Ep. 64 On the Fence About Weight Loss Medication?

Hi, and welcome to the Mindful Shape Podcast. I'm Paula Parker, and I'm a life and weight loss coach. Okay, so this is a bit of a controversial topic, but I really wanted to cover it because for one, I've been getting some requests to cover it, and it might be something that you are going through that is causing you some distress if you are considering going on one of the weight.

Drugs that have been in the media quite a bit it might seem kind of appealing and you might be wondering if it's something that you should do or not. And so I thought that it might be a great topic to just help you make this decision. Okay, so first off, there's a few things that I won't be getting into.

One is the side effects. And the medical risks, which I gather that there are some, and I'm not gonna be talking about those. I'm also not gonna be talking about any of the specific studies or research or the controversy over the availability of the drug and how it can be used for insulin and weight loss.

Not talking about that. There's also been some talk about alternative cheaper compounds. Not gonna get into that. Either, this is just not my area of expertise nor my interest, and I really trust that you are fully capable of doing this research and resourcing yourself with the info in these specific areas if it interests you.

And also, of course, talking to your medical provider. So I am not a doctor by any means, and so. Of course, disclaimer is that you of course talk to your doctor in making this decision. However, before you do that, you might want to consider this decision making process okay? But most importantly, I won't be telling you whether or not it's right for you.

This is truly none of my business. And I really don't have any idea what you should do, how I would like to help. How I see my role here is to help you feel really clear about the decision you make. So this episode will be useful for those of you who are considering taking a weight loss drug like Ozempic, a weight loss supplement, or any other medicinal treatment or medication for weight.

What I will be getting into is how to go about making a decision like this. So we'll be talking more about decision making in general than the specifics of what you're making the decision about, although I will use a specific examples. One of the best things about working with a coach is that they really help you make decisions because being on the fence about anything just takes up so much unnecessary energy and mental space.

So the sooner you can make a decision about this or anything else for that matter, and stick by that decision, right? That's a whole other conversation. Having your own back on the decision that you make, the sooner you can move on with your. My goal really is to keep this as objective as possible. I know it's a bit controversial, however, there are a few biases that I know I'm aware of that I have in myself, and so I'm just gonna disclose that right up front.

There are three of 'em that I wanna share. One is that it's truly my belief that if you don't solve for the reasons you put on the weight, any method of taking off the weight without addressing that is extremely likely to lead you right back to weight gain. Okay. I'm gonna talk way more about this at the end of this.

And number two is, although there is research to support a genetic element to weight gain in terms of your predisposition and your propensity to put on weight, I don't think it serves anyone to focus on that aspect because there truly is so much that you can do with your choices and thinking your weight is due simply to your genetics, and that this is just your lot in life.

It really relinquishes all of your power, and oftentimes it'll undercut any effort that you do make.

And number three is that I believe in body autonomy. There is no one that has the right to tell you what you should look like, what you should eat, or what you should do regarding medication or not.

This applies to dropping any shame or guilt around overeating and being in a bigger body. Also applies to not judging others for what you might perceive as extreme. Okay. So I'll give you an example that you might not be thinking of, which is Gwyneth Paltrow. So people love to hate on Gwyneth Paltrow.

Whatever your opinion is. She's a great example because she's been highly criticized for sharing her daily routine, which involves fasting. Bone broth at lunch, a relatively low carb dinner and every day an hour of intense movement. But let's also be careful not to judge her like we would judge someone for making so-called really unhealthy choices.

Right? So just think about why she might be doing this. She's about, I'd say 10 years older than me, I would guess, which means she was in high school in the fat shaming eighties, okay. And then she was in Hollywood in the nineties and, You know, the silver screen and whatnot when she was in her twenties. So if you just take a look at that, it's no wonder why she would be making the kinds of choices that she's making now.

So same goes for any kind of lifestyle that people are living. Let's just cut everyone a little slack. We are all simply doing the best that we can. All of that said, let's talk about how to make a decision around a weight loss medication like Ozempic. Our first step in the decision making process is just to list out all of your options.

