I lost 20 pounds in 6 weeks! Stupid (scary?) fast, I know. I wasn’t actually trying to lose weight. My doctor and I were trying to reduce or reverse my insulin resistance, as well as, reduce my blood glucose and A1C to get me out of the pre-diabetic range. She prescribed Ozempic®.
This low-dose semaglutide accomplished all it had been prescribed for—and more. Blood labs worked up this past week showed my insulin level had dropped from 37 to 13, a strong indicator (to me at least) that the medication was effectively reducing my insulin resistance. Glucose down 51 units to an almost normal 102. A1C down from 6.0 to 5.6. One doctor told me, “It doesn’t look like that much, a .4 drop, but to change your A1C that quickly… That’s huge!” Then there’s the “stupid fast” weight loss—the “and more” accomplishment. (There is significant controversy surrounding the prescription of Ozempic®, Wegovy®, and Mounjaro® for weight loss which is attributed with creating a national shortage.)
There are many side effects listed for semaglutide. The two I experienced consistently were nausea and loss of appetite. What happens when you’re too nauseous to eat? Or when you begin fasting? Duh! You lose weight! My experience matched up with other patient reports: increased satiety, decreased sugar cravings, decreased appetite, all contributing to a typical 15-20 pound weight loss.
It’s worth a moment to ask the opposite: What happens when you aren’t nauseous and your appetite is very good? From little food intake to as much as you’re hungry for? Yes, you typically gain weight. The rebound is what I’m dealing with now that I’ve been unable to refill my prescription during the past month. Just wanted to say: this isn’t a magic long-term solution to obesity. We still have to follow a healthy diet and lifestyle to maintain.
But, wow! So much weight lost in so little time. Despite the knowledge I’ve gained from years in pursuit of the “ideal” body weight, despite my knowledge of the science of weight loss through training in the fitness industry, despite knowing body weight is analogous with eye-balling a straight line as a measure of health, my inner teenage “big-boned girl” is flipping out! For her, the weight loss is the only accomplishment worth noting. Yes. 37 years deeply entrenched in diet culture left a mark that lingers, even 10 years after escaping the cult-ure.
My escape began when my “approaching a half-century” self discovered Dual-energy X-ray Absorptiometry, more commonly known by it’s acronym, DXA (a.k.a. DeXA–which is also the pronunciation of the acronym). Through DXA I learned, once and for all, body weight isn’t just the authoritative number we treat it as. It’s more complex, comprised of the many different tissues and fluids making up our physical body—e.g. fat, muscle, bone, water, cartilage, etc.
We know %body fat matters and why. But what about lean (muscle) mass and bone mass (density)? Why is it important to know those percentages when assessing overall health and fitness?
Higher lean mass improves metabolism whereby, we burn energy more readily, leaving less to store as fat. Or even tapping into the fat stores we have to support the activities we can do with our increasing lean mass. While denser, heavier bones increase our ability to support that lean mass and carry on those energy burning activities with less risk of injury.
Okay, okay, okay. “Enough already,” you say. “Stop dragging it out. How fat are you? Really?”
Still pretty fat, actually. I am down 3% body fat., from 45.3% to 42.3%. That leaves me firmly in the morbidly obese range. But, I still luv me some DXA data! Nothing beats it for a real look at how fat you really are.
Here’s my current noteworthy stats:
● Total Mass (weight) lost: 20.5 lb
● Fat Mass lost: 15.4 lb
● Body region majority lost: trunk/middle, 10.8 lb
● Visceral fat: 1.17 lb
● Lean Mass lost: 5.1 lb, 3.7 in my legs
Even in April 2015, a time when I was at my fittest and leanest, I weighed 180 lbs. The ideal body weight for a women of my (then) age and height was 126 lbs (or more generously, a healthy BMI weight was 111 – 150 lbs. By those medically based calculations, I was still 54 lbs overweight. Or at a minimum, 30 lbs. And yet, my %body fat was in the normal range at 32.6%. So, comparing results with the 2015 DXA scan, and all that’s been going on during the intervening 8 years, I’m very excited with where I find myself now. Great jumping off point !
Now if I can just get back on track with training for that “60th benchmark” 50K I thought I was going to be doing in 2022…
