WELLTHY Generation Podcast!

74. Ozempic & Microwave Wellness Culture

• Naihomy Jerez • Episode 74

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The Ozempic trend deserves more scrutiny as it's being prescribed like candy without proper education on sustainable weight management. This medication has legitimate uses but requires lifestyle changes to maintain results—high protein intake and strength training are essential to prevent muscle loss during rapid weight reduction.

• The weight loss industry preys on insecurities, creating endless cycles of dieting without teaching sustainable habits
• Looking skinny doesn't guarantee feeling healthy—these are two separate factors that often get conflated
• Sustainable weight loss is slow—around half a percent of body fat per month when done properly
• "Microwave culture" creates unrealistic expectations for quick transformations without consistent work
• Coming off weight loss medications without lifestyle changes leads to rapid weight regain, often as fat rather than muscle
• Rapid weight loss without proper nutrition can lead to nutrient deficiencies and muscle loss
• Comparing yourself to your younger body is unfair and unproductive—focus on current season of life
• A holistic approach includes food, exercise, stress management, and sleep—not just one intervention

If you want to learn the foundational work of sustainable nutrition, join my Sugar Mama small group intensive program starting April 23rd. We'll focus on understanding food groups, managing sugar intake, and eating intentionally without restriction. Only six spots remain, so message me for details or book a consultation call.

Thank you so much for listening!


Speaker 1:

What up friends? Welcome back to another episode of Wealthy Generation Podcast. That's W-E-L-L-T-H-Y. If you hear the sound is different this time around, it's because I am recording from my living room on my couch on my phone. I really want to get this episode out to you guys and I was just craving comfort today because I've been working from here and I was like I don't want to move everything to my desk where my mic is and all that. So there's a lot more space in my living room, no sounding boards, so it might be a little echoey, but bear with me because the topic you're going to want to listen to it is something I spoke about on Instagram about a week ago and it's been getting a lot of attention, not publicly, because a lot of y'all are shy and won't comment on it, but you have been reaching out to me privately about the impact that reel had and it was my reel on Ozempic and I just wanted to talk a little bit more about it here because I did all of two minute reel on Instagram and I just wanted to talk a little bit more about it because it is definitely a hot topic right now.

Speaker 1:

It is the trendy thing and what I was talking about in the reel is, if you've been considering it, things to think about, because I've had a lot of my friends reach out to me asking me what my thoughts are about it, because they are curious, because a bunch of their friends are on it or family members or a medical professional, like a doctor, has offered it to them because of whatever concerns that they're having. So this is 100% not medical advice, right? This is my opinion, this is how I see it and my thoughts on it, based on the knowledge of health and wellness and nutrition that I have as a certified integrative nutrition health coach, and also based on the experiences that have been shared with me from people who have been on this kind of medication and what I hear other medical professionals mention, talk about, suggest on this medication. Okay, so that's where my POV is coming from and my thoughts are coming from. So it is being handed out like kind of candy. It is the new trendy thing, but it's something I think that deserves respect.

Speaker 1:

As with anything else, especially a prescribed medication, with anything else, especially a prescribed medication, it does have 100% its needs and its uses. There are people who benefit highly from it, who need this kind of medication. The thing is that it's being handed out to a lot of people who might not need it at the moment, need it at the moment and people are not properly being prepared and set up for success if they do decide to go on this medication, or a lot of other factors or, let's say, stages of life are not being taken into consideration. I just want to give an example of when this has also happened, and it's when women, especially in perimenopause, are prescribed antidepressants and a lot of women go to the doctor and they're like oh, my energy's different, I'm down, I have no motivation, and a lot of times women just get gaslit and they're like oh, it's because you're getting older, which there's an asterisk to that right, because with perimenopause you are getting older, but it's purely blamed on age and not the physical, biological, natural symptoms or changes that are happening in the body. And they all say things like oh, it's because you have a lot of stress, you are in a stressful time in your life. You're probably taking care of aging parents and young children and you're at the height of your career, so of course you're going to have low energy and you're going to be down and all that. And then they're like, oh, take this SSRI. And then they're like, oh, take this SSRI, this serotonin inhibitor, right, so that you can feel better, and oftentimes it can be helpful. But there are other underlying things happening, which is probably perimenopause, which is most likely that you might have a vitamin D deficiency and that has you drained. You're maybe low in iron.

