BEYOND OBESITY: USING GLP-1S FOR WEIGHT MANAGEMENT

Everyone's weight management journey is unique, and finding what works for you is an important part of living well and feeling your best. Dave Knapp, also known as @manonthemounjaro, knows this story all too well. On his website On The Pen he shares his experience on a GLP-1, covering everything from his own progress to healthcare accessibility. We spoke with Dave about his weight management story and what he would share with those who are getting started. Here's what he had to say.

In many ways, my struggle with obesity mirrors the experiences of millions of others. I was an active child; I had a pretty typical childhood, filling my free time with all kinds of physical activity, like running around with the neighbor kids and playing pickup baseball games with friends.

My awareness of my weight and body image started around puberty when I began to develop fat around my midsection. My changing body was not something that only I noticed; the people around me were noticing, too. My food choices were becoming more closely scrutinized by those around me. I felt watched... and ashamed to eat. I soon developed a moral association with the foods I chose to eat, and the urge to eat became a point of shame for me.

Throughout my high school years, I fought desperately to control my weight. I remember eating the same foods in the same quantities as my peers, but my belly would grow a little more with each passing year. During my senior year, I discovered the Atkins diet. Working at a local sandwich shop at the time, I took advantage of a nearly all-roast beef diet and managed to drop my weight from 220 pounds to around 172 pounds. I would run multiple miles a day and eat an extremely low-carb diet to maintain it.

"I fought desperately to control my weight."

I remember receiving boatloads of well-meaning comments on my appearance while my weight was down. At the time, they served as a nice little dopamine hit—but those comments would boomerang quickly as the lifestyle required to maintain it proved unsustainable. I would spend the next nearly 20 years of my life chasing that early success, losing around 25 pounds each time but gaining back almost 35 on the upswing. It was a terrible cycle of rollercoaster dieting.

By the fall of 2021, my weight had climbed to 319 pounds and landed me in the morbidly obese category on the BMI chart. I received a type 2 diabetes diagnosis at the time as well. My care team urged me to control my diabetes with the keto diet. That was confusing to me. I had spent the past 20 years fighting to maintain a lifestyle that for me (and millions of others who have tried) was simply unsustainable.

After a year of white-knuckling through keto, my diabetes was well-controlled, but my insulin levels and my weight were virtually unchanged. I was so beaten down by the lack of success I had experienced. At that time, my doctor, who seemed as puzzled as I was, referred me for bariatric surgery. The thought of surgery was terrifying, but not as terrifying as the thought of leaving my wife and four children behind prematurely. 

As I began to take the first steps toward surgery, I found that my insurance plan would not cover it. When discussing other options with my provider, the topic of GLP-1 medications arose. My doctor explained that these medications could achieve similar hormonal effects for people with metabolic disorders, like me, as bariatric surgery. Fortunately, because of my diabetes diagnosis, I qualified for the latest version of these medications.

Hope. I finally had some hope to cling to. I was finally going to be able to topple this obesity giant in my life. I had lost 36 pounds within the first 6 months with minimal effort. This was about 12% of my body weight gone, and I didn’t even have to white-knuckle it. Unfortunately for me, severe migraines caused my treatment to change, and then drug shortages kept me from getting the higher doses I needed to maintain my progress with my weight. 

"Hope. I finally had some hope to cling to."

My weight slowly crept back up, and the initial effectiveness of the drug faded dramatically. I have now been on some form of a GLP-1 for over 19 months and have managed to maintain about 8.5% weight loss from my highest weight. I feel great, have experienced minimal side effects since the initial migraines I experienced, and am so thankful for the newfound hope that these medications have given me.

My online social media content creation has given me the opportunity to engage with some of the nation’s leading experts in nutrition and obesity management. I am learning more about sustainable methods to control my obesity and sharing information about the latest versions of these drugs, which offer hope and promise to others in similar situations. While I haven't ruled out surgery entirely, the current and upcoming medications give me great hope that—with the right coaching and medical care—I and people like me will be able to topple the giant of obesity.

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2024-07-31T13:11:38Z dg43tfdfdgfd