So I will gently add my perspective from someone who was on Metformin at 462 lbs. and had been on Metformin for 16 years with weight gain, not loss. Metformin is not semiglutide, it's a different class, but what I'm telling you here could apply, I just want to present another side of the coin.

Unless you feel that your Dr. is against fat people in some way or you are uncomfortable with them, I would say to listen to your Dr. and only you can make that determination. People don't like to be told no but sometimes no is what they need to hear.

I came off Metformin, wanted desperately to come off Metformin, and soon as my blood sugars normalized enough to do so because for 16 years I used a medication that, among other side effects, killed my sex drive. Facts. You won't find that anywhere on the internet, I could be the only person on the planet this medication did that to, but it did it to me because within a 3 months of coming off of it that, and all the other side effects (hair loss, kidney problems), resolved. I can't even tell you how happy I was when my hair started coming back, I thought I was going to be a bald ass bitch for the rest of my life. I even tried, during those 16 years, to find a medication for women that would help with lack of sex drive. The best 'solution' I was offered, by my female OB/gyn no less, was to rent a motel room and light some candles. Looking back I feel my sexual dysfunction had a lot to do with my depression which, ofc, caused me to eat more.

Medications have side effects. I feel like with all the media hype and ads and portrayals of fat people sticking patches on their arms and dancing around living their best lives that gets overlooked. Oh, you get the tiny print at the bottom of the ad with "may cause" or the voice at the end "maycausestrokecancertheendoftheworldtalktoyourDr" but we've all learned to ignore that voice, haven't we? It's just some babble. I have a curiosity: what if there were market studies done to determine how much people pay attention and what warnings would they pay least attention to? I'd be interested to know the answer to that, my own personal little conspiracy theory, if you will.

Is it possible that your Dr., based on his knowledge after extensive schooling that you do not have or have access to, has determined that the side effects on the negative side do not warrant giving you this medication, that he is actually, based on his clinical knowledge, doing what he thinks is best for you? I was a nurse for over three decades. Contrary to popular belief these days there are those of us that went into healthcare to help people. Is it possible that your Dr. is one of those people? Again, only you can make that determination based on your interactions with him but I would like you to at least consider the possibility.

I didn't. I kept looking until I found a Dr. to put me on Metformin against the advice of my original Dr. because I had heard that Metformin makes weight loss easier and I was desperate to lose weight. I didn't, despite being a nurse, do any research at all. I just heard, one day, that this would be a simple solution and I decided I was having it. I think I may have seen that in an ad on TV or someone at work told me. Hmmm.

I spent 16 years in Hell. By the time I figured out that the Metformin was causing these side effects I was committed because without it (and I tried) my blood sugars went through the roof because I refused to even consider lifestyle and dietary changes. Can't do that. It's too hard. I'm not strong enough. Maybe they did it but I can't and I need this pill to live. Make an informed choice. Do some research on both sides of the coin because there are always two sides. What are the side effects? Can you live with them? What will this medication do to me long-term? Do we even know that yet about semiglutide?

You can lose weight without any medication, I have. Is it hard? Fuck yes it's hard, it's the hardest thing I've ever done but it is not impossible.

As expensive as these medications seem to be again, using my daughter as an example, I would say to take that money and seek out mental health help to determine what it is that is causing you to eat and stop the problem at the source.

Whatever you choose that you feel is the best for you I wish you all the luck in the world because you are absolutely worth it.

<3

Eating protein has the benefit of keeping you fuller which is why I originally began to work on getting in enough protein for my body weight. Also protein is important if you are doing, say, weight lifting. That's the main purpose of protein supplements like shakes.

Gently I would say to you that these might not be the best choice for you in the long run. IOW, don't craft your eating habits around protein shakes. As a stop gap while you are struggling to eat due to your emotions it's better than not eating at all (because starving while severely emotionally stressed does not lead down good paths, ever) but when you go back to eating the best way to help your body is getting in fruit/veggies/meats but I think we all, including you, know that.

Binge/restrict cycles are a thing and the bounce back can be brutal. Been there, done that. Lived on nothing but medical shakes (similar to Optifast) for almost a year in my 30s and lost 110 lbs. Got off of them and gained back 180 lbs. 110% do not recommend.

You might look at drinking broth rather than protein shakes. You can buy (or make, since it's expensive) bone broth which is fantastic but honestly a box of Swanson's chicken broth is fine or any canned broth, I think Campbell's makes good broth. You'll get the protein you need that way however, and this is the big however, drinking chicken or beef broth doesn't hit the same as a cookies and cream protein shake.

Kind of the difference between, if you were a milk drinker, white or chocolate milk. If I'm drinking for my health I'm going for the white milk. If I'm going by taste and what I want it will be chocolate milk all the way.

