Little’s spectacular Winter Formal dress (Photo by Teri Sforza)
It is with tremendous pride that we present to you … The Dress.
It’s all dark blue and velvet and sequins and shine, at once as deep as the ocean and as twinkly as the night sky — just plain “STUNNING!” (That’s what Little’s fashion-advisor friend texted as we gazed lovingly in the dressing room mirror at Macy’s.)
The shocking part is not only the $35 price tag on this spectacular dress (how we adore those Macy’s sale racks), but that Little, who we figured would wear an oversized T-shirt, sweat shorts and baseball cap until the End of Days, actually wanted to wear it to the Winter Formal.
Here we are, folks, a full year into Little’s GLP-1 journey toward a healthier existence, and we see glimmers of the creeping confidence that shedding 25 pounds can foster. Thanks to those of you following along and asking how she’s doing. There have been many more twists and turns than we expected, and a changing menu of drugs and, thankfully, increasingly affordable options.
This has been a much, much longer odyssey than at least I had originally — and ignorantly — anticipated. But we’ve learned a lot and continue to learn a lot, and hope that our experiences might help others on a similar path.
More options
FILE – The injectable drug Ozempic is shown Saturday, July 1, 2023, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)
First, let’s talk drugs and pricing.
Tragically, at least from our wallet’s perspective, our insurance does not cover much for these weight-loss drugs. When Little’s doctor prescribed Ozempic — the GLP-1 drug officially used for diabetics — it cost $714 a month, out-of-pocket. Ouch.
In the beginning the shots hurt too. It was unfamiliar terrain for us parent-types; four doses are in one Ozempic pen, and you attach a fresh needle each week for the injection. There was Sturm and Drang at shot-time. We got better at it — icing the area for 15 minutes pre-shot, leaving the ice bag on the skin to distract during jab — and it got to be routine.
You ramp up slowly on Ozempic, but the cost is the same whether you’re taking the 0.25 mg dose or the 2 mg dose. She didn’t have any side effects and her appetite decreased, but not as dramatically as I (uninformedly) expected. She was motivated to eat healthier and exercise more — “Mom, can we go to the gym?” is a sentence that still stuns me every time I hear it — and she was more comfortable in her skin after shedding the first 20 pounds, which took about seven months.
Little, Halloween 2025 (Photo by Teri Sforza)
In October, there was a GLP-1 earthquake: Costco began selling Ozempic for $499 a month. That was a big help!
And in October, it was Halloween. That was a big hurt!
Halloween, in these parts, is the beginning of Pack-On-The-Pounds season, try as we might to behave. It’s a long, straight shot to hell, initially paved with Almond Joys and Milk Duds and, later, by turkey, stuffing and sweet potato-sausage bake and, in the final leg, by lasagna and apple pie and chocolate chip cookies for Santa. We wake up groaning on New Year’s Day, resolving to undo the carnage.
New drugs
We asked Little’s doctor about switching to Zepbound/Mounjaro. Their active ingredient, tirzepatide, targets two hormones involved in appetite and blood sugar regulation (GLP-1 and GIP), while Wegovy/Ozempic’s semaglutide targets just one (GLP-1).
In a direct “head-to-head” study, people on Zepbound lost an average of 20.2% of their body weight over 72 weeks, while those on Wegovy lost 13.7%.
But alas! Zepbound/Mounjaro are approved only for people age 18 and older. Little is 15.
So her doctor switched her prescription from Ozempic to Wegovy. They’re the same drug — semaglutide — but Wegovy is approved for weight loss and its highest dose is 2.4 mg, while Ozempic is approved for diabetes and its highest dose is 2.0 mg.
We filled the higher Wegovy prescription at Costco for the same price and thought we were off to the races. But things were definitely not the same.
The issue wasn’t the higher dosage; it was the method of administration. While Ozempic’s pen contained four doses and used disposable needles, Wegovy had four different pens, each containing one dose, and each with an internal needle that popped out when you jabbed the pen into your body (much like the epi-pen delivery system).
This, for Little, was a most unwelcome change. We had to use more force to get the needle out. It hurt more. She bruised more. The Sturm and Drang returned. She lost all the holiday weight, and several more pounds, but began to hate the weekly ritual so much we considered switching back to Ozempic.
Big change
In January, there was yet another earthquake in weight management land: The FDA approved the Wegovy pill and it landed in pharmacies nationwide.
No more injections?! Little’s eyes shone. Oral semaglutide must be taken daily, first thing in the morning, on an empty stomach, with no more than four wee ounces of water. Then you can’t eat anything for at least 30 minutes.
The pill packs far more semaglutide — ours is 25 mg — because most of it is lost in the digestive system. But studies have found that its success is comparable to, if not quite as robust as, the injectable version. On the plus side, the pill doesn’t need to be refrigerated (so it’s good for travel), and it doesn’t require a parent to bruise the patient (so it’s good for parents’ long-term survival).
Little’s doctor prescribed her the pill. We’re just a few days in.
Little modeling her spectacular Winter Formal dress (Photo by Teri Sforza)
They say it can upset your gut at first, even if you’ve used semaglutide for a while; but so far, so good. She’s so happy that the injectable days are (hopefully) over forever, and we’re happy about that, too. We’re also happy that, at Costco, we paid $299 for a 30-day supply of the highest-dose Wegovy pill, much less than we paid for the highest-dose injectable version.
As wildly popular as these drugs already are (I know a woman who inflated her weight dramatically to get a prescription from an online provider), expect to see their use skyrocket now that there’s a no-jab option. Within three weeks of the pill’s launch, some 170,000 people had gotten prescriptions.
About one in eight adults — 12% — were taking one of these drugs at the end of last year, before the pill hit pharmacies, according to a KFF poll. And some 60,000 youths aged 12-17 were using them as well (though that data is a bit old and we’d wager it’s far more by now).
Little is her doctor’s first pediatric patient taking the pill route. Her blood labs have been ordered and we’re all watching closely. Thanks for the concern we’ve heard from readers, and we’ll keep you posted.
Meanwhile, The Dress. When Little walked in to the Winter Formal, she was greeted by a resounding chorus of “Who IS that?! Is that really YOU?!” The memory makes her smile to this day.
I haven’t, however, been able to cajole her into wearing The Dress again. We’re back to the uniform of oversized T-shirt, sweat shorts and baseball cap. But her big sister’s college graduation is coming up and I can already hear the chorus: “Is that YOU?!”