The Dose with Paddy and Belinda
Join Paddy Cunningham (@adoseofpaddy on TikTok / Instagram & Qualified Personal Trainer) and Belinda Hogan (@GLP1.Insights on Instagram) for your regular dose of all things GLP1 (Ozempic / Mounjaro etc).
We’ll provide inspiration, motivation and information to help you on your way to a happier and healthier life with a few laughs along the way. We’ll chat about our own journey which is currently supported by the GLP1 Obesity medication, Mounjaro - sharing highs and lows, answering your questions along with some expert guests.
This content is NOT medical advice nor promotional content about prescribed medications - always consult your GP before starting / changing medical treatments and to discuss all available options for your healthcare, wether medicated or not.
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The Dose with Paddy and Belinda
Special - Belinda & Paddy on Radio - Newstalk Ireland
Belinda & Paddy were invited onto national radio station Newstalk, to speak with Kieran Cuddihy on The Hard Shoulder programme. 13 Feb 2025
This interview was to coincide the arrival of Mounjaro onto the market in the Republic of Ireland.
The Hard Shoulder with Ciarán Cuddehy with the MG Hybrid and Electric Range on.
Speaker 1:Newstalk. We're going to start by talking about weight loss drugs today, because you would have seen the news that, while Ozempic has been available here for some time, wegovy is on the way, alongside what's the other one that's on its way, monjaro, the other, so basically the kind of the suite of weight loss drugs, these famous weight loss drugs that have been available in other countries, going to be available to Irish patients and consumers. With me to talk about what life is like on them, how transformative or otherwise they can be, is Belinda Hogan, from GLP1 Insights and Instagram, co-host of the Dose with Paddy and Belinda. The Paddy in the title is Paddy Cunningham and he is with me as well. You're both very, very welcome. Belinda, can I start with you? When did your journey with Ozempic start? I think that was where you started. Was it with that drug?
Speaker 2:That's correct. Thanks for having me on Ciarán. So I would have started on Ozempic two and a half years ago now and I would have started on Monjaro about a year ago, I think now. So, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So two and a half years ago. I'm trying to remember when we started talking about it on this show. I'd wager you must be one of the first people in the country on it, were you.
Speaker 2:I was around about that. Yeah, I would be one of the longest standing people on it for like weight loss. Obviously, Ozempic was brought in as a diabetic drug so, yeah, I started taking it as a weight loss medication.
Speaker 1:So how did that happen? How did you get access to it or get onto it as a weight loss medication?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I. First I read about it in the newspaper. An article had come out and then I went to my doctor and asked him would he prescribe it for me? He declined and then I went online and made it my business to find it through an online prescribing doctor.
Speaker 1:And were you nervous at all about getting it through a doctor online?
Speaker 2:No, I wasn't nervous about getting it from online. I wasn't nervous about taking it. I think I was so low at that time. I would have taken anything. Well, not anything, but you know, I would have tried anything.
Speaker 1:So tell me about what it's been like then, the last two and a half years, and how different life is today.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I would have lived with the disease of obesity for 30 years and I would have spent decades in the cycle of dieting, gaining weight back and then relapsing over and over again. And then, when I started taking Ozempic, what would have happened was I would have taken the medication. I would have went about my day, my week, my month and slowly, slowly, slowly, things started to change for me. I felt that the food noise that I had heard for 30 years in the back of my brain was switched off. That happened really quickly for me. And then my sense of hunger, which I had I had a ferocious hunger for my whole life that just disappeared, like literally just disappeared. It was like. I know people say it's a miracle drug and I don't like to refer to it as a miracle drug, but some things that happen to you while you're on this medication feels like a miracle to you and so that kind of that yearning for food or that hunger, that switch, that gets turned off.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm trying to understand does it ever get turned on? Can you get kind of particularly hungry and still kind of have a craving for food?
Speaker 2:Not cravings. No, that's all switched off and. I'll say as well, like when that does switch off, you do go through a small period of mourning because you, you know, some people would have binged, some people would have used food for comfort, and then that's gone, that's gone, and you have to turn and look inwards and see, you know, do a little bit work as well, and what am I going to do with that? And fortunately I turned to Pilates, the gym, swimming, you know.
Speaker 1:And does food as a kind of as a source of pleasure. What does it mean to you today?
Speaker 2:I still enjoy my food, but I enjoy very small portions. I now eat without guilt. Ciarán, if I was to say, something that I would never, ever have eaten would have been cheesecake, because I would have really, really torn myself down and had that awful rhetoric in my mind that you shouldn't have eaten that and you're going to have to walk this much to get it off and how many calories are in it. I can sit down now and enjoy that food and push the plate away when I'm full and that's the end of it. I don't think about it again and I know there's millions of people out there that can relate to that, as well, one listener here is after getting in touch.
