Ozempic Update: Prices Are Lower, Food Is Good.

Being on Ozempic is amazing. There's just no other way to put it. It's amazing.

As you probably know, GLP-1 drugs are now available in generic form in Canada. The pharma company that held the patent announced it would match the generic prices. 

As soon as this happened, I asked my family doctor to transfer my prescription from the private, internet-based company. I was never comfortable using them in the first place, and I wanted my health records to reflect what I'm actually doing. The doc wanted me to have an appointment with the dietitian first. That's WRD from earlier in this blog! I was happy to reconnect with her.

I had a great appointment with WRD, talked through some things, and she sent something to my family doctor requesting to transfer the prescription. Done and done.

Things I cannot believe

This is the first time in my life I've allowed myself to eat whatever I want. Between being unable to control my weight and my eating-disorder mindset, I have done that. Every choice would come with guilt, or need rationalization, or I denied myself. Or any combination of those. 

Now I eat whatever I want, just in much smaller quantities. Overall, I have a healthy diet -- but I also want to eat things outside of that. A weekly ice cream after dinner. (A pint lasts for four or five servings.) I love food like baked pasta casseroles, but in the past, never let myself eat them. Now I do. I rarely eat fried food, but if I want a spring roll, I eat it. This is incredibly liberating.

And here's the truly amazing bit: I am still losing weight! I'm not trying to lose more weight. I was back to the -50 that I hit (and plateaued at) after surgery. But very slowly, the number is still going down. 

Wow.

Ozempic Update: How to Manage My Appetite or Lack of It

I've been using Ozempic since June 2025, so coming up to the one-year mark. I've lost all the weight I re-gained, and am now back to the full minus-50 I achieved after the gastric sleeve surgery. It's clear that I could lose more weight. But strangely, I don't want to.

Can't stop, won't stop

I tried stopping Ozempic, hoping that the tiny stomach would kick in, and the "cannot eat one more bite" feeling of satiety would return. It did not. A few days after stopping, my full appetite kicked in, and I started to re-gain weight. I'm not willing to go there. I re-started the Ozempic.

But there are two major issues.

• One is cost. Insurance in Canada will cover Ozempic or Wegovy for diabetes, but not for weight loss. Generic versions are coming, supposedly this year, but no one knows when, or what the price difference will be. Paying for it out of pocket is a stretch. I'm fortunate that we can do it, but I'd rather not!


• My other issue is a complete loss of appetite. The thing that I was afraid of from bariatric surgery, which didn't happen -- no longer enjoying food -- is happening now from Ozempic. I eat three bites and simply cannot stand the thought of eating more. I'm not full. It's not the physical discomfort of eating too much after gastric sleeve. It's a mental or psychological state. Food has no appeal. 

A dose that is not supposed to be a dose

I've been using 0.5 milligram, half the typical dose. I cannot imagine using a full milligram! On the half-milligram, I barely eat anything. There's also an unpleasant side effect: constipation. That can be tough to manage, especially since I don't feel like eating. More salad? More prunes? I can't even. I was very clear that I am not increasing the dosage.

So I cut back to 0.25. This would make the drug more affordable, and I was hoping it would be enough to maintain my current weight. But it wasn't. As soon as I halved the dose, I began to re-gain weight.

This is a real dilemma. 

Not wanting to lose more weight is deeply weird

Strangely, I don't want to lose more weight! I don't want to lose the enjoyment of food. I don't want to buy new clothes. This is so weird! I spent most of my life struggling to lose weight -- for a long time, obsessively so. 

During my years of eating-disordered mindset, Ozempic would have been a miracle. But now I just want to maintain where I am.

It's not like I'm thin. I have a chunky body, which is very typical -- or at least not at all unusual -- in women my age (mid-60s). But all my indicators are good. I take medication for high cholesterol and blood pressure, but I've had that all my life, regardless of weight, diet, or exercise. I have no great incentive to push it any further.

What I want: to continue using Ozempic in a way that is affordable and doesn't completely kill my appetite. My current plan is to alternate weeks of 0.25 and 0.5. No doctor would prescribe this dosage, I'm trying it on my own. I'll let you know how it goes.

Ozempic Update: Pleased With Success After 12 Weeks

I've been using Ozempic for three months. I've lost 15 pounds of the 20 that I re-gained, five years after having gastric sleeve surgery.

The side effects, which were not awful, have stopped. 