So in this case, option one might be to take it, option two might be not to take it, but are there any other options? Sometimes it's easy to overlook this step. Option three could be to take something very similar, which might require more research or talking to your doctor about other medical alternatives.

So again, maybe there are other options maybe. But you just wanna explore every single option that you can think of. The next step in our decision making is to write out all of our reasons for doing each option. We really wanna get clear on your reasons so that you can have full awareness. About them and determine how much you like those reasons or not.

Are they good enough reasons for you to take one action over the other? How much do you like your reasons for trying a weight loss medication? So I'm going to go over possible reasons for taking it that might be in your head, and then I'm going to offer some thoughts or just explore it a little bit and hopefully it will help you.

So number one. Is someone you know is on it and they are dropping massive. Number two is you just need a quick win. You just wanna see some results. You need it for motivation Number three is that your doctor recommended it for health reasons. Number four, you don't think you can do it any other way. This is like your last resort.

And the last one is that medical research shows that diets don't work. Nine outta 10 people gain the weight back. Okay? So you list out all of your reasons. Now you go back to your list and you circle. All of the reasons that you love. So let's explore these reasons a little bit before moving on. Okay, so the first one is someone you know is on it and dropping a lot of weight.

This can bring up a lot, right? I actually experienced this once, many years ago when someone I knew took a weight loss drug. So she had always been really uncomfortable with her weight, and when she started taking this, the weight just started really coming off. She was almost unrecognizable. And when we met up, I will admit that I did feel.

Not that she had lost all of it so easily, but just that she was now living at her goal weight, right? She was buying the clothes that she wanted and she was just living with a new energy, a new vitality that I'd never seen. So when you see someone with anything that creates en me in you, that generates that feeling, just let that be a gift.

Let that be confirmation of your renewed clarity, of your wants and desires, and also prove that it is possible. It's possible for them. It's possible for you. So in this case, I didn't need to look exactly like her to have what I was envious of. Right? I didn't need to have the clothes that she did or like have the same body that she had.

You don't need to duplicate exactly what you see someone else living. You'll do it in your own personal way. Right? So how she got there wasn't necessarily what I was envious up. It was the result that I. Also, we might look at that person and think it's not fair because they didn't do the hard work. Here I am struggling, feeling deprivation, taking two steps forward, one step back, spinning my wheels, while it's all a smooth ride for them.

And when we think it's not fair, we feel defeated, we might overeat. Or beat ourselves up or think badly about ourselves. We don't give ourselves a fair chance. I'll bet You're a bit curious if this person regained all of her weight back once she went off the drug. If you sacredly hope that she did see that, it shows us what's in your brain that you're still stuck in that.

That's unfair, poor me, kind of victim mentality when it comes to your weight and that you're only focused on the results, not the benefits and growth gained from doing the work to create those results. Don't judge yourself for it. Just see that there's also an option for you to wish her and that person that you know who's just lost a bunch of weight to be happy for them and wish them well.

Okay? Let them be on their own journey. You are going to lose focus and lose your power when you're focused on their journey and what they're doing instead of your journey and what you are. Great example that they teach in track. I was pretty terrible at track, but my sister was really good. She did all of the races and what they teach you right when you're running is to like never turn your head and look behind you at the person behind you.

Why? Because it slows you down, right? You lose momentum. Such a great metaphor. Another way of thinking of this is I want you to think of something that you've achieved, something that was hard and took a lot of effort, like getting a degree or a master's degree, or maybe it's raising children or getting out of debt or some sort of financial goal.

Now, I want you to take a minute just to reflect. On all that you gained from that experience, how much you learned about yourself and who you are, about your ability to persevere, to go through the disappointments, the challenges, the frustrations, and still ultimately reach your goal. So I've mentioned on the podcast before that I once had a, about, I don't know, it was over 35 K of debt.

There wasn't anyone that was just gonna come in and swoop in and pay that. So I had to get really creative. I also had to get life coaching on it, right? To come up with that money to figure out how to come up with the money and pay off the debt and work harder than I ever had before. So I got a second job serving at a restaurant.

