WeGovy and the Future of Weight Loss

Today, I will be entering my fourth week of WeGovy. Some people might be ashamed to admit that they need a weight loss medication, but I am not afraid to admit that I have had a complicated relationship with food and weight gain/weight loss my entire life. My weight’s been up, my weight’s been down, and it seems that it has all been tied to my choices. Well, my choice now is to take the bull by the horns, follow my doctor’s recommendation, and use WeGovy as a tool to help me get my rapid weight gain under control. It’s a slow process—something that they don’t tell you until you’re actually considering the medication—but it will be worth it in the end.

However, that is not why I am revealing the fact that I am taking this so-called “wonder drug” to the world today. It’s because this revelation should come as no surprise. According to Gallup, 11% of U.S. adults currently take GLP-1s for weight loss purposes, and 15% report having used it at some point in their lives (see this report for more information).

So, what does this mean for the future of weight loss and weight management?

After all, until now, weight loss and weight management have been relegated to the realms of fringe health and the beauty industry. Sure, there has been some advice from doctors about nutrition and exercise, but the things that the general public have really jumped on have been trendy diets and, sometimes, exercise trends. Think the Paleo diet, the Keto diet, intermittent fasting, palates, spinning, yoga, etc. Then there were surgeries such as gastric bypass surgery. It was all in pursuit of one thing: a quick, easy fix to weight loss.

Some would try to say that GLP-1s are the same thing. Before starting the medication myself, I would have said the same thing. However, after learning how it works and how doctors prescribe it, I would argue that it actually works to produce a slower, more sustainable weight loss that is healthier for the user than most of these trends.

GLP-1s like WeGovy help reduce your appetite so that you eat less and lose weight (for more information on this, check out the WeGovy website). However, for this to truly work without causing you to crash and burn, you also have to change your relationship with food. I have found that my relationship with food has begun to change even in these early weeks of the medication, the weeks during which the medication is given in its lowest dosage so that your body can become accustomed to it. In order to make sure that your body still gets the nutrients that it needs with this calorie reduction, you have to start eating healthier as well as eating less, like the medication forces you to. This allows you to attack the weight loss problem on multiple fronts at once, rather than just losing weight because you’re eating less.

This is drastically different from trendy diets and exercises, which often just address how much you’re eating, tell you to specifically eat this or that to lose weight, or tell you to exercise a certain way in order to maintain a certain physique. This GLP-1 approach changes you from the inside-out, making the change more sustainable and permanent (though not without its own side effects—I can’t begin to address the bowel movement issues, especially for those with IBS, and the so-called “Ozempic Face”).

You might think that this still leaves the general approach of weight loss and weight management in the hands of fringe health and the beauty industry. After all, insurance companies don’t like to cover weight loss medication unless it’s a final resort, and these medications aren’t cheap. So, it must still be those people who are either rich enough or vain enough to afford the medication who can use it.

However, there are payment programs that make the medication relatively more affordable. Until I see if the prior authorization works with my insurance, I paid $199 for the first month’s worth of shots and will pay $349 per month up until the 2.4 mg through the WeGovy Savings Offer. It’s not great, but it’s better than paying over a thousand dollars for each month’s supply—or not having the medication at all. And hopefully, this means that the medication will become more affordable—or at least more readily covered by insurance—in the future.

With these shifts in how we treat weight loss and weight management, I am seeing a new trend in this field: treating obesity as a chronic health condition, not as a beauty defect. It’s not just about whether we “look good” anymore. It’s about our health. I’m not trying to lose weight because I don’t like how I look in the mirror (although I would be lying if I didn’t admit that that was a factor). No, I’m doing it primarily because my cholesterol is up, my blood pressure is up, and, overall, I just don’t feel good or like myself anymore. And this is where we are going into the future with weight loss. We are not just saying “eww, extra weight looks gross.” We are saying “oh, extra weight could cause me to have health problems.” We are listening to our doctors who are telling us to make nutritional and exercise changes because we are realizing that our health ties in with our vanity. We want to be immortal, and we want to look good while doing it—so if a GLP-1 gets us started on that path, we’re willing to prick ourselves or take that little pill as often as needed.