Tirzepatide and Semaglutide are both known to reduce addiction / substance ingestion. I noticed I was just less interested in Alcohol when I started on Wegovy, and didn't realize it's a common effect until much later. I retained most of my disinterest after going off, too, FWIW.

I'm with you on this, tirzepatide has been life changing for me. I've struggled with my weight my whole life and I can actually imagine a future where I lose enough that I'm no longer ashamed of my weight.

I've been on tirzepatide for just over a year now. Before that, I managed to lose 6% of my body weight over the previous year. With tirzepatide, I've lost an additional 17% of my body weight, for a total of 23% over two years.

Tirzepatide isn't a magic drug that just makes you lose weight, it simply makes it much easier to avoid overeating.

It makes the difference between being so hungry that I can't fall asleep and having the ability to just go to sleep.

I think this is such a helpful description of the totality of components working together to spur a positive outcome, which I think, at least in my personal experience, is an under-appreciated aspect of using a drug.

I've sometimes heard it said that it's an unhealthy reliance on a drug in place of curbing behavior, but I think it's important to understand it as, among other things, a stimulant to the activation of beneficial behaviors, which can be as critical as the drug itself.

Have you been recommended an exercise regimen, or taken one up yourself? The one the great things about GLP-1s is that with the weight loss, it's easier to be more active once you've lost some of the weight. The negatives is that the current breed promote a loss in muscle mass as well as fat loss, so it is very important to do your best to maintain if not increase muscle while on them.

The next generation of drugs are including 2nd molecule...I'm blanking on the name, and a search isn't bringing it to me...which maintains or potentially increases muscle mass.

But curious what your experience with exercise has been.

I also didn't know there was a planned reduction in dosage, but the expectation is that you'll be on some type of GLP1 for life, is that not right?

Is the official recommendation that you continue to take it for the rest of your life? Or, is there a schedule to "wean" people off of it?

Did you notice that cannabis consumption interferes with weight loss due to interfering with motivation to stick to your health goals? Or did it interfere with your metabolism in some way?

Have you noticed any effect on gastric emptying. As someone with 'tummy issues' ( ibs/gerd ect) i am apprehensive of messing with my digestive systems.

My view about obesity has shifted dramatically since Ozempic came out. Before this, I didn't think about it too much (I am not obese myself).

I notice now that there is a LOT of judgement, bias(?), around obesity, that people, obese or not, carry with them. I certainly carried that bias, and the reason I noticed it was because Ozempic is literally an external substance that you take that simply makes obesity go away. So if you believe (like most of us unconsciously do) that obesity is a personal failing or an issue of willpower, an issue of personal merit -- HOW is it possible that a chemical pill, an external chemical process, can SO effectively resolve it? My inability to square that circle really changed my thinking about obesity in a fundamental way.

Already there is a reaction to Ozempic -- like people thinking that taking Ozempic is a personal failing, or judging celebrities, for taking it, thinking it's the "easy way out" -- I think the origin of that is this very deep unconscious bias that we all have about what obesity actually is fundamentally.

My view: It is a health condition, that people do not choose. Not unlike diabetes, celiac, or clinical depression. We should be focused on how to improve the lives of people who suffer with that health condition. We all agree insulin is unequivocally a good thing; that it's not a "personal failure" or "cheating" to take insulin; that it really is simple as, diabetes is a health condition and insulin is used to treat it. Ozempic? Same. Exact. Thing.

It's really heartening to hear your experience. Your post really struck me, I felt exactly the same way after getting on a CGM + Insulin Pump for my Type 1 Diabetes. Nobody EVER thought I had a lack of "personal responsibility" or an "issue of willpower" for going low or high on shots of Humilin and NPH.

Thank fucking god for Novo Nordisk.

> realized that frequent cannabis consumption interferes with the weight loss, so I've kicked the habit from daily to occasionally on weekends

Did you try to reduce your cannabis consumption before using tirzepatide?

Because although you say(feel) like the realization made you reduce your intake, I can hardly imagine that you were totally oblivious to the fact that smoking cannabis is unhealthy in the first place.

