Yes, it works — but as soon as I stopped, I piled on the pounds
ALEX GUEVARA, 47, a paramedic practitioner from Milton Keynes, in Buckinghamshire, first took semaglutide three years ago after his weight rocketed following a severe lung infection that left him housebound for months.
‘In 2017, my weight started to balloon after I fell ill,’ says the father of three. ‘At 5 ft 11, I was already about 15 st before I got ill — about 1½ st overweight.
‘But by April 2020 I was touching 20 st [giving him a BMI of over 39]. I couldn’t go to work, couldn’t exercise. I just felt so low.
‘All I could do was eat. Playing with the kids was impossible because my joints were so sore. I even developed sleep apnoea [where you stop breathing momentarily during sleep].
‘I must have been spending about £250 a week on snacks from the garage. I was on a barrage of medication, since I had depression and had developed asthma. I even felt suicidal.
‘I just couldn’t see a way out of this vicious circle of eating and misery. I tried everything, including going to the gym and various restrictive diets.
‘But there’s only so much exercise
you can do in a week if you have a job and a family. I just didn’t have that kind of time on my hands.’
Alex decided to try semaglutide after it was recommended to him by a colleague. Feeling that he had nothing to lose, his desperation vanquishing any scepticism, he didn’t baulk at the £200-a-month price tag.
The results were almost instant. Within a few days of starting the treatment, he says he ‘stopped feeling hungry’.
Within a month he had lost a stone and his sleep apnoea had gone.
All the same, there were side-effects including nausea, constipation and diarrhoea. These were at their worst when he started the medication and settled down after a few weeks.
One other side-effect of semaglutide is that it can make food less appealing, potentially ruining the enjoyment of eating altogether.
Yet Alex says that, given the weight loss, these side-effects didn’t bother him.
In December 2021, his weight now down to 15 st and feeling mentally and physically able to keep up a healthier regimen without the drug’s help, Alex stopped taking the medication.
But by the following November, having put on a stone again, he felt compelled to restart it.
‘It was a combination of things,’ he says. ‘Working in the NHS — especially now — is so stressful and I can work long hours, so I was grabbing snacks or junk food. I also wasn’t sleeping well.
‘Slowly the weight crept back on until I was horrified to get on the scales and find I’d put on over a stone.’
Self-funding his treatment, in the past five months Alex has shed 7 lb but is 1½ st overweight (giving him a BMI of 30); his ideal weight is 14 st.
‘It’s great that the drug will be much more available, but the criteria are too restrictive,’ he says.
‘For example, your BMI has to be 35 to be eligible — there’s almost an incentive to become really overweight, just so a person can get the drug, which is ridiculous, of course.’
He adds: ‘Some people may see semaglutide as the lazy option, but I don’t agree.
‘I needed something dramatic to help me break the cycle and stop me hurtling towards type 2 diabetes and the risk of cardiovascular diseases and stroke.
‘Anyway, restrictive diets have a huge failure rate. And when junk food can sometimes be cheaper than fruit and vegetables, is it any wonder it’s so hard to lose weight by yourself?
‘As far as I’m concerned, semaglutide is a miracle. It should be available to anyone who needs it.’