Mommy blogger Constance Hall has shut down rumors she shed an incredible 44 pounds by using a controversial weight-loss drug.
Mommy blogger Constance Hall has shut down rumors she managed to shed 44 pounds by using the off-label weight-loss drug Ozempic.
The West Australian-based mother-of-five, who has amassed a following of almost 400,000 on Instagram, addressed questions about her body transformation in a post on Facebook – namely whether she was on the injectable drug, which is intended for diabetes treatment but has been found to greatly suppress the user’s appetite.
“So many people have accused me of lying about my weight loss and being on Ozempic or some other weight loss injection,” Hall began.
“I’ve noticed it’s not just me, people are accusing everyone of being on weight loss injections. Which made me wonder if people have the wrong idea about these injections. They aren’t the miraculous appetite suppressants everyone thinks they are.”
Hall said she visited her GP early last year to discuss weight loss solutions because her “old tricks” stopped working.
“I’d gained 20 kilos [44lbs], I was mentally and physically unhealthy, I felt like my bad habits were out of control. The doctor agreed I was at a dangerous weight,” she explained.
“He prescribed me Saxenda, an injection that’s been cleared to prescribe for weight loss, similar to Ozempic, only you inject yourself with a little epi pen once a day instead of once a week and there was no shortage of Saxenda so I wasn’t endangering diabetics by using it.”
After five weeks, Hall was so nauseous that it became “impossible” for her to continue administering the drug. Feeling “depressed and hopeless”, she went back to her doctor and asked whether she should consider bariatric surgery.
“But the doctor gave me a weird look and said, ‘You aren’t quite there yet, just try and lose it on your own’. Instead of focusing on the two years that I’d been unhealthy and unhappy for, the doctor told me that I’d easily slip back into better habits because I had 37 years of healthy habits to rely back on and that gave me some hope.”
Hall ultimately tried a similar method to intermittent fasting, consuming “whatever I want” before 3 pm and then only juice, water and occasionally alcohol after that point, until she goes to bed.
“I know myself and I know the way my mind works and this works for me. One simple and consistent change is what has worked for me. The knowledge that I can eat whatever I want as long as it’s in a specific time frame is what has worked for me. Weight loss injections didn’t,” she said.
She added that she wanted to lose weight for her mental and physical health, not to fit into the “unrealistic expectations of women that society is constantly pushing.”
“Having everyone assume that you have used a weight loss injection to throw shade at your weight loss isn’t frustrating because I feel judged. Or think I’m better for ‘doing it alone’ than people who have found success with them,” Hall said.
“It’s frustrating because I worry that people think these miracle injections shed kilos for anyone who tries them. Sure, they’ve done wonders for some and caused health complaints and made vital medications inaccessible for others.
“But if you are going to try them, don’t be disheartened if they don’t do anything. Don’t give up on you and your health, it’s the one thing that has to come before everything else. Being skinnier doesn’t make you happy. This I know. But getting healthier and feeling in control of your body is a definite start.”
In a recent interview with Wired, a scientist whose work in the 1970s helped pioneer drugs like Ozempic warned that people will struggle to take it for more than a few years because it takes the pleasure out of eating.
“Once you’ve been on this for a year or two, life is so miserably boring that you can’t stand it any longer and you have to go back to your old life,” Professor Jens Juul Holst said.
“What happens [when you take Ozempic] is that you lose your appetite and also the pleasure of eating, and so I think there’s a price to be paid when you do that. If you like food, then that pleasure is gone.”
