Hey OP, I will copy a point I made somewhere deeper in this thread that you might not see, because I do really believe that there is help to be had. I commend you on your desire to do something about this, since it will increase your quality of life in ways you never even imagined. Other people have also had great points I think and have touched on the tragedy that is the US medical system, I want to touch on the potential alternative solutions that are too often overlooked.

The obesity epidemic is caused by caloric density creeping up in ultra processed foods, tricking people into thinking they eat a normal amount when they most definitely don’t. The fact that these foods are 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 to loose weight, but you find yourself in the difficult circumstance of having to pay 200$ per week to do something about it, and there are two alternatives.

“Eat healthier, eat more fruits and veggies, cut out excess sugar, walk more, exercise more, the whole kit and caboodle” - as an external observer with no context all I can read from this is that you replaced some unhealthy calories with some healthy calories. So the first proposal is calorie counting by yourself. You have to be anal about it, every little detail, any little snack has to be on your list and fully counted. If you do this properly and have a hard limit of 1500-2000 per day you will absolutely see results without having to do any excercise or eat any specific food. This is proven science at this point and anyone arguing about this is trying to sell you something or someone else sold them something. More colorful trends like intermittent fasting also achieve caloric deficit in a roundabout way, but in the end it doesn’t matter what approach you take, any way that works for you is fine, as long as you don’t go over the caloric limit. Losing weight is not exciting and doesn’t have some funny quirky solution, it’s just simple hard brute force.

Second, a little less brute force solution, but also not free, spend a fraction of that ozempic money on a registered dietician that can monitor your intake and make recommendations. At least that way there’s external support and motivation, as well as much needed help in case you have a history of eating disorder. I found they are like 100-200$ per month so an 8th to a quarter of the ozempic price. This is still going to be hard work, but with support and help from an expert it will be far easier to establish and maintain.

Both of these solutions will help build good habits and help you build an intuition for food caloric content at a glance. Ozempic, if it works, skips these important aspects, which might make you rebound after finishing the treatment, since you never actually learned how to manage your intake, just had reduced appetite for the duration of the treatment. Any aditional things you do like eating healthier and exercising will be a great bonus to your health, but you should honestly skip if they are overwhelming you and impeding you from achieving your goal. It’s normal to expect failure when the requirements are steep, so keep it a level you can manage. If calorie restriction is all you can do, then stick to that, but don’t compromise it ever because that is the absolute minimum. Everything else may come later.

I wish you good luck with your journey and hope you’ll enjoy the new life when you finally succeed.

Edit: bonus point I forgot to make earlier. Exercise may actually increase your appetite because that’s just how the body is wired. Which will make resticting calories even more difficult from a mental/willpower perspective. So it may be advisable to actually not exersice while you are trying to achieve your goals, because dealing with both changes of exercising and eating less at the same time can be too much and leads to failure of both. If you have to choose, always do the calorie restriction, like I said before, that is the minimum requirement, everything else is a bonus.

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Because everything in America is a privatized scam and the regulatory agencies are being completely dismantled

Because profit margin. There’s no deeper reason than that.

Doctors are concerned with your health.

Health insurance companies are concerned with the stock price.

These are conflicting goals.

This is what pushed Luigi to allegedly merc one of them

The is healthcare system is clearly a disaster but …. Since those drugs are not approved treatment for a health issue you have (your diabetes is under control), they have. Bit of an excuse. The real reason of course is that most of the population is overweight so they can’t afford to pay for everyone who needs it.

Can I suggest other strategies that may help you lose weight?

When I was planning to have kids I successfully lost over 100 pounds and kept it off for a decade! For me the key factors were doing it with my wife so we kept each other on track and food tracking. We joined weight watchers but it was the food tracking that made the difference for me and there’s many ways to do that. Even when you think you’re doing well you probably consume a lot more calories than you think, and it adds up. Food tracking can highlight this, identify where to make more effort. On the other side of things, losing weight requires following good habits over time: food tracking also helps you stay on track over time but this is also where peer pressure from someone else can really help.

Of course I’ve gained it all back now that my kids are in college but I did pretty well for their entire childhood, which was my motivation. I currently may have better nutritional habits than I did back then but I’m clearly way off in portion size and calories consumed

Something I’ve noticed is that doctors like to offload saying “no” to insurance companies so they don’t have to do it themselves. That’s at least part of it.

The health insurance industry is an objectively evil but very profitable business model, that sustains itself directly on human misery.

This is allowed because our government is corrupt, paid off, and broadly dysfunctional, and/or controlled by ideological/religious extremists who hold bigotry of one kind or another as a fundamental principle.

This is allowed because exploiting your suffering makes a small number of people very wealthy.

And that small number of people runs everything by way of paying off nearly everyone involved in potentially regulating them, nearly every elected representative at the level of State government or higher.

You live in a failing, rogue, totalitarian, extremist state, run by pedophile rapist murderers who lie openly and brazenly every day.

You do not live in a well-run, representative democracy, that sees to the needs of its citizens.

You live it’s corpse.

Why is this allowed?

It’s a private company operating under a contract that affords representatives ability to deny you payment for care on conditions that favor the company.

Why would it not be allowed?

Because capitalism and culture of inequality

Because your congressperson is bought and paid for and there aren’t enough people assassinating health insurance CEOs in the street to inspire them to change their ways.

It’s not allowed, but then again, I’m not in the US.

Im going to go out on a limb and assume you are from the us. us healthcare is nuts. Here is the funny thing. My wife has thyroid issues. Her bloodtests shows it within normal but on the low end. Doctor refuses to raise her cheap thyroid medicine and instead insists on a gpl. Even though she has other symptoms for low thyroid. insurance we had did pay for it. it makes no fucking sense. at times we can’t get stuff we need and at others we are given options we don’t want. A similar thing is there is this pretty cheap procedure called prp where they draw blood and centrifuge it down and dake the serum and inject it in a joint and it seems to relieve pain and does so for awhile. Like she could just get it once a year. They would not cover that but they did at one time. It kinda was based around what medicare was doing. They will pay for surgery that from our experinece may or may not make it better and may make it worse (we have more experience with surgery than anyone would want to have). That surgery is so expensive that if you were to stick the cost into a savings account it would easily make interest enough to do the prp. So even economics wise the insurance company should do the prp. Why don’t they. Because its like a game of chicken. people may get surgery but it does not always go well so many people will not get it. Also prp is done in the doctors office and does not require anything. They will pay for things from drug companies injected into the joint. We have just the worst system. Also you know why your insurance covers some things but not others? Some high muckity muck at your company want something. We had one that did unlimited chiro. Im like 100% the president or one of his family must get chiro adjustments every week or something. Either that or someone between the president and the hr level that decides on what insurance to use.

Look into compound pharmacies, you can get it for under $50 a month that way and not have to deal with insurance at all.

Sorry you are getting such negaticve responses here, people dont realize ozempic actually helps you to eat less and make the lifestyle changes people insist anyone can do without help. Feel free to dm me if you need additional help.

Nunber 1: Ozempic is NOT a weight loss drug.

Ozempic is a diabetes management drug that has a potential side-effect of weight loss.

The reason that you are likely being denied for Ozempic by your insurance is because you likely lack the diabetes with the additional comorbidities. You shared that you are diabetic with good numbers.

If you had worse diabetes and additional issues (comorbidities) such as high risk for stroke or heart attack by (very) high unmanaged blood pressure, then you could appeal the insurance company to cover the drug.

Number 2: the struggle is real. I highly recommend you fight this and continue your weight loss journey. Diabetes is unbelievably complicating later in life.