Trying to lose weight and obsessed with food!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve heard good things about wegovy

I would love to try something like this, but alas my insurance won’t cover it and it’s like 1000 something dollars per month.

I’m just finishing my first week of Ozempic. I am prediabetic and had no issue getting it covered by insurance. It’s a $25 co-pay.
This is a game changer. I’ve lost two pounds without really doing much. The obsession with food is gone. No more mindless grazing. It’s just gone. I worked out like I normally do. I didn’t count and write down everything. I just ate when I was hungry and then stopped pretty quickly. I didn’t eat out of boredom. Fingers crossed that this continues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What are you drinking? Are you drinking 3 liters of still water a day? Hot coffee or tea or lemon water in the morning?

I drink a cup of green tea in the morning. I cut out diet soda because it made me hungry. Now I drink a ton of fizzy water, like a ton. But I think it actually makes me hungry.

Stick with straight water and cut the fizzy. I felt like it was triggering my hunger and never satisfying my thirst which I often misread as hunger. Basically I was thirsty.

Phentermine is the only thing that ever worked for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just listened to a podcast about this on Weight Loss for Busy Physicians Ep #270: [Back to Basics Series] Urges and Cravings. (Thanks DCUM for recommending the podcast!!!)

She had some really good tips on this. I really liked the suggestion to pause and "feel" where in the body you are experiencing hunger. Back of the throat, stomach, etc. Real hunger pains feel differently than craving signals. I've been trying to listen to my body when I feel hungry, and really the act of self reflection has been pretty helpful. It's been most helpful, for me, in distinguishing between "I want" and "I need". Cravings/urges will pass, real hunger pains will not.

I’ve been doing this too for a couple weeks after another episode. Turns out I feel my craving “hunger” on top of my stomach, whereas I feel true hunger inside my stomach. It’s been interesting noting the difference.

I know Weight Loss… Physicians gets mentioned here a lot, but part of her program addresses exactly what OP is facing. Dieting often ends up with us spending way too much head space thinking about food: what can I eat, when can I eat, how much can I eat, etc?? It would be freeing to get past that (I’m not overweight but I still think about food way too much). Pre planning out what I’m going to eat that day, and sticking to it, is helping free up that mind space.

It seems like people are attributing food obsession to psychology, as if you just need to change your thinking to get out of it. It's actually biological. Read Keyes starvation studies. Putting healthy young men on diets caused them to be food obsessed. These men didn't care about their body weights or dieting, they were just doing an experiment. The mental obsession is one of the ways our body biologically protects us from starvation. I experienced this as a teen with an eating disorder. The only thing that reversed my constant food obsession that was destroying my life was to reach my setpoint body weight and reestablish balance in physiological body weight regulation pathways. Leptin is one example.

If you're overweight but dieting and food obsessed, you're probably eating too few calories. Your body thinks it is starving so it is telling you to eat.