I took on freelance work. I rented out an extra apartment on Airbnb. I was already renting out my current one and staying at my boyfriend's house. And I also summoned up the gumption to ask for a raise and then another raise. So there were times when things went wrong, like at one time in one of the Airbnbs, the landlord came by and gave.

A really late notice that he was gonna turn off the water for like 24 hours or something. So the girls that were staying there like called me and were like, this is unacceptable. Like we can't stay here. Right. I remember calling my sister and I was like crying because I just thought I'm in over my head, like, I can't deal with this.

I was leaving one job and like on my way to the starving job and meanwhile trying to deal with this Airbnb crisis. But now of course I look back. Kind of amazed that I was able to do that, that I was actually able to pull that off, that I rose at the challenge of paying off that debt, and I am so much better for having done that.

I'm sure you can imagine that if someone had just walked in and paid that off, I would've been thrilled at the time, but at the expense of what my self-concept is now and the pride that I get to experience when I look back on that time of my. The next reason you might be considering this is that you're thinking that you just need a quick win.

Okay? You just wanna save results. That's because you think that you'll be more motivated when you start seeing the weight going down and you start fitting into smaller size clothes. And that's true, isn't it? It's easier to feel motivated because we're thinking more motivating thoughts, but you don't need to see results and to feel motivated when you have mastery over your.

So I want you to imagine what it might be like to be someone who can generate motivation before they see any results whatsoever. You can learn to do this by focusing on the process, by focusing on your actions. This might be a really good time to explore for yourself why you're even wanting to release the weight.

What I have really noticed on my own journey, and I'll share with you to save you the time, is that when you are solely focused on the results, on the number on the scale, and not on who you are becoming in the process, it will never be enough. You'll get there and you'll be satisfied with your weight for five minutes, and then you'll still feel like it's not enough.

It must mean about more than that. It must mean something to you. So I encourage you to, I. Focus on the kind of woman you wanna be. So for example, what do you wanna think of yourself? When you are at your natural weight? What do you think you will think about yourself? When you imagine yourself at your goal weight, what will you think of yourself?

What will be your self-concept? That's why you're doing this because you want a, think of yourself as maybe beautiful, attractive, someone with self-control, someone with freedom around food. Someone who's achieved something really hard. Okay. And I apologize. My husband is upstairs and he, I don't know, he's like stomping around like an elephant up there.

So I hope, I think he could probably hear it. So I apologize for that. Okay. You can start believing all of those things about yourself already, but it will become much easier to believe those things when you see yourself taking action. So instead of measuring your success based on the results you currently have, start measuring your success based on the actions you're taking in this process.

Okay? Not results, but the actions, the day-to-day, super boring, tedious actions that you're taking, that feel. They don't have any effect. They do create exponential results, especially with weight loss. Okay? This will also increase your capacity to fail, your willingness to try new things and, and fail and get back up, which will also directly increase the likelihood of you learning from your failures and reflecting and strategizing and not giving up permanently and ultimately reaching your goal.

So when you only measure your success on current, It just won't be good enough, or you'll think or feel like it's not happening fast enough, and you'll also use your results as an indication that you're on the wrong track because of that. So be more committed to the action, the type of action that you at your natural weight would be taking.

Then your current result. When you do this, you will get the benefits and also the growth. A weight loss journey has to offer the dedication to yourself, the self-control, the skill of managing your mind and capacity to process and release any emotion without hitting the escape patch, right, without a crutch.

Many times I hear women say, if I could just figure out this weight loss thing, I can do anything. The reason that's true is because of how much they will need to grow as a. The next reason is that your doctor recommends it for you specifically because for some health related reasons. If your doctor recommends this to you, you might love this reason, or you might not.

You'll wanna know all of their reasons, of course, and know that there is no right or wrong decision. Okay? We only tell ourselves that there is based on outcomes. But that's a fallacy. What's more important is how we make the decision if we're thoughtful about it, and use a process like this one where we look at all of our options and our reasons.

We're making the best decision, giving the information we have, but then sometimes later, based on the outcome, when we have more information, we'll say, well, that was a bad. But it wasn't because based on the info that you had, it really was the best decision, just the outcome was bad. And those are two different things.

