Section two
I prescribed these medications for two years before I took one. This is the log I kept — written during each month rather than after it, while it was still uncomfortable and before the retrospective gloss set in.
Month 0
I spent two years prescribing these medications and telling myself my own situation was different. It wasn't. On the specific vanity of being the doctor in the room.
Month 1
The nausea was manageable. The silence was not what I expected. Notes written during, not after — including the two evenings I did not enjoy at all.
Month 2
Going from 0.25 mg to 0.5 mg semaglutide was the first month that actually asked something of me. What the escalation felt like, the day-three pattern I only spotted because I was logging it, and why I stopped eating when I was hungry.
Month 3
Seven weeks with no movement on the scale, a DXA scan that told a completely different story, and what I learned about my own capacity to panic at a number I had publicly declared meaningless.
Month 4
Four months in, and the medical part has gone quiet while the social part has not. On eating out in a city built around dinner, the wine I stopped wanting, and the question of who gets told.
Month 5
Month five is when I found hair in the shower drain and had to take my own advice. What actually causes shedding during rapid weight loss, what 'Ozempic face' is and isn't, and the micronutrient problem that comes with eating half as much.
Month 6
Six months in. The labs, the blood pressure, the knee, the sleep — and a harder paragraph about what happened to how people treat me, which I am still angry about.
Month 7
Two weeks in Europe, one pen, a hotel minibar I could not turn off, and a time-zone question I got wrong. The practical logistics of taking a weekly injection abroad — storage, security, and what to do about a missed dose.
Month 8
Eight months in, and the question that arrives more than any other is whether these drugs affect your mental health. Here is what the regulators actually found, what changed in my own sleep and mood, and the one thing I have genuinely not resolved.
Month 9
Nine months, a maintenance dose, and the question I have been putting off: what is the actual plan for year five? Including the conversation about what happens if the coverage disappears.
A note on numbers. I don’t publish my weight — not the starting number, not the current one, not a target. A specific number invites a specific comparison, and the comparison is rarely useful. What I do publish is percentages, doses, labs, body composition, and how things actually felt.