Speaker 1:

Your lifestyle habits that you currently are engaging in are not aligned with this current season of perimenopause, so you can get prescribed an antidepressant and it might work for you, but there are also so many other things that are not being brought to the table and discussed that can be helpful before we get to the medication piece, and that's something I worked on with my doctor a lot. Actually, I was on SSRIs for a little while, especially to help me with my PMDD, and eventually I was able to wean off of them and support myself. Not that it's super easy and that I don't get any symptoms regarding PMDD premenstrual dysphoric disorder, which is more of an emotional condition around menstruation but there are adjustments that I made to my lifestyle and my food and exercise and things like that to better support me during those times. Okay, and now? So that's just an example. I wanted to give an example of another time, where medication is just handed out with no curiosity, with no digging, with no curiosity, with no digging, with no suggestions of lifestyle adjustments that can be made to better support the individual.

Speaker 1:

Now I feel like the same thing is happening with Ozempic, and there is always a trend happening in the health and wellness industry. It is a multimillion dollar industry the weight loss industry. Not only do they come at women at all different angles, always addressing their insecurity, always telling them that they need to fix this or that, especially us millennials who grew up in the era of America's Next Top Model and Tyra Banks. And just skinny is where you want to be, your hip bones had to be popping out, your collarbone had to be popping out, and there were so many women and celebrities who were just so sick from this trend. And now I feel like it continues. So it preys on all the insecurities your hair, your lashes, your cellulite, your belly fat, your this, your that, and it's never, ever, ever ending.

Speaker 1:

And we lose sight of our own beauty and the natural way our body wants to be. Your body usually knows the weight that is good for it, but we want to force it and manipulate it into looking a certain way, or we always want it to go back to a time where it's not in the right season for us. For example, a lot of women talk about when they were in high school or when they were in college. That, reproductively speaking and just in nature, biologically speaking, is just such a different timeframe when you're in your early twenties and your teens versus when you are in your late thirties, early forties. It's just completely different seasons. It is so unfair for us to compare ourselves to those times and force ourselves to go back. It can actually make us sick. We want to admire and thank ourselves back then and then see how we can take care of our current version, of our current and present self, because we're never, ever, ever, ever going to be that age again. We're never going to be that person.

Speaker 1:

Unfortunately, we cannot turn time back and if we don't learn how to love ourselves now and to take really good care of ourselves now, life is going to pass us by, and what a lot of times happens is you look back at photos. Passes by, and what a lot of times happens is you look back at photos. I can promise, guarantee you that this has happened, where you look back at photos and you're like gosh, I don't even know why I was complaining, I don't even know why I thought I was fat and not cute. I was so beautiful, I wasn't even big, I wasn't fat, and I wish I had not beat myself up so much. I wish I had loved myself more. I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish. So don't you think that that's the same thing that's going to happen 10 years from now, 20 years from now, when you're probably around 60 years old, late 50s, in your 60s, and you're looking back at your 40s and you're like, damn, I wish I had taken better care of myself, I wish I was not beating myself up. Look how beautiful I was. I thought I was fat, but I was not. Same thing, right? Let's pay attention to these patterns. Let's pay attention to these patterns and, with that said, I know I said I was going to talk about Ozempic, but I feel like these things are important to mention because the point of Ozempic is to lose weight.

Speaker 1:

The point of Ozempic is to be skinny, or whatever your goal is. Oftentimes, people are not taking it for reasons like healing their diabetes or helping them with a chronic illness, with a chronic illness, or if you are obese and you really need support with losing a few pounds in order to move your body more comfortably right, with less pain, things like that. I'm not saying it's not useful, I'm not saying it's not a great resource it is but the thing is that with a lot of things is being abused. So I'm talking to those people who maybe have 10 pounds to lose, 20 pounds to lose, and the doctor's like, oh, let me give you this or you go ahead and request it yourself. And it becomes this thing where people have FOMO because you probably see your friends or family members losing weight at a rapid state.

Speaker 1:

But the thing is that when I mentioned that people or the medical system doesn't set you up for success when you're taking this medication, is that time and time again, medical professionals have mentioned that for this medication to be successful, you need to eat high protein and you need to work out like strength workout, because it's not just with Ozempic Any diet that you do that severely limits calories or, let's say, energy, right Nutrients to yourself and you're not appropriately protecting your muscle mass, then that's what you're going to lose. If you do rapid weight loss, if you're losing tons and tons of weight in a short amount of time, then you probably start off losing a bunch of water weight and then you start losing your muscle mass. You're not even losing fat water weight and then you start losing your muscle mass You're not even losing fat. So what they advise is for when you are on something like Ozempic is that you eat a high protein diet and you strength train. The thing is that those are lifestyle changes that you need to make. You need to learn about food. You need to understand how to adjust your schedule to fit in eating and to fit in strength training. You need to prepare your mindset for these changes right.

