Why I Took Wegovy Years After My Bariatric Surgery
Key takeaways:
Before she had kids, Tara Johnson lost weight with bariatric surgery.
Eventually, she gained the weight back, trying for years to lose it again.
Since trying weight-loss medications, including Wegovy (semaglutide), she has returned to a healthy weight. Shey says that she expects to take weight-loss medication forever.
Tara Johnson has finally arrived at a place where her weight is under control — to a large degree, she says, thanks to the medication Wegovy (semaglutide). But it has taken decades to get there.
“I feel normal again,” Tara says in a TikTok video, which ends with before and after pictures. At 192 lbs, Tara is now about 30 lbs from her ultimate goal weight.
Weight loss was a long time coming
Tara, who is 51 and lives in Merrick, Long Island, says she was a large baby, who was “born fat” at a time when the medical community didn’t see obesity as a hormonal condition.
Tara grew up constantly struggling with her appetite and never feeling satiated. When she was in elementary school, she says, her doctor put her on a strict diet that felt like starvation.
Then, in 2008, Tara underwent gastric bypass surgery in an attempt to lose weight before she had kids. After the surgery, she lost a lot of weight, quickly dropping down to about 250 lbs from her highest weight of 350. Within 18 months after the surgery, she dropped down to 206, the lowest weight of her adult life until recently. But after having her two kids — Michael and Keeva, who are now 12 and 10 years old — she started regaining the weight.
Tara fluctuated between 230 lbs and 250 lbs for several years. Then, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and her weight shot up to 299 during quarantine.
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“I was approaching my 50th birthday, and I thought, ‘OK, if I don’t lose the weight, I’m going to have a heart attack, and I’m not going to see my kids grow up,’” she says. She knew she needed another medical intervention.
Trying different options: Saxenda, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepbound
In March 2021, Tara started taking her first injection-based, prescription medication for weight loss: Saxenda (liraglutide). She lost about 60 lbs with daily injections. But then, her weight loss stalled for several months, so she switched to Wegovy and lost another 40 lbs with weekly injections.
Tara’s husband is an employee of New York state, so she has “a great insurance plan” that covers weight-loss medications with a prior authorization. Many health insurance plans do not cover these medications.
Tara took Mounjaro (tirzepatide) for a while, but then her insurance stopped covering it because of a shortage and she switched back to Wegovy. While the Wegovy worked really well, she says, she prefers Mounjaro, which is approved to treat Type 2 diabetes. For weight loss, the manufacturer of Wegovy has another brand-name medication called Zepbound (tirzepatide), which she started taking in 2024.
At the beginning of 2024, Tara was maintaining a total weight loss of between 110 lbs and 120 lbs, but she wants to lose about 30 lbs more. For her, the Zepbound does a little bit more to suppress her appetite than other medications.
“You just don’t think about food. I could forget to eat the entire day. It makes it very easy to eat a [small meal], because you’re really not interested in eating at all,” she says. “Your brain just gets so distracted. You feel hunger, but it feels like it breaks the connection with food. “I’m not interested in satisfying my hunger [any more].”
Even though the type of hunger she feels now doesn’t translate to food cravings, she jokes: “If cookies are in front of me, I’m human, and I’ll want to eat them.”
Making diet and exercise changes
Tara focuses on eating protein-rich foods — like fat-free Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, eggs, and lean meats — as part of her daily diet.
“I am a very basic person when it comes to eating because it makes life easier,” she says. “I’ll eat pretty much anything. If my family is cooking lasagna, I’m going to have lasagna.”
As for her fitness routine, Tara loves going to Pilates classes at her gym.
Although she switched to Zepbound because it works a little better for her, Tara highly recommends Wegovy, which she calls “fantastic” and “life-changing.” Aside from feeling sick to her stomach and vomiting 20 minutes after the shot — which only happened twice, at the beginning — she had no concerning side effects.
She expects that she will take Zepbound indefinitely, as an important safeguard for weight maintenance.
“I think this is a lifelong situation for me,” she says. “If I were to go off it, I’d end up eventually gaining weight, and I’d rather avoid that if I can.”
Although she regained weight after her bariatric surgery, she has no regrets about having it, because it helped her lose weight by restricting her food intake — “fixing a system that’s not working,” she says. Now, Wegovy and Zepbound have done the same thing, as she sees it, by dramatically reducing her appetite. They haven’t, however, ruined how much she enjoys eating.
“I can still enjoy food. I just can’t have as much of it,” she says. “I love to try new things.”
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