It’s been a little over a year now that I have used my insurance to help me lose weight. It’s been long and slow and I had a few bumps in the road, but I am still going.
I was 42 and hovering around 200 lbs. Sometimes I felt like I looked fine and then I would see a picture of myself and be like “who IS that??”
I have polycystic ovarian syndrome and Hashimoto’s disease. Since my thyroid numbers aren’t that bad, I am not on medication for it. I don’t know if these things factored into me not being able to really lose weight, but I assumed that the reason I was having such a hard time losing weight ( and such an easy time gaining) was because of this diagnosis.
I was getting really frustrated with dieting and not seeing the scale move at all. I would get down like a pound or two after a week of being super strict and then a few days later I would be right back where I started.
I started jogging. I watched what I ate and tracked it, and nothing worked. Finally, I just starved myself for a month. I do not suggest this as a way to lose weight, but for me it’s really the only thing that worked. I dropped 10 lbs in a month but I couldn’t keep going on one meal a day, and the holidays were coming up.
I was able to keep the 10 lbs off for the holidays but I was stalled in my weight loss. A coworker kept telling me to use our insurance because it would give me Ozempic or Mounjaro and it would be covered under my insurance. I finally listened. My insurance uses the Flyte program. Through this program you get a nurse and a nutritionist. First you meet with the nurse.
My first meeting with the nurse was in March and it was not what I expected. She said that they couldn’t start me with the injections, first we need to try oral medication. If the oral medication didn’t work, then we would talk about injections. I was already on Wellbutrin for depression, so she added Naltrexone. From what she told me, Naltrexone is usually prescribed for addicts, but they have found that it also helps with the food noise. It honestly helped me a lot. I was able to stop eating when I felt not hungry anymore. I wasn’t eating until I was full and I wasn’t eating just because it was time to eat. I ate when I was hungry only and stopped when I was not hungry. I lost about 10 lbs. Then I met with the nutritionist who went over what I eat. I don’t eat bad, but she did say I needed to add more protein in the morning.
In June I met with the Nurse again and she added Zonisamide, it’s an anti-seizure medication and she said that with what I was currently taking, it’s been shown to help accelerate the weight loss. Also, since I lost weight, I no longer qualified for Ozempic or Mounjaro because your BMI needs to be over 30. I didn’t really want to take the zonisamide because the side effects scared me, but the nurse talked me into it.
For a few months I had a constant dull headache. I thought it was due to the anti-seizure medicine, and it was just one of the side effects. I decided to use the blood pressure cuff that the Flyte program provided and my blood pressure was sky high. Like 165/110. I thought there was a problem with the cuff because I never had blood pressure issues in my life. Every time I used the stupid cuff, I would get texts and phone calls that if I felt funny or off, I should go to the ER immediately. I felt fine except for the headaches so I didn’t go. I was so convinced the cuff was wrong I called a requested a new one. Finally, I called my Primary care doctor in August. Sure enough my blood pressure really was that high. My PCP prescribed me a low dose of Losartan and told me to stop taking the Zonisamide immediately. I did and my blood pressure is now almost back to normal.
In September I was back to taking Wellbutrin, Naltrexone, birth control and now, Losartan. The entire time this is all going on, I was still slowly losing weight. I ended up losing another 10 pounds by the end October.
It wasn’t just the medication, I also added in more walking and a little bit of weight training because my doctor also told me that in your 40’s when you lose muscle, it’s very hard to get it back.
I maintained the 30 lb weight loss thru the holidays. I had another meeting with a new Nurse in January, and she added Metformin in to help with the last 15 lbs. I tried metformin alone a few years ago for 9 months and it did absolutely nothing for me. I asked my PCP and she said it was ok to add it in, so I did. Now I have a pill box when I never took more than a vitamin and a birth control pill daily.
It’s March now and I am down another 7 lbs. I am 163. I do feel better about the way I look but I also want to start weening off of all these pills.
First, I am going to talk to my gyno about the birth control. I really need to stop taking that. I do feel like that is the reason my blood pressure went crazy. The issue with that is once I hit 40 my periods got crazy heavy and gross. I didn’t want to even leave my house when I had my period because I was bleeding through everything. The pill did help with that. My periods are now light and predictable, but I am old and I don’t think I should stay on birth control anymore. Once I figure out what to do about the birth control, I am going to see about getting off the Wellbutrin.
We’ll see what happens, I am hoping that since the weight loss was slow, it’ll stay off.
Have you tried any of these things? What was your experience?
Moving forward 