Janet Kintner

 

(This is NOT medical advice. Talk to your doctor for that. This is only to share my experience and hopefully inspire you.)

 

When I got older, I found I was adding weight. It seemed slow but it kept coming. I went from age seventy to eighty and I realized I had added forty pounds and I felt awful. I didn't feel like me. I had trouble getting comfortable in bed at night. It was almost all in my abdomen. "I feel fat," I said to my husband.

 

"There's just more of you to love," he said loyally. But one night a leg cramp had me sliding to the floor in pain (this is what it's like to get old) and when he tried to pull me up, he had a hard time. He's strong for his age, and this was embarrassing. He said,  "Whoa, how much do you weigh?"  I was too embarrassed to tell him. I tried to reduce my food intake, but no matter what I did, I couldn't get rid of any weight.

 

I talked to my doctor, who recommended Wegovy. I wondered if she may have used it herself. She didn't hesitate to recommend it. At first I declined. I was worried about possible side effects and I know with most weight loss aids and diets, as soon as you go off them, you gain all the weight back and sometimes more. And I didn't want to be on it for the rest of my life. But I thought, maybe I can go off it and still keep the weight off if I don't eat much. I still have a tiny bit of self -discipline.

 

So I said, "Sign me up. I want to start Wegovy." My doctor called in the prescription. It was only affordable at Costco at that time, and it was still terribly expensive—several hundred dollars a month. My insurance wouldn't cover it. But I knew I kept gaining weight and I felt so awful that I decided to spend the money. I started with .25, the lowest dose on March 3, 2026. Wegovy had separate pens for each dose. I got the directions from the pharmacist and I watched a video online (I just Googled it) and it seemed easy to do. It was very clever. I never saw the needle. It's enclosed. (This is different from Ozempic, where you see the needle and use the same pen with different needles for each injection.)  The first time it didn't work but then I realized I hadn't taken the cap off. So I took off the cap and pressed the pen perpendicular against my stomach fat. The pen goes in without me seeing it and I could hardly feel it. I followed instructions and held it there until it released the entire dose. The needle must be very tiny. I have a child who got type 1 diabetes at age ten and I remember giving her shots until she was old enough to do it herself. This was way easier than what we had to do thirty years ago for diabetes.

 

The main thing I noticed was I wasn't hungry and I wasn't craving sweets. That was a nice change. I still had some delicious snacks around my house including frozen chocolate covered strawberries, M and M's, See's candies, and Butter Waffle Cookies from Traders Joes. I put them out of sight and difficult to get to. I threw some out.

 

My doctor's clinic gave me the services of a weight loss counselor, a dietician, a physical therapist, and a behavioral health counselor. Those all helped.

 

The physical therapist and I talked. My favorite (and almost only) exercise then was walking. He said I had to walk at least 4,000 steps a day, and ideally 5,000 steps or more. I have a watch that tells me the number of steps I have, so I started doing that. I'd try to take walks outside. I tried to do at least half by 2pm and all of it by 6pm. If I went on errands I made sure I parked far from the store and added walks around the restaurant, mall or town while I was out. If I stayed home I walked around the driveway and the house. I have a hall, and I walk up and down the hall to add steps. It helps to walk while I am talking on the phone. I walk around the living room and wherever I can. I got at least 4,000 steps a day consistently. I have to add lifting weights…small ones for me, but heavier than lifting a fork to my mouth.

 

The dietician said I had to eat protein and fiber. The protein helps combat my desire for sweets and fills me up. It should also help reduce the loss of muscle. I want to lose fat, not muscle. I focused on fish and chicken. I have GERD (Gastroesophageal reflux disease) and I have already tried to restrict red meat and rich and fatty foods. The dietician suggested some foods including a high protein yogurt that I found at Costco (Oikos Triple Zero). I also got some protein bars at Costco that she approved, and some protein drinks. Now more foods are appearing in the grocery stores that have labels saying high protein. How can they make familiar foods suddenly have higher protein—like milk, tortillas, and pretzels? Sugar is still a no-no. Not eating sugar makes me feel better and helps me not gain weight. But I can remember how delicious it tastes, and occasionally I try to eat a small chocolate covered strawberry. And stop with just one. Which is easier with Wegovy.

 

I have only drunk liquor very rarely since I started Wegovy. Like one small drink in three weeks. I drink lots of water. That's almost all I drink. I don't want to get dehydrated. And evidently this medicine can make you constipated, so I take Calm magnesium powder daily, which helps me with that. You might want something else.

 

I talked to the behavioral health counselor to figure out how I can keep off the weight if or when I go off the Wegovy. It seems I will have to keep eating the small portions of healthy food that I am eating on Wegovy. But the difference is I will be really hungry and probably think I'm starving to death. Which I won't be.

 

I have lost twenty pounds since I began two months ago. I took the .25 dosage for five weeks, then I increased the dosage to .50. I used that dosage for the next five weeks.  I seem to have plateaued out at twenty pounds loss for a couple weeks, but I have not given up. My goal is to lose 35 pounds—fifteen more to go. I hope to keep taking the .50 dosage and just eat less. I was told the higher dosages just make you less hungry. We have a friend who had some bad side effects –diarrhea and vomiting—when he took the 1.0 dosage, so I am hoping to continue with just .50.

