What I Eat Since Taking Wegovy: ‘I Just Try to Stick to Whole Foods’
Key takeaways:
After she had a mini stroke, Candice Toney’s doctor prescribed Wegovy to help her get her weight in check.
Candice had to learn which foods work for her body and which don’t.
She sticks to whole foods to make sure her meals provide sufficient nutrients.
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Candice Toney has settled into a healthy pattern of eating: A breakfast of oats. A lunch of salad with salmon. A light dinner or protein shake.
But for Candice — a 44-year-old Department of Veterans Affairs education and policy specialist who lives in Cleveland, Ohio — it wasn’t always that easy.
In January 2023, she had what she says was a scary “wake-up call” about her health. A “mini stroke” landed her in the emergency room. That led her doctor to prescribe Wegovy (semaglutide) to help her lose weight, which could in turn lower her blood pressure.
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Since then, working in tandem with the popular weight loss medication, Candice has worked to change what — and how — she eats.
“I had to start back at Square 1,” she says.
Health scare leads to effort to lose weight
For years, Candice says, she struggled with her weight.
She dieted and tried to eat healthy. But food restrictions “lead me down to the road of binge eating,” she says. Sweets were her weakness. Instead of one cupcake, she’d have three.
She exercised and got into running. She didn’t know why, but too often, the results weren’t visible.
“I never looked like [a runner]. And I always got the thing from people saying, ‘Well, I think you’re cheating,’” she recalls.
Then, like many Americans, she gained weight during the pandemic. That was just one sign that her health was slipping. She experienced tingling sensations in her hand at one point and heart palpitations amid her stress from work and her side business.
She told herself she was too busy to see a physician, she says.
In January 2023, Candice was on a video call when her vision began to blur and her words began to slur. She went the next day to a hospital. Tests showed she had suffered a transient ischemic attack, often called a mini stroke, a temporary period of symptoms similar to those of a stroke.
“When I walked into the emergency room, my blood pressure was 185 over 89,” she says. Normal blood pressure is 120/80 or lower. “And on the scale, I was 300 pounds. And I’m just sitting here like, ‘How did I get to this point?’” she says. “It was a wake-up call.”
Candice wanted to remain healthy for her 22-year-old son, who is in the Air Force, and her parents, who live nearby.
Her primary care doctor sent her to specialists, including a neurologist, cardiologist, and endocrinologist. She learned that insulin resistance, high blood pressure, and hormonal issues had stymied her attempts to control her weight.
But controlling her weight was critical to improving her health.
Instead of bariatric surgery, she decided to try Wegovy, meeting its clinical criteria because of her high BMI, high blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
Her next stop was at a dietitian’s office.
“The appointment with a dietitian really helped me just reprogram myself,” she says. “If I was going to take this medication, I really wanted to do the right thing and eat better.”
Diet medication changes eating habits
When Candice started taking Wegovy, she felt nauseous a day after the injection and didn’t feel like eating. In those cases, she says, her doctor told her to focus on protein, including shakes or chicken.
Over time, finding she didn’t crave junk food as much and couldn’t eat as much without feeling full or even sick, she had to make sure the food she ate provided the nutrients her body needed.
“I just try to stick to whole foods,” she says.
These days, a typical day for her looks like this:
Breakfast
Oatmeal, chia seeds for protein and fiber, and two hard-boiled eggs.
Lunch
Lunch might be a salad with a protein, such as salmon or tuna. Or it might be a turkey burger with sweet potatoes. She looks for fibrous foods and leafy vegetables.
Snack
A snack will be something like yogurt with protein or some almonds.
Dinner
She typically eats a lighter dinner. It might be a lean protein, quinoa and some vegetables. Or if it’s a hectic night, she will have a protein shake with peanut butter.
Dessert
A favorite treat? Strawberries and Cool Whip.
But she doesn’t forbid herself from eating a slice of pizza at a family gathering or a bite of cake at her mother’s birthday party, or even having a glass of wine at dinner with friends.
That’s in part because she knows that “if I go overboard, that’s when I'm gonna feel sick.”
Passing up old favorites
If she goes to Chick-fil-A, one of her favorites, she’ll get a salad or some grilled nuggets instead of something heavier.
At the same time, she also learned to be in tune with how her body on Wegovy responds to certain foods.
“I used to love fried chicken, but I can’t have fried chicken like that anymore. Because I know I’m going to be in the bathroom,” she says.
She packs a lunch for work to avoid heavy restaurant meals. And she makes a grocery list and does meal-prepping to make sure healthy food is available. She found she can easily pass up the sweets while taking Wegovy.
“Things that I used to love, I can literally walk past. I now can look at it and just not even want it,” she says.
Lifestyle changes fuel health
After nearly 30 weeks on Wegovy, Candice has lost 44 lbs.
Her blood pressure and cholesterol readings have improved. She’s sleeping better and has the energy to exercise.
“I now can do high-impact aerobics, which I didn’t think I could do after I had the episode in January,” she says. “Wegovy has really been a game-changer.”
Candice says she stays motivated by trying on old clothes and taking photos and videos of her progress.
“Celebrating every step of the way has made me feel like, ‘Yes, I can do it,’” she says. “I feel the best that I’ve felt in a very long time. I feel free. I don’t feel ashamed of my weight, because I know that I'm changing things.”
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