Speaker 1:

So now you're on a medication and you think that that's the only thing that you're going to need, and a medication at that that curbs your appetite. Because what I've heard from a lot of people that have been on it is that you don't even feel hungry and you feel nauseous a lot of the times. So now you're not eating at all, you can become nutrient deficient and you're losing your muscle mass, the one that protects you the most against prediabetes, even though this drug is helping you with that. But the thing is that if you're not eating, then how is your body digesting any food for it to use insulin? And then it's like, okay, well, you're not prepared to come off of this safely, because what happens is that you go ahead and come off, you lose the way you want to lose, and then you come off of it and you have not changed anything in your lifestyle. You're still eating. However, you're still not exercising. And then what happens? You gain the weight back as fast as you lost it. And it's even worse because now you're probably gaining it back in fat and not in muscle, because you're still not exercising, strength training and you're still not eating higher protein levels. And people always think they're eating enough protein and they're not. That's another thing, so it's just a bit of a learning curve. Or another situation is that while people are on these medications or on whatever diet it is, they'll follow this, they'll strength train and they'll eat higher protein, but they think that once they're done with the medication or with the diet, they can go back to doing whatever it was that they did. And this is why the diet industry is a multimillion dollar industry, because what no one is taught is how to stick with these habits, how to make it a lifestyle, how to make it sustainable, to maintain your results, and then you probably won't ever need a diet in your life again or this kind of medication.

Speaker 1:

I know a group of people, a group of loved ones, who every single year for about six years they did a weight loss challenge in the beginning of the year and I literally joined. Maybe I joined, or I thought about joining, one year and then I changed my lifestyle. I learned how to eat, I learned how to exercise and year after year, I maintained my results, whereas year after year, the same people joined the same weight loss challenge because they were bigger than they were the previous year and I thought that was it freaking, boggled my mind. I'm like do people not see what's happening? And you're getting older, you're gaining more fat. Why are you going to torture yourself for a month or two to then just go back to what you were doing before, to then be on this hamster wheel over and over again?

Speaker 1:

So the way that it should work with go on a lifestyle change first, you need to earn the right to use something like Ozempic so that you can do it safely. Where you are learning about food, you are learning how to eat higher protein. You are learning how to incorporate strength training into your life, learning how to incorporate strength training into your life, and then you use this medication so that you can successfully get your results and maintain your results. And I know that when some folks do gastric bypass, that is required, where you need to practice changing how you eat, your lifestyle habits and things like that to prepare for this surgery. And I'm not knocking any of these freaking tools. You can do whatever you want, whatever's going to make your soul happy. You can go get plastic surgery, gastric bypass, go on Ozempic. I really do believe in every single one of these tools, right, and it's so helpful for your mental health too to just get support with your results.

Speaker 1:

What I am freaking will stand. What's that saying? Stand on the gravestone? I don't know. I will. To take it to my gravestone? I don't know. Whatever, what I will die on my grave. I need to stop. Anyway, what I will continue to say over and over again is that that is not an easy way out. It takes a lot of effort. It's fucking painful. I'm assuming it takes a lot of mental, a big mental load and a big physical load to do any of these things, to use any of these tools.

Speaker 1:

So let's protect our health while we're at it in terms of nutrient deficiencies, our muscle mass, how we're feeling, because one thing is that you can look amazing. You can look skinny as fuck or however the hell you want to look, and whatever size and whatever number on the scale, and you can be feeling like absolute shit. You can have low energy, you can be super exhausted all the time, fatigued like hollowed eyes, because one thing is to look one way and another thing is to feel another way, and being a certain size doesn't guarantee you that you're going to feel amazing. Those are two separate things, and it's always assumed that if I'm skinny, I'm going to feel great, that if I can fit into this clothes, I'm going to feel great, and that's all I need for confidence or to feel amazing. And that's just not true. Okay, I went off on a tangent and now I forgot what I was talking about. But yeah, it be like that, right? Oh, I think I was saying that I want you to maintain your results and be healthy at the same time. For real, take care of your health along the way.