I am a big fan of these dating reality shows that are on Netflix. So like the recent one is Love is Blind season Four. So if you have not watched it and you are planning on watching it, skip ahead 15 seconds because this is gonna be a. Okay, so I'm telling you now, skip ahead if you don't want to hear this.

So one of the examples is that one of the guys, Zach, is making a decision over who he will propose to. You know, he doesn't see them love as blind. That's the whole thing. So he's making a decision whether he will propose to this girl, Irena. Or a bliss, and then he makes a decision and then he regrets it, right?

And he says, chooses Irina turns this to be a terrible outcome. And he says that was the wrong decision, but it wasn't. It was the right decision given the information and how he felt at the time. Turned out she was a nightmare and it was a terrible outcome, but it was. A good decision. Okay. Those are two different things.

Alternatively, sometimes we make terrible decisions with no awareness. Maybe it's simply on impulse and thought errors, and then we luck out and we get a good outcome. This doesn't make the decision a good one, cuz there was no decision process. So again, only you will know if you like the reasons your doctor gives.

Just have confidence in your ability to be thoughtful and make the best decision. The next reason you might be contemplating any kind of weight loss drug is that you don't think you can do it any other way. When you think this, how do you feel? I imagine you feel desperate. You might feel frustrated, hopeless, maybe even a bit panicked.

My question is, do you want to make a decision from this feeling? Emotions, fuel our actions. We can think of emo emotions as fuel. When we are in these types of emotions, we're less likely to be using our prefrontal cortex, which helps us make rational. Helps us think ahead. These emotions are just really intense.

When we're high in emotion, we're low in cognitive ability. You're unlikely to make the best decision for yourself if you're feeling this way. So you might wanna check the legitimacy of this thought by answering a simple question, is it physically possible to release the extra weight without medication?

Is it physically possible? If so, then there's gonna be more options for you. Right? Then we go about figuring that. Okay. Last reason is that medical research shows that diets don't work. Nine outta 10 people gain the weight back. This one seems very heavy, right? And seems to be a big reason for the push for this drug and the rationalization behind it.

But here we just need to ask ourselves why this is the case. Why is it that the research shows that so many people gain the weight back? The reason. Is that although there are many methods of losing weight, which people have success with in the short term, the methods were never the problem. The problem was never that they didn't understand how to lose weight or what to do.

The problem was that they didn't know how to live without overeating. The problem was overeating due to. Over desire. So when we solve for the over desire for food, we will solve for the overeating issue. We won't overeat anymore. And the research those, all those studies, they just don't account for that.

It's the classic case of treating the symptom, not the problem. I used to get eczema really bad on my hands and I could control it by using cortisol cream and keep it at bay. But as soon as I stopped using the cream, it would just flare right back. Why? Because I wasn't getting to the reason that was causing the eczema the real problem.

Then through lots of trial and error, I eventually figured out that it was drinking matcha powder of all things like green tea that was causing it. But once I stopped drinking that the eczema went away. When you treat the over desire, you're overeating and overweight issue will also go away and how you're currently relating to.

Relating to your life and relating to yourself is creating the level of over desire or the just the level of desire that you have, and that's gonna match your weight. So if you're overweight, you know you have over desire. It won't matter what regimen or food plan or drug you take, you will still have that level of over desire.

What we need to do is match your level of desire with your natural weight. Natural desire equals natural weight, and that's achieved with your mind. Not a food plan. Okay. All that said, I want to close by saying, listen, if you do the research, you look at your reasons and you love your reasons, by all means do what you think is right for you.

As I said, there is no right or wrong decision. We can decide it's the right decision for us regardless of any outcome. So just know that no matter what you decide, you still have to address the over desire issue one way or the other, the reasons you needed to escape with food in the first place. Okay, that's what I have for you.

I hope it helped you with the decision making process, which again, just a quick recap was explore all your options and then write out all of your reasons for doing each option, so all the reasons for it. Then review your reasons and take a look and just circle the ones that you love, and then that will really help you.

It'll really show you which one stands out. Okay. I hope that helps, and I'll talk to you soon.