Speaker 1:I was morbidly obese in 2022 and I found out I was diabetic. The doctor prescribed me Ozempic. I've lost 13 and a half stones since, complete life changer, able to regularly exercise now, and I'm a million times healthier. So that's kind of one person's experience, shared in the text. I mentioned Paddy Cunningham, your co-host on the Dose podcast, the Dose with Paddy and Belinda. Paddy, when did your journey with the weight loss medication start?
Speaker 3:Yeah, cheers, ciarán, thanks for having me on. So mine with the medication started. I started exploring it May of last year, so I'd kind of reached a point, I guess, similar to Belinda and a lot of people that have lived with overweight and obesity for their life, of kind of constant dieting, trying to lose weight, constant relapses, like I even went to the extent of in 2010, 2011, took part in a reality TV show called the Biggest Loser and lost six and a half stone. After that, I went and qualified as a personal trainer, worked as a personal trainer myself for two years and during that period I could still feel my weight coming back on. And, of course, then I was like God, I'm doing the things I know I should be doing, I'm trying my best at this and I'm still failing.
Speaker 1:I'm really, really failing at this. In hindsight, why were you failing? Why was it going back up? You were just eating too much, were you?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, if you want to bring it down to the very basics, obviously that's what it'll come down to. But I think the root cause that we now know thankfully because the world of medicine and science has progressed is that it is down to your biology. It is that it is down to this inert difference in your body that is driving you to tell you you are not full, that you want food, that you're constantly thinking about food. So, like, the way that I kind of think about it now with medication is that it's kind of my stabilizers that takes away that food distraction so that it allows me to focus on my movement, on my nutrition, on my kind of mental well-being as well. But where can? I got to last year, like over the years I regained all the six and a half stone that I'd lost when I was on the TV show and kind of got to a really bad place because I was beating myself up about that, about I'm the person that's meant to know better, I'm the person that's a qualified personal trainer. Like how have I failed at this? And last year I reached my heaviest weight that I had been ever in my life just over 24 stone and I remember looking at a photo of myself and just thinking, oh my God, how have I got back to this point? I thought I had dealt with all this years ago. So I started looking, thinking that bariatric surgery was going to have to be the route that I would take, and I had started investigating it and kind of I had almost prepared myself for how invasive and how difficult a road that is. But I was like this is what I think it's going to take, because when I looked at the impact of longevity based on my BMI which I know is a flawed measure, but it's what the health system uses at the moment it was telling me that my you know, my life expectancy was going to be 10 to 12 years less because of my weight. And I was like I've lived the past 30 odd years trying to control my weight, or 20 odd years, and it was during that.
Speaker 3:Then I kind of learned more about Ozempic and at that stage I kind of thought, oh, that's just for Hollywood, that's not for Paddy down in Sligo. But I started learning more about it in terms of actually wait, this is a feasible type of route to investigate. And then I found out about Munjarro. So Munjarro, at that stage was only out in the UK about two months and when I went to my own pharmacy to get it they're like you're actually our first patient ever to get this.
Speaker 3:Now I say my own pharmacy. I had to go up the north to get this. I'm very lucky where I live that I'm very near the border, so I was able to get a prescription down south and bring that up the north from the pharmacy to get it dispensed up there, because it was just a normal medication in the north and in the UK and it has been for nearly the past year. So I started the medication in June of last year. So in just over seven months I'm down almost seven stone now and the thing that is really important to highlight with that is that I'm not going to give the medication all the credit for that.
Speaker 3:I have been working my ass off literally in the gym like three to four times a week since day one, focusing on the nutrition, focusing on that mental well-being, and that's, you know, the side of the story that's really important for me to tell, on my social media as well, that it's not just this skinny jab, that it is a you need to put in so much effort.
Speaker 2:And it's not. It is not, under any circumstances, a quick fix like. Paddy just said. I want to reiterate that I've spent the past two years watching what I'm eating, making better choices, going to the gym, going swimming, going walking. But the thing that this medication will do for you it will give you the space in your brain to make better choices.
