| About six weeks ago, I stepped on our bathroom scale and the weight that popped up seemed connected to either another time, or another body. After three decades of a fitful march toward what seemed an inevitable ever-higher weight, the number staring back at me was about what I weighed when my wife and I married in 1993. That euphoria quickly faded. A letter arrived just days later saying my employer’s insurance coverage of Eli Lilly’s weight-loss drug, Zepbound, was ending on July 1 and I would have to switch to Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy. Bloomberg has reported that research shows Zepbound has superior results, so I was surprised. It got me thinking about a 1990s movie called Awakenings. In the film, Robin Williams plays a neurologist who is treating patients who survived an epidemic of encephalitis lethargica. The disease left many victims in a catatonic state, with only limited response to external stimuli. In the movie, loosely based on real events, Williams’ character gets private funding to test a Parkinson’s disease medication on his patients, and they stage a remarkable recovery. But the recovery is short-lived. After a burst of new life and rekindled relationships with family and friends, the patients all begin to regress toward catatonic states. By the end of the movie, they’re back where they started. What’s the comparison? It’s hard to explain how much of a revelation Zepbound is. It literally changed my brain. I didn’t know what “food noise” was before, but then the shot silenced it. I noticed the difference immediately and lost 65 pounds. In 2024, I was fractions of a fraction away from being officially type 2 diabetic. My liver and kidney were straining. My blood pressure was high for the first time in my life. This was despite the fact that I have never stopped running. I walk my dog 2 to 3 miles a night. I tried no-fat diets. I tried a protein shake diet and lost 50 pounds on that until the program added solid food back in. My brain kept telling me I needed more calories than my physical activity could supplant. I tried Rybelsus, Novo’s pill version of Ozempic, with little success. So my doctor switched me to Zepbound, a drug that mimics two hormones instead of only GLP-1. That combination was apparently the magic I missed all these years. I hurt less. I run faster. I’m in the green across the board on diabetes, liver and kidney measures. My body-mass index still isn’t perfect, but it’s in line with recommendations for a man my age. I’m not alone in fearing that the decision to put me on Wegovy will cause my weight to come back. Like the patients in Awakenings, I worry about reversing my miraculous improvements by shifting to a shot that might not work as well. Last month, I took my first Wegovy shot. It’s way too early to really know, but I already feel different. The food noise seems to be slowly creeping back in. For now, my doctor and I will be monitoring the situation. We’ll see what happens next. — Jeff Green | 
