I’m tan, I’m blonde…and I’m fat. I so, so need to be thin: I lost so much weight compared to my peak, trimmed effortlessly in my European vacation, stoked, oh so stoked, to get the flat tummy of my dreams…only, in the past few months, to have pretty much stalled out after my return to the United States.
Those extra 10 or 20 pounds I’m carrying in my stomach, my chest, and (most direly of all) my neck and face are stubborn. Oh, I’m finding it easy to build muscle; my tone is looking so yummy in arm and leg alike after just a couple weeks of dianabol. But if I have a big pouch of fat on my abdomen, what use is that? I need to be pretty; I need to be slimmed down, streamlined, so I’m picture-perfect from every angle.
I started my weight loss regimen originally so I could look awesome on camera from any angle, but even now, years after my earliest efforts, my neck looks like a disaster area, and my face is just…puffy. And not in the good way filler makes your volume expand, either. I just need some oomph. I need some help.
But, I thought, one step at a time. So I booked a consultation to get a facial at the nicest place I could find that’s close to me. It’s literally in my own neighborhood: biking there takes like five minutes. The website made it out to be a premium service, but what I saw impressed even me: the people and the products are medical grade, and everything is customized for each patient.
Like everyone else it seems the person in charge of the place said I have great skin, but of course as I pointed out there’s always room for improvement (hehehe). I told her everything about my situation, my goals, and the products I was using now; she actually seemed excited to work on me, which was an interesting sensation (she even practically manhandled me into a sneak preview of the reiki she does, and god that felt really good on those shoulders…).
We’ll be starting with a lymphatic facial, which is a type I’ve never done before, but she recommends its benefits, especially in cases like mine where I have some puffiness and could use a more snatched jawline and for everything in my face to be lifted up. Smooth, slim, youthful, perky, and vibrant is the desired result for the skin on my face, which exactly matches with my goals.
I’ll be on a regular regimen of facials from now on, and not just lymphatic facials: the facial is really just to get to know my skin (and get me looking and feeling my best), after which I’ll be doing facials with chemical peels.
Especially over time and repeated treatments they enhance luminosity, refine the pores, even out the skin tone, and just rejuvenate the skin and get it looking its best. If you want that picture-perfect Hollywood look a key component of that is heavy chemical peels sustained over a long period of time, even if you’re a younger person like me. I myself have gotten on a regular regimen of filler and recently botox already, along with medical-grade skin care products, going to the tanning salon, and anabolic steroids, and I’ve found I’m getting “the look” to a degree I’m starting to be satisfied with. Light processing in Facetune, photoshop, or what-have-you finishes it off, and TV makeup helps a lot I’m sure, but the point is it’s not just one trick or the other: it’s all of them together. If you want to look like your movie-star self, you need all of it.
The spa I’m going to doesn’t do filler or botox, but I’ve got another place for that over in the city (and said other place doesn’t do facials, so they complement each other nicely, hehehe). The dark circles under my eyes are getting worse again, so I’m considering making an inquiry soon to get that looked at; perhaps I’ll do PRF again. Whatever it takes to make me not look like I’m drunk on the dark side of the Force when the light hits my face at the wrong angle (ugh).
Where it gets really fancy is that I mentioned my weight loss goals at the consultation, and the woman in charge was kind enough to suggest semaglutide injections. Semaglutide! Why didn’t I think of that? Conveniently enough, she just so happens to be part-owner of a clinic literally right next door to the spa where I can get that done. From an actual doctor, not from her, but she’s familiar enough with aesthetic medicine to tell me the basics and tell me that I would absolutely be a candidate for it.
Which surprised me: I first heard of semaglutide, when it came on the market for weight loss, as a treatment for severe obesity, but the practice has since expanded. I was honestly under the impression it was still a hush-hush thing for rich people, but nope: turns out even someone merely in the “overweight” range of body mass index like me can easily get it right out in the open.
Looking over the clinic’s website, I’m liking what I see: it claims to be a “concierge weight loss program”, by which what they mean is they’ll assess your situation and your goals, the doctor will give you the stuff, and you’ll come in weekly for a check-up on symptoms, and to assess progress, with nutrition and lifestyle counseling available. Sounds expensive, but the impression I get from ChatGPT is that I could easily afford it if I really wanted it, even in the upper end of current price ranges for this sort of semaglutide regimen.
So would I want it? I’m increasingly thinking…yes.
The results from semaglutide I’ve heard about always struck me as underwhelming in the context of making the obese masses lean and trim again: 10-20% of your body weight taken off? And I was under the impression that even that paltry gain was only accessible to those who were severely obese to begin with. But no! The information I’m researching this week indicates that even someone like me would experience the same proportion of body mass taken away. And for me, 10-20% works out to the 20 pounds or so I need to lose to get my flat-tummy body of my dreams. Perfect!
Best of all, semaglutide, along with the other GLP-1 agonists, works by suppressing appetite…and without raising your body temperature or stimulating your energy levels, which is the way the classic stimulants and the mitochondrial uncouplers work (the previous generations of weight loss drugs that were actually effective). Which seems perfect for me as well, since I get hot easily and don’t enjoy the feeling of being wired; indeed, looking at the list of side effects the only one to watch out for in my case would be nausea…but opioids don’t make me nauseous, so I think I should be okay with that. The other side effects might even be offset effectively by my steroid regimen!
And an appetite suppressant is kinda what I need. I try to cut back on my food intake, but I get so hungry I feel like I need a large steak dinner…only to end up consuming more calories than I’m burning. The solution might seem obvious: eat less. But if I don’t eat that much I’m still hungry and go to bed feeling miserable, which I just can’t tolerate. Making the hungries go away so I can burn off that fat, therefore, should be just the ticket to a brand new me: a me with a flat tummy, trim and rail-thin, with no extra fat bulging out in my figure for the first time in my life. Golly that sounds wonderful…
According to ChatGPT’s surmising, I could achieve my cosmetic goals in perhaps a couple months with this stuff, as long as I keep off the food intake (which should be easier if I’m just not hungry; I’ll feel full much more easily). Heck, the high end of the percentage weight loss estimate for me would push 40 pounds, which is more than I even need to lose.
Perhaps that’s why the woman at the spa said their top concern at that weight loss clinic was maintaining muscle mass, but boy was she pleased when I told her I was in a personal training regimen with heavy weights three times a week. So it seems I’m a perfect candidate? Wow.
Even more “wow” is the fact I can get all this time in a place that’s less than a five-minute bike ride from my house…which I can hear the ocean waves from and is sooo quiet at night, into rugged nature enough that I’ve seen coyotes roaming through the canyon (which looks out right into the Pacific Ocean).
There’s a reason people pay millions of dollars to live where I do: it’s because being a coastal elite is great. Before too long I’ll have the coastal elite body to go with it… 🤞
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