body functions. It can affect your physical health, which in turn can very much affect your mental health. And I think the two are like a yin and a yang. there's a lot of comparison that can happen, especially you see all these celebrities online that

look completely different and have lost, you know, 60 pounds or more and you think, want that. But at the end of the day, you know, your body has a place that it's going to be. It's, you know, some of us are not meant to be in a size two and weigh 110 pounds and that's okay. Our bodies are carrying us through life and we need to take care of them and not force them to be something that they're not.

meant to be.

so that's it for me. Those are my thoughts. That is my lived experience with Wegovy. I hope that this has been helpful in some way.

In the medical world, patients are kind of grouped into statistics, but we are living people with lived experiences. And my goal in sharing is always to help other people. It's never to give medical advice. It's never to tell you what is your path, but to help you see that we all have our own individual paths.

you so much for your time. Thanks for being here and I will see you soon.