At the start of this year, I decided to finally do something about my weight. Over the years I kept gaining about 1 or 2 pounds per year then I started working from home and the weight gain turned into 3 to 4 pounds a year to where I ballooned up to a weight that was starting to have serious potential health problems down the line. I talked to my doctor and we agreed to try Zepbound and see how it would work so here is a summary of my journey.
First Shot
The medication is easily injected via a star trek like hypospray. Despite there being a needle that plunges into your body and injects liquid, I rarely felt anything when injecting the medicine. For the first 24 hours I felt nothing different but after a day the first thing I noticed was that I was not hungry at all.
We are all creatures of habit so I would find myself getting up from my desk to head for the kitchen to get a snack but when I got there, I didn’t feel like eating anything at all so I would head back to my desk. I did this several times throughout the day until I finally just decided to drink water to satisfy my habit of needing to put something in my mouth.
I took the shot on Thursday, lost all appetite on Friday and it lasted through Tuesday when I regained my normal appetite back and started snacking again albeit in smaller amounts.
When Thursday rolled around again, I weighed myself and recorded that I lost 2 lbs.
Second Shot
On Thursday I took my second shot and like the first one, it took 24 hours for my appetite to disappear but over the following few days I noticed something else. It wasn’t that my appetite was muted, it was also that the taste of food had changed.
One of my go to snack foods has always been corn tortilla chips and salsa or avocado dip or nacho cheese. I love the salty crunchy taste of tortilla chips contrasted with the spices of salsa or avocado or cheese so it was a surprise when I decided to serve myself some chips and homemade salsa and the flavors were completely gone. The chips no longer tasted salty and the tomato infused salsa with a half dozen spices I put in it were all muted.
It dawned on me and made me wonder if people who are thin don’t ever experience a full flavor profile of foods. I’m sure thin people get hungry but when they eat food are they getting the same level of satisfaction that I do from it?
Tetrachromacy
Tetrachromacy is a condition where a person ends up with four cone receptors instead of the normal three in their eyes. What this means is that people with this condition are able to see more of the color spectrum because they have more cone receptors than normal people.
I am left wondering if I have Tetraflavoracy where by I am able to taste a broader spectrum of flavors than most people. Maybe my tongue has 4x as many taste receptors than normal people. I have about 100 spices in my pantry that I used regularly to cook meals so I may be on to something. Now those spices sit mostly on the shelf as my meals are as simple as avocado on toast, chicken soup or a home made bowl of Pho.
But I don’t think it’s as simple as that because the other piece is always being hungry so I suspect for people to get fat there must be two conditions:
- Have a hungry mode that is always on
- Have an ability to fully enjoy the full flavor spectrum of foods
If a person has condition #1 but not condition #2, they will eat but not get enjoyment from food so they stop eating. If they have condition #2 but not condition #1 then they’ll enjoy food but never be hungry enough to keep eating. I suspect that I have condition #1 and #2 so I keep gaining weight. I call this condition tetraflavoracy bingeitis.
Third Shot
By the third shot I repeated the same pattern, was not hungry until the following Tuesday when the drug seems to “wear off” so I find myself eating more on Tuesday and Wednesday. One huge difference in my personal finance world however is that I cut my grocery bill in half. There is some wisdom that you should never go grocery shopping hungry because you’ll fill your cart with more food and when I went to the grocery store to pick up food, I found myself passing by all the snacks including my favorite salty chips and salsa and not even considering putting in my basket.
An article on SeekingAlpha caught my eye, “Weight-loss drugs cut grocery bills by up to 9%” and I think the article is wrong, I think it’s more like 20% to 50% but I guess it depends on how many people in a household are taking the medicine.