 

I had two times since I started when I felt like I was gagging—once after eating some toast, and it was scary. But I just had to sit down and let it pass. That took about ten or fifteen minutes to pass. I talk to my medical team frequently about everything that happens and I appreciate their availability and assistance.

 

 If you ask am I glad I did it, I would say yes. I am starting to feel more like my old self. I even bought some sexy underwear, which I hadn't done in absolutely ages. Now that's a new me.

Modern motherhood is still stuck in many of the mores of the past. More men are
helping, but still most mothers bear the burden of taking care of children. My mother stayed
home with me and my four siblings in the 1940's and 50's. She handled all childcare alone.

I was working as a judge when my two boys were born in 1976 and 1978, almost fifty
years ago. There was no maternity leave or parental leave. The only time I got off was my three-
week annual vacation. Fortunately, I was in my early thirties, so I could physically handle that.
My third child was born in 1985 when I was forty-one, and I was unable to work until her birth. I
had to take a few days off before her birth and I got a month off afterwards but there was still no
official parental leave. I needed that time off to recover as well as bond with my baby. Still that
short time off was not ideal for a new mother. I would have loved more time to be with my new
babies, all of whom I breast fed. It was agonizing to have to return to work and leave an infant at
home. My husband left all childcare to me; I would have loved more help. The one thing he did
was to watch our kids while I met with a monthly women's bridge group.

The big change since that time is maternity leave and parental leave. Some states like
California have that and there is a federal unpaid parental leave law since 1993 to protect your
job while you take up to twelve weeks off for a new baby if you work for an employer of fifty or
more employees. That doesn't help everyone, but it is still an improvement over the past.

There are some women who have more control over their lives, like the female lawyers
who are principals in small law firms and have a lot more flexibility because they are in charge.
If you could arrange for someone to take over your work, you could arrange to take several
months off. But most women can't do that. As a judge, I couldn't.

Once we give birth, we discover that finding childcare is a huge challenge. Female
lawyers still seem to favor hiring nannies or babysitters to come into their home to take care of
their children, like I did. That can be very expensive. It has been estimated that childcare costs
$400 to $3500 a month. Many childcare workers charge about twenty dollars an hour, but it
varies greatly depending on the location. Many women don't earn that much.

Hiring a person to come into your home has advantages over taking your children to a
day care facility. You are still covered if your child gets sick and your nanny can take the child to
a doctor for you. And some children, like two of mine, are introverts and don't like being around
a lot of children all day long. But it was very difficult to find good people to watch my children.

Fifty years ago, I couldn't find any reliable agencies and I had to advertise in the local
newspaper under Help Wanted. I found checking references was key; I got several references
from each applicant and talked to them myself for a leisurely time. One person used a fake
reference; a relative pretended to be a previous employer. I have heard of screening agencies
more in recent years so hopefully that has improved.

Most, but not all, of the women I hired to take care of my children lasted about a year and
then my life came to a screeching halt while I found a new nanny. I wanted good people to take
care of my children so this was often a gut-wrenching experience trying to find them.

 

Daycare is one of the highest recurring expenses Americans with children face. HeadStart
and Early HeadStart are free in the US for low-income people. All others must pay for childcare.
It would be lovely if it was easier to find affordable, reliable childcare. That would be a huge
benefit for working mothers.

  It's time to fill my seven-day pill container again? I could swear I just did that yesterday. This looks to me like a conspiracy to make me feel older faster. Somebody must be emptying my pill container every two days when I'm not looking. When I'm playing Wordle or eating chocolate or drinking a margarita. Right?

The older I get, the faster time flies by. And if I'm writing a book or playing with my grandchildren from out of town, or similarly having a really good time, the hours zip by. Oh, I get tired, especially around the young ones, but before I know it, it's 10:30pm and time for bed. There must be a scientific explanation because I could swear the minutes are ticking by faster than they did years ago. As my husband says, a year now is 1/80 of my life, but when I was six, it was 1/6 of my life. It's all relative, so that time does seem to fly by quicker now even though it's not going any faster.

   It's funny because when we have to put up with something unpleasant, like a person we have to work with whom we can't stand or a politician we don't like gets elected and does things that we can't ignore, we wish the time we're stuck with them would pass faster. I feel like I can't wait til those years are gone. But, at my age, I don't have enough years left to have even one year speed by. So that's not a good solution .

   I have known men who can compartmentalize things so they can totally ignore problems that I'd think would bother them. "Oh, yes," he says. I know we're hurtling into the sun, about to burn up. But today I plan to have a beer and watch a baseball game." My husband contends he goes to the compartment on the rare occasions when he needs to look at it. It doesn't seem fair to us women who can't so easily do that. I have been incapable of that trick. Most of us women seem to be totally aware of everything--constantly juggling things, multitasking, bearing all burdens all the time. Life would be easier and happier if we could pack our problems away and stuff them in a top, almost-unreachable shelf and not think about them while we enjoy the good stuff in our lives.

I intend to try and be better able to compartmentalize so I can enjoy those precious limited hours I have left. So I have spent an adequate time on the problem and now hand me a beer and the remote control.