I weighed exactly what you do now when I started. At one point I did a 60 hour fast. I was also on keto for the first year. Judging from my body now I would say I had zero muscle loss, my Drs are well pleased with my progress and my labs are stellar. Having done both of those I'm not a fan of, and do not recommend, either because in my case I ended up with an arrhythmia and had to go to the ER. I was also 59 at the time and had been SMO and MO my entire adult life. Only happened to me once and after that I switched to CICO. I had extensive testing done and I do mean extensive. Nothing wrong with my heart at all, it just decided to glitch that day and it could be my age, my diet, or the fact that I bent over and stood up too fast. I don't know, my Drs. didn't know and my heart went back to normal four hours after it happened but the recommendation was that, for me at my age, those ways of eating were too radical.

There is also the emotional component to both eating and starving, a reaction to severe emotional and untreated mental distress. Please see a therapist, talk to your Dr., or if neither of those is available to you for monetary reasons which I completely understand because I couldn't afford them either, there's the internet and YouTube.

Listen to some binge eating podcasts. Listen to some podcasts on leaving an abusive relationship and how to heal yourself.

Do your best not to stay in that hole that you are in now. I realize you are in severe pain, I've been through that. Taking it out on your body by either not eating or eating too much, this is not the way and I think you know that too. Find a sub here on reddit that specifically has to do with leaving toxic relationships. Search for keywords like 'boyfriend abuse' or 'toxic relationship' and look at the posts that come up and when you find something that rings true search out the sub it came from. Do the same searches on YouTube in the same way.

I'm so sorry you are in pain but you can climb out of it and the sooner you start to help yourself in some way, either seeking out professionals or doing it on your own, the sooner you can leave that asshole in your rear view window and live your best life.

I'd hug you if I could. You're gonna be alright, I promise. The pain fades with time and caring for yourself. <3 My abusive bf went through four marriages and had several children he didn't support, just kept moving to dodge alimony payments. I lost track of him in my forties, didn't talk to the people that knew him anymore so I don't know the ultimate outcome. Not a good man, didn't live a good life.

Me? I'm over here in a 37 year marriage with a couple of kids and a couple of grandkids tearing life up with no intention of stopping. You gonna tear life up too.

Aw, you're sweet. At first when I started to lose I was so down on who I had been all my life and it took time, distance, and compassion (which I have for others but never extended to myself) for me to understand that the woman that I was so critical of in my mind was the same woman who made the choice to change and all she was doing was trying to survive this life the best she could with the tools she had.

Unpopular opinion because I've been taken to task in the past for saying what I do about food and pharma in the US. Most people don't want to know, you know?

I like Jayler, 3 Teeth, The Southern River Band, Scum of the Earth, and Clutch.

Stuff in other genres I like: Tiesto, Atarashii Gakko, The Baby Seals, Little Big, Lola Young, Lil Dicky, Trampsta & Juicce

YAY, I'm so happy for you! Those plateaus are death, lol.

YAY, that's amazing and I'm proud of you.

I was a bolter, ate as fast as I could and sometimes I will still get bad heartburn and realize it's because I'm plowing through my food, it's a hard habit to break.

Not saying that's what you have going on but part of the reason I was able to eat so much during binges was because I can eat really really fast, like competitive eating fast.

I drink water with my meals and do my best to remember to put my food down between bites and actually chew my food, then pick it back up and continue to eat and I've found the combination of slowing my eating and increasing my water intake during meals has made it possible for me to see reason in what I eat.

Then there are the times I just have to pretend I'm glued in the chair and sit on my hands so I don't go and get something because the mental game is also a challenge.

Black coffee and strong tea are also my friends.

My mother was a person like that, ruled my father, ruled me.

Just because people haven't experienced something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It also doesn't mean it's shameful to fall under someone else's control, it happens all over the world every single day.

I'm proud of you, so proud, for having the bravery to escape. My father never did.

Here's to a new life filled with love and joy. <3

You are not alone and I see those Chessmen, those are crack for me.

Reading labels and becoming self-aware of what I was doing to my body really helped me, not only from a caloric standpoint but at some point I remember thinking, "All this other junk I'm eating along with the sugar, all the chemicals, can't be doing me any favors" and it wasn't.

I don't feel anything like I used to not only physically but mentally and while I'll credit working really hard on my mental health I can't personally (me, I, YMMV) help feeling that at least in part clearing all the chemicals out of my diet has impacted me positively. For one thing the lifetime bowel problems are a non-issue now, I'm asymptomatic.

I've also had skin problems most of my life and those have resolved as well.

Me to you, let go of the shame, OK? It may take a bit but can you change things you've done in the past? You cannot. I've decided to move forward and let my mistakes be, they are what they were and I'm moving on from them and that's my advice to anyone else as well.

Find the things about yourself that you are proud of and build on that and if you can't find something to be proud of, because that was really hard for me, work instead to just make today better than yesterday then rinse/repeat. Focusing on the now makes letting go of the past and shame a good bit easier.

