Let me explain with my current situation. I am 22 F and I currently weigh 305lbs.
I am obese. Morbidly obese.
Even though I have been trying for 5 years at this point to lose the weight on my own. Eat healthier, eat more fruits and veggies, cut out excess sugar, walk more, exercise more, the whole kit and caboodle.
But I still am not losing the weight. I am still very fat. And I am worried that it will cause very serious health problems.
So I talked with my doctor and she told me “We need to get you on a weight loss medication. Let’s try Ozempic”.
But my insurance told us that they don’t think I need the Ozempic so they won’t pay for it.
So we tried Wegovy and Mounjaro. But my insurance still rejected our requests.
They’re saying because I am young, and I am a diabetic with good numbers, I dont need the weight loss meds and I can just lose the weight naturally.
But ive been trying to and it hasn’t been working. So that’s why my doctor prescribed me the weight loss med.
Why is this allowed? Why is it that your insurance can deny you a medication, even if your doctor says you need it?
Not to say you should be denied prescription coverage, but that is not the whole kit and caboodle. Weight loss results from consuming less calories; specifically, less than you are burning. You can lose weight on a completely unhealthy diet and without any extra effort to exercise.
Yep, this. I’m like 130 lbs and I literally sit around all day and I eat garbage. But just a little garbage.
Sadly there are some people i know who gain enough to look unhealthy if they dont eat a strict healthy vegan diet. And its easily to see in some cases. A friend of mine was very annoyed when she only got compliments after such rigorous effort. At that time her unhealtiest snack was dried strawberries.
On the other spectrum is me who cant gain any weight how matter what and how much i eat (cant even donate blood ;.;)
Bodies are VERY different and there are extremes where only meds can help and i think OP is one of them
she must be dehydrated if she eats “freeze dried strawberries”
She definetly hydrated helself properly with those 2L/Day bottles
True, and it could be easier for them to keep weight on, but CICO is a very basic science and will work if one keeps to it.
While CICO is universally true, it doesn’t account for a few other factors. For instance, gut microbiome. Gut flora has a strong affect on cravings. Also mental and emotional health also affect self control and regulation. Food “science” has created craving
monstrositiessnacks that are as addictive as cigarettes. Personal health issues like PCOS and thyroid dysfunction will affect how many calories are consumed by the body and how those calories are used within the body.So yes, eat less and lose weight. Sure. Some people can lose weight eating junk. For others it creates a reward cascade in the brain that leads to overeating. Just eat less. For some that’s as practical as telling a lifelong smoker to give up the habit. And that’s why medical alternatives to self control exist, but aren’t successful without addressing the root cause of the obesity.
All those behavior cycles and feedback mechanisms are also literally what these GPL drugs suppress.
It’s like anxiety meds for someone who has diabilitating anxiety to just relax. Or more commonly telling the clinically depressed to just smile more.
Telling someone it’s a personal failing only fuels the feedback mechanism.
Medications exist because they stop the biological feedback loops.
Exactly!
What a pointless post.
If my alternative would be 200$ per week, I’d take eating less as a solution.
And depressed people can save money by just smiling more!
My first reaction would be to say not the same thing, but then I remembered we’ve had studies recently that have confirmed that depression can genuinely be helped by leaving the house and touching grass.
But still not the same thing compared to depression, unless you have some eating related disorder or medical issue, the vast majority don’t and historically never have. The obseity epidemic is caused by caloric density creeping up in ultra processed foods, which already tells you everything you need to know, tricking people into thinking they eat a normal amount when they most definitely don’t.
The fact that this food is almost like a drug for some brains combined with the fact that some bodies struggle more than others with burning calories can make it more difficult at first for people but given difficult circumstances like having to pay 200$ per week to do something about it, there is always the free alternative. The difficulty in this case is more akin to quitting smoking or coffee. No one said it’s easy, but most could do it if they set their minds on it.
On a less brute force but not free path I would spend a fraction of that money on a dietician that can monitor my intake and make recommendations. At least that way there’s external support and motivation. I found they are like 100-200$ per month so an 8th to a quarter of the ozempic price.
What I’m hearing here is the reason her medication was denied is because people like you are more than willing to jump between a patient and their doctor to take the bullet.
There are many who had all these resources and the only thing that worked was this medication.
You clearly do not have the medical knowledge to back any of this up since your take away from those articles on excersing for depression is that it’s is a replacement for medicine. That’s the pop-science understanding of the topic.
You are leaking Dunning-Krugerall over this thread and you inability to absorb new knowledge here is telling.