Speaker 1:

So when it comes to a medication like this. Why not? I see people all the time where they start the medication and then they start the lifestyle changes. Why not give that a shot to begin with? Why not just stay consistent with that? You stay hella fucking consistent when you're doing some sort of diet or medication or whatever the fuck. So it's just like why don't you just honor that with regular old things? And a lot of times what you need is education, what you need is support Because, trust me, I am Dominican.

Speaker 1:

I have Dominican family members. I come from lack and scarcity and people pleasing, so making lifestyle changes for me wasn't easy peasy. I'm just going to do this, fuck everybody. I really had to make hard decisions. I really had to learn how to set boundaries. I really had to learn how to honor myself, to shift my thinking, to shift my mindset, to honor my body, to realize what was happening to me, to really honor me. And we're not taught to do that shit at all. We're just taught to people please and to eat what you're served, and if everybody's drinking, you go along. And the peer pressure and all this. But that was just not working for me anymore. It wasn't making me feel good. I was not happy, feeling so sick it wasn't worth it for me anymore and there were a lot of things I had to change. So why not just give that a shot to begin with, okay.

Speaker 1:

And another thing is give yourself time. Microwave culture has us all the way fucked up. Everything is right away. I don't know if you've seen these memes out here where they're so funny because they're like oh, I asked the fit person at the gym how long it took for them to look that way and they told me seven years. And I was expecting to look like that in three months. Right, three months is nothing, nada. It took you a whole life to be where you are right now. So, giving yourself three months, you can 100% see progress, right, and you can change how you're feeling. But you're probably not going to be at your goal in three months, right?

Speaker 1:

I've been working for first of all, I've been working out or consistently with this lifestyle for about eight years, eight or nine years now, and after I turned 37, I had this big perimenopausal shift where I gained about 30 pounds. I started gaining body fat, I started losing muscle mass. A bunch of stuff changed. So again, I had to shift my wellness for the new season I was in because I was like what the fuck is happening? I was gaining a lot of belly fat and this entire time, for the past two years, I've been trying to lose body fat and maintain or gain muscle and with that the weight shifts a little bit right, because I gained 30 pounds. It wasn't that I wanted to lose 30 pounds, I was more concerned about the fat loss and muscle gain. So it just so happened that I got my in-body is a body composition report done at the gym and it has taken a year to lose about 2% body fat and, thankfully, maintain my muscle and I'm down about six pounds. I started off at like 183 and now I'm at 178 or something like that, and it took this entire time of consistency to lose about 2% body fat.

Speaker 1:

And when you're looking at sustainable weight loss, where you're maintaining your muscle and losing fat, is about half a percent of fucking week, okay, or a month, something like that, it just takes time. So y'all be quitting at three months, at six months, at seven months, not understanding that this is a lifestyle, that this is a four life change and it doesn't mean that it's going to look the same every single day of the week, every single month, every single season. You're going to adjust it, but the consensus is that there's going to be some sort of movement, there's going to be some sort of nutritious eating, and how it's composed can look different 100%. There are adjustments and tweaks that always need to be made based on the data that we're receiving and the progress that we're seeing, but the consensus is that you are consistent in figuring that out and committed to your wellness in the way that fits the current season of your life, and you need to freaking give it time. You can't just be changing up the strategy every month, because then you will never know what's working or not. You should give yourself at least three to six months to see how something's working and you might just be seeing micro changes, micro progress, which is what I saw every month that I did my in-body exam. It was just small, tiny shifts, but the difference in a year really is noticeable. So that's the difference Everything that is ending like if you're ending a diet, if you're ending Ozempic or anything like that.

Speaker 1:

You need to have a plan as to what you're going to do after for sustainability. There is no way that you can go back to not doing it. Let me give you an example. Let's say you run marathons or you're an athlete or whatever, and you're training and you're playing, you're training and you're running, you're training and you're running. And then you stop. You stop training for three years, let's say. And then, because you were a great marathon runner and you had a great time and a great pace or whatever it is, and three years later, with no freaking maintenance work, with no practice, with no training, you sign up for a marathon and decide to run it the next day. You think you're going to be successful? No, you think you're going to get the same results you did when you were training? Absolutely not, you will not. It's just ridiculous when you think about it, right? So it's the same thing with health and wellness. Why would you think that you can go back to doing whatever it was that you were doing before and you're able to keep your results? Yeah, you'll keep them for a month or two, but then it's slowly going to slip away, slowly going to slip away.