The people who should be ashamed are the food companies with their deceptive practices, hiring scientists to find the bliss point in food (perfect balance of salt/sugar/fat) to increase consumption and increase their bottom line profits and their juggling of taking sugar out so they can say no sugar and replacing it with fat and salt or taking out the salt (I said no salt, noooo salt) and replacing that with fat and sugar or let's go no fat and replace that with sugar and salt.

It's all a con game to make investors rich at the expense of the health of a nation. I'm a bit biased. I tired of being a lab rat, I'm happy to have escaped the cage.

So the next time you feel like beating yourself up for your choices look at the environment we all were exposed to (anyone else get visits from Tony The Tiger in grade school to encourage you to "eat a healthy breakfast" that mainly consisted of sugar coated corn flakes or as I think of them, sugar coated sugar) and realize that what we were fed as children through media has some culpability in all this.

I realize mine is an unpopular opinion but my own scientific experiment on my body has proved to me that I don't want to eat like that anymore.

Vienna sausages and Spam.

Music. Cycling. Dance. Art.

I'll never have enough time to create all the things in my mind but the process of creation, I guess you could say, producing art and moving my body, that keeps me young at heart.

Thank you for the years of hard work and risk and I hope you have an amazing retirement, you deserve it!

Aw, I'm sorry it didn't pan out. Good on you for listening to your instincts.

Chicken noodle soup for lunch. Might make some grilled cheese, too.

I love that combo. I made my husband chicken and dumplings and he finished the last of it off yesterday and is already making noises about more.

Comfort food in winter really is lovely.

then is “supposed” to cool for two hours.

Hahaha, I know how that never happens in my house, I hope you can protect it for a couple of hours so everything sets well, it sounds amazing.

Same, I have surgery in a little over a week. Just want to get it done so I can heal up and get back to cycling.

ETA: good luck, I hope everything goes well for you!

I feel this. I'm riding the upright exercise bike at the gym but it's simply not the same as riding the trails.

Aaaaah, this. How can a ziplock be so freakin' hard to open?

Don't eat your feelings. Find a way to process trauma, get through it, and move on rather than burying it and letting it ruin your body with any substance or action: drugs, things you smoke, food, sex, gambling and shopping addiction, all that. I guess these days you could throw social media and porn addictions in with the OGs. I see people addicted to body mods like plastic surgery or some of the more radical stuff. I have several piercings, that can get addictive too. For some of us, myself included, pain can be addictive, both mental and physical. I elevated calling myself a POS to a fine art, I was meticulous in all the ways that I didn't deserve to exist and reminded myself all the time. I think some people call it a victim mentality or victim mindset and that makes sense to me from the perspective of I was victimizing myself to continue victimization that started in childhood because change was scarier to me than staying in misery because misery I understood. Misery was my friend, my constant, along with food misery was that unchanging unwavering reality I could always count on.

So I guess what I'm saying is consider the reasons that you do what you do and consider dropping habits that don't serve you by careful consideration of what drives you. Neuroplasticity is a good thing to look up, the brain never stops changing in response to learning so I exploited that by learning new things, new habits. I literally changed my mind.

Clear as mud, I know.

At 58 I was looking at possibly losing my feet and finally, after a lifetime of allowing myself to wallow in "...and this xxx that happened wasn't fair and I'm angry but also refuse to face it" I finally decided to take control of my life instead of letting past trauma and past mistakes color every single thing I did to myself and without really registering it, to my family as well because when you are deep in addiction everything else goes away except for your driving need for whatever your crack of choice is. Mine was, at the bottom of all the other ones, food.

Was it way too late? It was damn sure later than it should have been but the human body is an amazing thing and I've recovered more than I ever dared to dream and I still have my feet. When I wiggle my toes it makes me smile.

To me 'too late' means in the grave.

You're so welcome! Bonus points are that the tread on the bottom makes these really stable for me, I had to walk over snow the other day and they were super stable, just an FYI for anyone who has to deal with slick surfaces. I cycle and go off trail some and these have been great shoes for that too.

These Skechers Terrabites are what I wear all the time. I have hobbit feet, short and really wide. These have the widest, most comfortable shoe base I have found.

Prolly not the fashion look most people like but I adore these and they are perfect for me. They go up to a 14 wide, they're out of the 9.5 wide which is what I wear.

The biggest selling point for me with these is I don't get that, what can I call it, that collapse that I get from a lot of shoes. After wearing them 6 months daily you can see that there has been some minor compression but my feet aren't sliding off the sides and the shoe isn't worn unevenly and that has always been an issue for me with the way I walk.

I hope you find the best shoes for you because that is honestly so important for everything from foot pain to back pain.

You're so welcome. <3

Anytime in life is a good time for Poe. :)

My answer as well.