The effect on my eating habits is somewhat the same as the bariatric surgery, but there are differences. After the surgery, any overeating led to immediate physical discomfort. With the Ozempic, at that same point, I lose my appetite. I suddenly have no desire to take another bite. The food that I was enjoying two bites ago would now disgust me if I ate it. This is a very strange sensation!

I don't know what I'm going to do long-term. I don't have a clear plan yet. Obviously, I don't want to gain it all back, and lapse back into yo-yo weight loss and gain. I wouldn't mind using Ozempic very long-term -- the aversion to taking meds long-term mystifies me -- but it's not covered by insurance. Do I want to adjust my budget to take, say, one dose a month? And would that work? This is all unknown. 

I know that I'm not going to try to lose more than the 20 pounds, which will bring me back to minus-50. I don't even think that weight is sustainable, so I'm not going to continue, just to see how low I can go. 

Ozempic Update: Two Doses In

I won't post weekly updates about my experience using Ozempic, but I will update from time to time.

So far, all is well. Self-administering is painless, but a bit more complicated than I imagined. There are several steps and it's not necessarily intuitive. I've used two weekly doses so far, and both times followed along with a video. Easy enough.

The information said you usually start to feel a difference after three to four days, and that is exactly what happened. I had my first dose on a Friday, and when eating on Monday, felt fuller sooner. I simply lost my appetite and wanted to stop eating. Also, my nighttime carb cravings were more manageable. I found that eating a small amount of fruit took care of it. Both these things are quite different.

I have lost a little weight, which already makes me feel better. I have had some mild side effects, just some GI stuff. Nothing that an over-the-counter remedy can't fix. Side effects are supposed to taper off within a few weeks or less.

The plan starts you off on a very low dose - 0.25 milligram - to allow your body time to adjust, and to minimize potential side effects. There are cautions everywhere, telling you not to bump up to the next dosage - 0.5 milligram - until your practitioner tells you to. It is very tempting! But I will restrain myself.

Almost Five Years Post-Surgery: Weight Re-gain and Decision to Use Ozempic

I'm five years (minus four months) post-surgery. I'm not happy with my weight, or with my eating. 

Satiety cues have greatly diminished. I can eat more at any given meal, and have to be super careful to find an artificial stopping point. Worst of all, cravings are back -- intense feelings of needing to eat something carbohydrate, especially at night. I've learned a lot about these cravings over the years. It's not hunger, but it's also not emotional eating or stress eating. It's an addiction, and it takes more than willpower to shut down.

So, to recap.

Shortly after hitting the 50-pound weight loss, I re-gained five pounds. That's fine. I knew that minus-50 was not sustainable. 

About a year after that, I re-gained five more pounds. I wasn't thrilled about that, but I accepted it, and I could live with that weight.

I maintained that minus-40 weight for three years. 

And since then, I've re-gained 10 more pounds. Now I'm seriously unhappy with my weight again, and I don't want to let this go any further.

I want to note that I never got thin. Minus-fifty wasn't even thin. I look and feel significantly better than I did pre-surgery. My bloodwork is in the normal range again. But I am still my chunky, shapeless self. Meaning, the weight re-gain is significant.

For a while, I was really beating myself up, blaming myself for letting the tiny stomach expand. But I gave that up. No one knows how permanent weight-loss surgery is. It was originally thought that lap-band surgery was the fix. Now that is no longer used, because most people re-gain everything. The data on the "permanence" of gastric sleeve surgery looks at five years: if a patient retains the weight loss after five years, it's considered permanent.

Even that data is incomplete. Most people who have the surgery aren't tracked. Most people aren't part of a study, and many study participants drop out because they've re-gained weight. So the long-term prognosis is unknown. What's the point of beating myself up?

I've tried repeatedly to lose the weight I've re-gained. It starts out well: I lose a half-pound per week. Then, after three or four weeks, weight loss stops, and eventually those few pounds return. I do not want to return to the diet yo-yo! But I also don't want to be this weight.

I did a lot of research and decided to try Ozempic. Our provincial health care and our extended insurance doesn't cover it, because I don't have diabetes, and because my BMI is under their threshold. It's a sizeable expense, so it was a big decision. 

It's also impossible for me to tell if this is a rationale decision based on health, or if I'm back to obsessing on the number on the scale, if I'm having disordered thinking again. I can't sort it. I don't have the perspective. 

My hope is that a few months on Ozempic will lead to 15 to 20 pound weight loss, and I'll return to the state where it was easy to maintain that, and transition off Ozempic. I honestly don't know how realistic this is, but I'm trying it.

I had my first dose this morning. Stay tuned.