'I've been using Ozempic for 5 months... and the haters were right.'

Every Tuesday morning for the past six months, I've been grasping the soft roll on my lower belly between my two fingers.

With a big exhale, I've pressed a tiny needle into my skin and released a dose of GLP-1 into my body, suppressing my appetite and helping me to lose the weight I have been so desperately trying to shed for years.

I've been dieting for as long as I can remember, and my weight has been up and down all my life.

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When it was down it was from sheer willpower and excessive working out, and any slight divergence from the strict food and exercise rules would add kilos and a negative impact on my mental health.

My mum would say, "You only have to look at a cake to gain weight," and she was right.

For decades, I teetered between starving my body and eating so much I hated myself. Food had that much power over me.

I now know that weight loss is way more complicated than we were ever told back in the day. A complex mix of hormones, biology and genetics influences our body and how it stores and uses energy and, unfortunately for most of us, weight loss is never as simple as eating less and moving more. It is definitely not about willpower, and it's not only about hard work. If you're overweight you're not lazy and unlikable, and it doesn't mean you're a failure.

I wish I knew this years ago.

Like many of us, I grew up within the confines of diet culture, where women were picked apart for our bodies. Every week there was a new miracle diet, and no one escaped — even women who were thin and healthy were publicly shamed and called 'fat'. You only need to look at the magazines from back then to see it. Back in the day, calling someone 'fat' was probably the biggest insult you could serve.

Years later, when I was pregnant and dealing with all-day morning sickness, I relaxed the restrictions I'd placed on myself. It was like opening the gates to hell. Everything I had denied myself went down the hatch with a vengeance, at first to try and ease the nausea and then because I just couldn't stop.

For 15 years since my daughter was born, I struggled to close those gates. And nothing worked because I had the same messed-up mindset I did as a teen. The difference was I could no longer skip dinner and have a flat tummy the next day or be "good" for a week and fit back into my clothes. Yes, I lacked willpower — but willpower wasn't what I needed.

Whilst I had learned to love my body at any size, I wasn't healthy. I really needed help, and to the horror of many who have never struggled with weight, I finally found a solution through medication, or 'cheating' as some call it.

Image: Supplied.

My knight in a shining injection pen was weight loss medication — and it's completely changing my life.

Over the past five months, I've slowly lost 12 kilos and as I've shared my story on Mamamia I've had so much support — but I also received a lot of critical messages and comments on my personal account.

Some were just nasty, like being called a cheat for using medication to help me become healthier. Others made me pause and think about how losing the weight with assistance could possibly be the easy part, and changing my mindset and staying healthy may be the challenge.

People messaged me that I was wasting my time, and once I stopped taking the medication I would put the weight back on. They said my skin would get saggy and I'd look old, and I'd have what they called 'Ozempic face'. They said I was stealing medication from people who needed it more than me. They said I was lazy and I was a cheat, and I would always be fat on the inside, even if I wasn't on the outside.

These comments were made to hurt me, but some of them actually helped because they made me think about how I was planning to maintain my weight loss. Spoiler — I hadn't even thought about it.

I realised I needed to understand why I struggled to lose weight and make sure I kept it off forever this time.

I was considering changing medications, as I had noticed it wasn't always available and I didn't want to impact others who needed access to the medication. Changing weight-loss brands would mean starting from the lowest dose again, and I could use this to shift my focus to prioritising education and strategies to help me maintain any weight loss I achieved.

I asked around and found that there are actually programs that support women on the entire GLP-1 journey so that our weight loss will last — they even take you through the whole process, starting with the doctors' consultation for prescribing the medicine.

So I signed up to an online program with telehealth appointments and ended up switching to a different form of the GLP-1 medication.

Image: Supplied.

The most common question I've been asked by women thinking about starting medication is how to talk to their doctor about it. So many women feel judged about their weight and are dismissed by their doctor when they ask about medical assistance — doing it all online reduces the anxiety and barrier to getting help.

After dieting for most of my life and still ending up in the same spot, I'm taking this seriously this time. I'm going to make it work.

As far as I am concerned, anything that we can do to reduce being overweight and improve our health alongside education about how to maintain it is the perfect approach.

Right now, I have lost 12 kilos and the impact has been huge.

I've been doing my Bronze Certificate at the local Surf Club and I'm getting back into running and swimming. I feel so much better, and clothes that had become skin-tight are now falling nicely. Knowing I'm getting healthier means so much more to me than how I look, especially when I'm thinking about spending the years ahead as a healthy mum with my daughter.

I have another 12-ish kilos to go over the next four or so months. And once I reach my goal and taper off the medication, I am determined that I will be able to maintain my health.

Finally.

After almost 40 years of dieting, I will be free.

Evie is usually traveling and is currently hosting group trips in Vietnam! Follow her at @mumpacktrips and @mumpacktravel

Feature: supplied.