Speaker 1:And what? Because you kind of touched on it there to a degree, paddy. But what do you say to those people? And you won't be surprised to hear they're texting in. You know, listen, this isn't a disease, it's just kind of gluttony or whatever, and this is kind of the lazy way out. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I think, look, I can understand again, as someone that's qualified personal trainer, I guess I can understand why people have that mindset. But the reason people now have that mindset is there's enough information out there to prove them that they're wrong and for them to be better educated and to do better and to be a better member of society and friend and family member to those around them that are living with obesity that if they were to go and research it, they will quickly find out that that is not the truth and that they will find out, in the same way that we no longer drill holes in people's heads, we no longer tell people that you should avoid eggs holes in people's heads, we no longer tell people that you should avoid eggs. You know this kind of thing we will reach a point where finally, people will realise actually, do you know what? This is a chronic disease we understand that we are reaching.
Speaker 3:We have some people like Dundal Shea, like McCruddy, like other people like that, that are out there pushing this narrative and advocating for better understanding within society. But that needs to come with the understanding, as we say as well, that society needs to understand that this isn't a quick fix, that you just jab and go. And, equally, this is not a medication for people that, oh, you come back from holidays and you've overdone it on the buffet and you come back a stone heavier. So I'll just get the pen and I'll be grand.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, actually on that kind of Belinda, who are the people this isn't for, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm not a medical doctor. I can't say who should and shouldn't be taking this medication, but I do think the people that should be, it should be made available to, are people with the disease of obesity. You know, and the thing is as well, like myself and Paddy, we're kind of making it our mission to change the conversation around GLP-1 medications, you know, and it isn't about vanity, it's about health, longevity, and it's about breaking free from a system that's failed people like us, year after year, decade after decade, you know. So I'm not going to comment on who shouldn't be taking this medication. Ciarán.
Speaker 1:What about side effects? Did you have any side effects, Belinda?
Speaker 2:I did back in the very start. I did because I took Ozempic first. Now the side effects of Ozempic are a little harsher than they would be for Mongero.
Speaker 3:Okay, Paddy did you have any?
Speaker 1:side effects.
Speaker 3:Minimal, Minimal.
Speaker 1:Ciarán Like.
Speaker 3:I've been very lucky and like, even like my reviews with the doctor and endocrinologist and that they were kind of a bit surprised that, god, you've had minimal side effects, like I mean, most people, and this is where, when people tend to go online, they will find worst case scenario about what the side effects are.
Speaker 2:You're going to hear a horror story, but that's because they're the sense it's. They're sensationalized, aren't they?
Speaker 3:yeah, and there's there's a lot of scaremongering goes on out there but in reality for people that are on glp1 medications, most may have mild to moderate side effects, like for myself back in when I started it the first weekend, I felt freezing cold to know. So that was grand. I just went to the sauna and you know I was happy out there, out at the beach.
Speaker 2:But apart from that Changing from Osempic, sorry.
Speaker 3:Go on. Belinda For the most part, no, I've had minimal side effects, Belinda.
Speaker 2:Changing from Osempic to Monjaro was absolutely seamless as well. No side effects and no nothing.
Speaker 1:Paddy, listen Belinda's right. I mean you shouldn't be giving out medical advice to people on the radio. But I guess what I was getting at is this idea that and you talked about it as the Hollywood drug as well, like you were what 24 stone Is that what you said last year when you looked into this about people in Hollywood who maybe weigh 13 or 14 stone or 12 or 13 stone, taking these types of taking these jabs, so that they can get down to kind of single figures, high single figures, and maybe closer to the 10 stone mark. And I just I'd kind of, I'd just be wary about kind of the message people get from those types of celebrities. Of course, yeah.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and I think this is where it is so important that there is responsible prescribing both in, you know, gp, in doctor surgeries and in pharmacies, and in online prescribers or whatever. That bit is so important. But the other thing as well is that we need to make sure in terms of the enforcement of, like the black market, because that's another way that people are potentially looking to access. We had the RT Investigate show back in December that highlighted, you know, so much that was going on on our own doorstep in relation to the black market of these drugs, where people are literally taking prescribed medication and taking so many chances with, like you know, under-accounted drugs from salons and places like that, which is so dangerous. But I think it comes back to that responsible prescribing that's so important for these medications.
Speaker 2:Well, listen the other big issue as well is like healthcare versus wealth care. At the moment, the price point for these medications coming out in Ireland are unobtainable for most people, completely unobtainable.
Speaker 1:Well listen, the dose is the name of the podcast, the dose with Paddy and Belinda.
Speaker 2:Can I just say one last thing, Ciarán?
Speaker 1:Yeah, go for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just for the listeners out there, just if you are listening and you feel like you've tried absolutely everything, like your body has been working against you your whole life. Nobody is alone. That medication is out there. You need to go to your doctor and you need to advocate for yourself if you feel that that's the only way out for you.
Speaker 1:Belinda Hogan. Paddy Cunningham, co-host of the Dose with Paddy and Belinda. Thank you both very much.