Speaker 1:

And again I'll say microwave culture has us all the way fucked up because we expect things fast and we expect things for us not to have to work so hard for it, like one solution to something, like one thing, and when it comes to health and wellness, it's not one thing. It's many things that add up and you can start with one thing. But let's say, for weight loss and sustainable weight loss and healthy weight loss is not one thing, it's not just taking Ozempic, it's also how are you eating. It's also how are you exercising, how's your stress management, how's your sleep? So I haven't spoken about this yet, but I'm doing a procedure called Morpheus 8. And it's like this deep ass microneedling with lasers or whatever the fuck, because I want the appearance of my abdomen to look better of my belly After two kids. It's left a little jiggly and with loose skin and stretch marks and I just want it to look nicer, which, again, like I said, it's okay.

Speaker 1:

But the one thing that the nurse practitioner who does the procedure told me time and time again is it's not just this. She's like are you eating well, are you exercising? This is not the only solution. So she doesn't want me to think that just because she's jabbing my stomach with needles to recreate collagen production and new layers of skin, that that's going to make my tummy look fantastic. She continuously reminded me that eating well and exercising was an integral part of getting nice results. And, lucky for me, I already do that anyway and I can be more intentional, let's say about training my core or something like that. But I am already intentionally eating well and exercising, so it just will enhance my results.

Speaker 1:

What a lot of you think is that that one thing that you're doing, that one juice cleanse, that one microneedling, that one surgery, these few months of Ozempic, is going to solve all your problems. But that just puts you on the depression rollercoaster. The depression rollercoaster because one day you're a few months you're great and you're feeling great, and then you don't keep up with it and then you feel crappy again and you need to figure it out. So because you were not consistent. But there's also the other scenario that you are consistent and what you're doing is no longer meeting your needs and you need to figure it out again, and that's something that happened to me. So those are two different things. I don't want you to think that whatever you're doing right now is going to work forever, because it probably isn't, and I would not be being truthful and honest with you if I may pretend it was. You will have to make adjustments depending on your season or certain goals that you want, cool. So I hope this was helpful in understanding a bigger picture of wanting to use something like Ozambic or wanting to go on some sort of diet as it relates to sustainable, healthy weight loss and managing health and not being set up for success.

Speaker 1:

Remember that doctors get paid to give you these kinds of medications. The pharma industry is by far the largest. They really don't give a shit if you really need it or not. They really don't give a shit if you're going to use it correctly or not. They really don't give a flying fuck. And I want you to. I want you to be curious. I want you to take the time to research and to set yourself up for success and to understand that the absolute foundation of all of it is how you live your life, how you incorporate exercise and food and stress management and sleep and all that into it. Gave you maybe a new perspective or a different way to think about it, or courage of some sort to make a decision one way or the other, what's best for you. Or maybe it filled a few gaps of things that you knew you were missing, to move forward with something and again, this is not medical advice. It's honestly like me ranting from everything that I know and what I see happening out here in the streets.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and just as a reminder, if you need support with the foundational work, if you really want to learn about food specifically and how to help your health and really redefine your definition with weight loss and understand the fundamentals of food, sugar Mama, my small group intensive program it's still open for enrollment is going to be closing by April 9th 2025. So the deadline to join is coming up soon. There are a total of six spots left and in this program we're going to really learn about food groups, understand how much sugar you're having and how much extra added sugar you're having. That really impacts weight loss and your overall health, and we're going to learn how to eat these foods with joy and more intentionally. It's not about restriction. It's not about I can't have this, I can't have that. Let's suck the joy out of life and out of food, because I, for one, am a foodie and I love, love, love, love to eat.

Speaker 1:

So I invite you to join Sugar Mama, to send me a message or book a consultation call where we can discuss more about it, if any of this hit the spot for you and you're like, yes, I want to learn about lifestyle, then this is a great program to get started with. The meetings are going to happen Wednesdays at 6.30 PM Eastern time. They start April 23rd and it runs through March. It's six weeks, so it's super quick and super effective. We're going to have a group chat. We're going to have a great time. We're going to have so much fun and so much learning. So I invite you, send me a message about it if you want to join, if you want more information, and I'll talk to y'all next week. Bye.