Fourth Shot
I took my fourth shot this past Thursday. It takes about a day for the shot to take effect so by Friday I lost all appetite again. During the weekend, my wife ended up sharing two bottles of wine and I can tell you that the wine and cheese we consumed tasted bland for me. I asked my wife if the wine and cheese were good and she said it was great. Clearly another case of food/wine losing flavor for me while on the med. The concerning thing though is that two bottles of wine (even shared) would put me into an alcohol buzz and I didn’t have that at all. I am concerned that heavy drinkers on this drug may end up doing damage to their liver if they keep consuming alcohol looking for that buzz. I won’t be drinking any more alcohol from now on. I weighed myself and am down 3 pounds total so far. Weight loss slowed from the first week so we’ll see how things go from here. If I lose 2 or 3 pounds per month I should lose 20 to 30 pounds by the end of the year.
Eating Habits Change
How have my eating habits changed?
- Breakfast before Zep – two fried eggs with a side of protein or fried egg sandwich (cheese & protein) or breakfast tacos
- Breakfast after Zep – A slice of toast with avocado or peanut butter but most days NOTHING.
- Lunch before Zep – Fast food delivered via Uber Eats (Pizza, Burgers, Tacos, Gyros, etc) almost always with french fries.
- Lunch after Zep – A bowl of Pho (bean sprouts, thai basil, cilantro, rice noddles and a small portion of protein beef/chicken). Alternatives are home made chicken soup or a slice of home made bread with avocado or peanut butter. I am simply not hungry enough to eat more than a handful of food which is why I eat soups for lunch now.
- Dinner before Zep – Hello Fresh meal (vegetarian) but we add our own protein (beef, chicken, seafood, etc).
- Dinner after Zep – Some days nothing but if I do eat, it will be half of what I ate before. When I eat it is small or single servings of our Hello Fresh order. Before I would eat seconds.
By far the biggest change though is all snacking in between meals have stopped. No more chips and salsa, Doritos, Cheetos, cookies, ice cream or other junk food. Most days I have to remember and force myself to eat a slice of toast with avocado or peanut butter so I don’t let my blood sugar get too low. I have started to drink a protein shake every morning now to avoid losing muscle mass.
Ironically, I am one of those people that gets cranky when my blood sugar drops too low and that all went away with Zep. One day I started feeling a bit faint and forced myself to eat something to get back to normal. Not sure if that was Zep or just me adjusting to the new normal.
Body Changes
Even though it’s only been a few weeks on the drug, the two most important body changes are:
- My beer belly has gone from a firm round mass of fat to loose melting blobs of fat. I feel better and have more energy since starting to take this drug.
- Inflammation “storms’ are gone. I have suffered from low back pain now for close to 20 years. Certain things, like alcohol, trigger my inflammation storms so that if I have a few glasses of wine on Saturday, the price I will pay the following day will be acute back pain for a day or two. This has all gone away with Zepbound. I think Eli Lilly is under estimating the uses of this drug especially for inflammation. I’ve been to doctors, chiropractors, physical therapists and none have been able to fix my back pain. I take Zep and my back pain and inflammation is gone. It is also possible that too much food or certain foods was triggering my inflammation and now that I’m eating less it’s not triggering.
Cost
The biggest hurdle for anyone contemplating these weight loss drugs is going to be cost. I paid about $600 for my first set of shots and my health insurance covered some of the cost. I haven’t yet received the cost for the following month but I will assume it will be the same. If I’m on this drug for 10 months it will cost me $6000 which is very steep for most people.
I don’t like the cost but I also feel that I don’t have a choice. If I keep gaining weight I may ultimately end up with health issues like diabetes or needing things like heart surgery or possible get some cancer. This is a huge personal finance issue and choice. Do I keep getting fatter and deal with the high cost of healthcare a few years down the line or do I fix this here and now?
The way I am looking at this whole thing though is to say to myself that I will be enjoying the world’s most delicious beef made from my very own stores of fat & meat seasoned with Zepbound at a mere cost of $6000 or if I lose 30 lbs it’ll be $200/lb of self-consumed beefy steak. My hope is that this drug or competitors will eventually bring the cost down or if I have too, perhaps I’ll fly to a different country and get the shots cheaper there the following year.
I’ll check back in at the end of March and let you know how I’m doing.