Do you feel like you think less about e.g. cannabis, or do you feel like it's easier to say no to that impulse?

Does it seem to mainly influence health choices or are you also less likely to be angry or does it interact work place interactions?

What annoys me is it’s like $100 in Europe and it’s available in a pill form there (so you could presumably easily reduce the dose and therefore the cost by breaking the pill in half). And no US insurance will cover any of it unless you have diabetes. Put another way, if I can find someone in Europe to prescribe it to me, and pay out of pocket for 90 days worth, I could take a free vacation to Europe every 3-4 months in perpetuity.

Do a reality check that leas-frequent cannabis consumption with your target activity and intake levels doesn't also lead to weight gain .....

I feel high on life when I am off the sauce, eat less, and walk more - without any drugs. Healthy lifestyle is the best medicine, and the biggest problem people have is not even genetic predisposition, it's impulse control. We all want that reward, right away.

I’ve had an on and off battle with ad-hoc self medication for anxiety via heavy drinking for like twenty years, by “on and off” I mean that some situations didn’t really trigger it much, and other situations made it life defeating.

As close as I’ve come to an effective remediation was living abroad where the food wasn’t actively adversarial: capitalism can do many good things but it drives the quality of food to “edible plus epsilon”. Rich people eat pasture-raised shit for a reason. For me it just deleted that problem.

But I’m interested in this class of medication because it’s difficult bordering on impractical to eat well in some regions. People say just cook, well, there’s an infrastructure around that which amounts to a declared bias against those who didn’t settle down young. Much like people who met their partner before partnering became monetized, “easy for you to say”.

I hope you have success in your journey either way, and the less meds involved on average probably better, but if it works and has no bad side effects I don’t see why one would stop. Welcome to your new awesome life!

Every SV power player I’ve ever met was enhancing themselves via chemicals. It’s not tweeted about (other than when Garry Tan threatens elected officials), but it’s a quiet norm.

Congratulations! This is such a great success story.

I love your tactic about building healthy habits while you have some support and leaning on those to carry you through the future.

Good job!

I'm not sure if you tried but add a sport, can be table tenis, jiu-jitsu whatever. I did this too after got comfortable with the walks (that I still do).

Sounds like a kickstart you needed!

Aside from the disruption in cravings, the immediate results seem to have motivated you to do more.

> I realized that frequent cannabis consumption interferes with the weight loss

Because you eat more or is there some other factor?

You need to change your attitude if you want to lead a healthy lifestyle. Don't blame your failures and CHOICE to eat junk and not exercise on weed. You know what the healthy choices are, you know when you're not making them. You lack self control.

Have you looked at Psilocybin for your depression?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41818420

How do i get this?

In the future, this would be indistinguishable from an ad.

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> I don't know what is so different about having the drug help me

Likely the placebo effect

> I've kicked the habit from daily to occasionally on weekends. I've started walking 2-3 miles a day, 2-3 days a week regularly, in addition to eating less and being more motivated to calorie count.

This would have done the same without the drug

That said, perception is reality. Keep up the good work! Glad you're getting healthy.

Cut on carbs and you will have all the benefits without the nasty side effects.

Check https://metabolicmind.org for details.

My own experience with the keto diet - https://www.feelingbuggy.com/p/finding-hope-after-decades-of...

I’d like to make a couple of things clear here:

1) “obesity” has no clear clinical definition, nor is it really a disease. [1] 2) there has been no evidence yet that weight is at all a primary determinant of health [2] 3) Weight loss drugs must be taken forever or it’s nearly certain you will gain the weight back [3]

There’s a lot of great research these days that shows fatness is not what people think it is, and weight stigma is far more harmful than being fat itself [4].

Also, nobody knows what happens yet if you take these drugs for 30 years, and what we do know is that being fat hasn’t been proven to kill anyone.

I'd just say follow the money.

[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/obesity-doesn-t-alwa... [2] https://withinhealth.com/learn/articles/why-body-weight-isnt... [3] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240521-what-happens-whe... [4] https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291...