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Wellness Wednesday for August 9, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Last time, I had "lost" 4 lbs. That was a weight measurement snafu: turns out, my home scale is consistently off by about two pounds, so it would be correct to say that at the time of the post, I had lost two pounds, not 4.

However, since beginning semaglutide, I have lost approximately 12 pounds. The number of calories I managed to avoid eating thanks to sugar reduction is more than 500 kcal/day. I'll not detail the experience in too much detail, but current conclusion is that the vast majority of my weight loss comes from being able to cut down on the soda.

I will note a few extra details: Loss of interest in bread. Not terribly strange, considering most bread is a vehicle for sugars. But everything from subway, to hot dog and bratwurst buns, to regular sliced bread. White bread now has the same palatability as low-sugar sarah lee's wheat bread. Naturally, I have swapped over to Sarah Lee's. Miracle Whip is nasty now, though regular, low-sugar mayo is still good.

If you are struggling with weight loss, especially snacking + sugar, Semaglutide is a miracle drug.

So does Semaglutide do anything for the weight loss mechanism except effectively suppress appetite? I mean I know it affects blood sugar etc, but in terms of losing weight, is the effect simply from causing the user to eat less calories? Put another way, if you stopped taking it, but were able to maintain the same diet as if you were taking it, would the effect be the same? Or is there additional effects of the drug that induce changes in how your body metabolizes the food?

As far as I am aware, it does affect digestion, though I do not know how. Nausea and constipation as well as unnatural stool are common side effects; I haven't had any of those issues personally, but I know a number of people who do.

Your gut craves sugar, and satisfying that causes you not to eat as much. Unfortunately, I'm not studied enough on the subject to say for sure how much more there is to how it acts.