How I Lost 80-Plus Pounds in a Year With Wegovy

Alyssa Sepulveda, a 34-year-old blogger from Rancho Cucamonga, California, has spent much of her adult life trying to lose weight.

She’s given birth to three children — now ages 11, 9, and 2. And after each birth, she says, it felt more difficult to lose the pregnancy weight.

In addition, she had frequent gatherings with extended family that centered on cooking big meals together.

Alyssa tried changing her diet, working out, and taking over-the-counter diet treatments and pills that claimed they would burn fat. She tried going to a gym and following a trainer.

“Nothing had really ever worked,” says Alyssa, who works for an electrical company.

Two years ago, she hit her highest weight, at 312 lbs. At the beginning of 2023, her blood work was “getting out of control,” she says, and her body mass index was 43 kg/m².

Prediabetes diagnosis spurred change

But it was Alyssa’s prediabetes diagnosis in 2023 that led her to start thinking about a different kind of weight-loss plan.

Her doctor said one choice was gastroplasty (stomach stapling), which would restrict the amount she could eat at one time. However, Alyssa had a cesarean section with complications and wanted to avoid another surgery.

Her doctor then recommended semaglutide (Wegovy), and she started the injections in February 2023.

Alyssa injects the medication once a week with a prefilled autoinjector syringe. She first tried injecting it into her thigh but found sticking the needle into stomach fat works better.

The weight loss came fast. She recalls losing 30 pounds within the first 2 months.By the end of 2023, she had lost 83 lbs, about as much as one of her children weighs.

“I’ve lost this human off my body,” she says. And her cholesterol and hemoglobin A1C  (blood sugar) levels are back in the healthy range.

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Alyssa says she wanted to lose the weight mostly for her children.

“I want to be healthy to run with my kids, to play sports with them, ride bikes with them,” she says.

Making a change for herself

But losing weight was also something Alyssa wanted to do for herself. The littlest things matter, she says, like being able to put a towel around herself after a shower.

She also can enjoy eating at family gatherings: “I don’t have to go eat my salad by myself while everyone else is eating tacos,” she says.

Before, she would get winded walking up the stairs. Now, she can hike up a mountain for hours.

The way she presents herseIf has also changed, she says. “I felt sorry for myself all the time, and now I don’t feel that anymore. I have a lot more confidence.”

Dealing with side effects 

Alyssa says she had diarrhea and a few headaches at the start of taking semaglutide, and she had some hair loss because she eats much less protein than before.

Her eating patterns have changed drastically, and she gets full quickly. Now, she waits until about 1PM to eat her first meal and then eats a bigger meal in the evening with her family.

She has also greatly reduced her portion size.  If she eats a whole burger now, her stomach hurts, and she feels stuffed. She eats about a third of what she previously ate.

Another side effect: She has lost most of her desire to drink alcohol. While she’ll have an occasional drink with friends or family, she never craves it.

Advice: Watch your protein and your expenses

Alyssa recommends those taking semaglutide drink protein shakes occasionally. She says it helped stop her hair loss.

She adds that if you are considering the treatment, you should be ready for extra expenses, such as replacing your entire wardrobe more than once.

She’ll likely have additional expenses when she seeks plastic surgery to remove the loose flaps of skin that come with rapid weight loss.

Her insurance covers her medication, but if she gets a tummy tuck or surgery to remove skin from her arms, she’ll have to pay out of pocket.

For additional support, she recommends social media support groups. They can provide answers to questions about the medication that a doctor who has not personally been on the medication might not know.

It’s also important to tune out the people who say that “taking the medication is the easy way out” and focus on your progress toward better health, she says.

She started on the lowest dose of semaglutide and now is at the highest.  While she knows that taking the medication is usually a long-term commitment, she plans to discuss tapering off Wegovy when she reaches a weight she and her doctor are happy with. She’d like to lose 40 more pounds.

With the weight she’s lost already, though, she feels like she “can keep up for the first time in nearly a decade.” 

The weight “is not holding me back from my life,” she says.

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Written by:

Marcia Frellick

Marcia Frellick has been a journalist for more than 35 years. She started her career as an editor and became a freelance healthcare writer in 2008.

Edited by:

Tanya Bricking Leach

Tanya Bricking Leach is an award-winning journalist who has worked in both breaking news and hospital communications. She has been a writer and editor for more than 20 years.

Reviewed by:

Patricia Pinto-Garcia, MD, MPH

Patricia Pinto-Garcia, MD, MPH, is a medical editor at GoodRx. She is a licensed, board-certified pediatrician with more than a decade of experience in academic medicine.

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