Obesity and Me

I ordered Oprah’s weight loss gummies off of an Instagram advertisement. According to an interview Oprah gave to Time Magazine, she lost sixty pounds simply by taking the gummies every night. The gummies, called Keto Blast, were filled with apple cider vinegar and sent your body into ketosis while you slept. The gummy burned through fat at an accelerated pace.

Hmm. My common sense kicked in. How was this real? And why had I never heard about these gummies before? But then, I thought of Oprah. Here was a woman I trusted implicitly. I knew her even though I had never met her. She wouldn’t steer another human wrong. I clicked purchase. This was the definition of an impulse buy. Fuck, I was desperate.

I have steadily been gaining weight since I switched from needles to an insulin pump. I’ve found that it doesn’t matter what I eat or what I do, I can’t drop a pound to save my life. I realize people tend to exaggerate when they describe how active they are, and how healthy they eat. Only recently have I been slipping. For the better part of two years I have religiously exercised 5-6 times per week. I have also eaten a plant based diet. I avoid processed foods, carbohydrates and sugar all day long.

When you’re doing everything recommended to be healthy at a 90% consistency rate and you only see the number on the scale rise, it’s hard not to feel like you have absolutely no control over your own body. I was born with a pancreas that turned out to be a real piece of shit. I didn’t get to start out with a full deck and it’s more evident now than ever before. It’s an eerie feeling to have no control over your own body. Women all over this country, with working organs, are able to resonate with this. Whether a person has no autonomy or say in the fate of their body because of natural causes or political ones, it’s devastating.

I’ve only been described as thin once in my life.  I was 4 and being diagnosed with diabetes. I remember when I developed hips. I was so distraught. All of volleyball season I wore shorts over my spandex. I wanted to camouflage this new voluptuous part of my body. It took me a good twenty years to fully understand that there was no hiding my curves or the extra cushioning around my thighs, arms and stomach. Just when I finally learned to accept my body as it was, even those extra bits, I suddenly lost all control of how my body responded to food and exercise.

I searched for a reason. I had my thyroid checked over and over again. I saw endocrinologists and functional medicine doctors. I paid hundreds of dollars for these doctors to tell me that it was because I was diabetic. Yeah, no shit. I am fully aware that I am diabetic. I guess I just didn’t expect my disease to get this frustrating so late in the game. It’s been wonderfully frustrating for 33 years, but with the insulin pump, I thought things were going to get better. They did. I love not carrying insulin and ice packs around with me, or having needles taking over my purse and home. 

I sometimes wonder if it’s all worth it. I was forced to go back to the old school way of being diabetic when my PDM, the brain of my insulin pump, stopped working while I was out of town. The device wasn’t even two years old. I was seriously screwed. Luckily, I had a friend in town who was also diabetic and hooked me up with insulin and syringes. Thank God for this friend. I don’t even want to think about how much money it would have cost me to get a prescription for some insulin and syringes, and then purchase them at a pharmacy out of state. 

It’s so insane to be so dependent on something that is so elusive and nearly impossible to get. I recently waited three weeks for my insulin prescription because it was out of stock. My amazing doctor and I have regular calls with my insurance company because they said they would cover a medication, and then they would change their mind. Or they needed endless prior authorizations for medications, which is odd because a prior authorization is supposed to cover the medication for the entire year. Why is it that I could get pain killers and coke in this country at the drop of a hat, and yet I cannot get a prescription filled without some kind of hold up or delay? This country needs to rethink its priorities. What does it say about America that I could become a drug addict with such ease, but I can’t get or afford the prescribed medications I need in order to stay alive? Whatever it says, it’s not good.

So back to the gummies and my rash purchase. Please remember that I was desperate. My disease, that was never going away, wasn’t only making my life a constant stress cesspool, but it was also making me obese. I thought the universe was throwing me a bone. I thought I was buying a bottle of gummies for $39.95 plus a second bottle for free. I was already slightly annoyed because the ad said that the first bottle was free. I guess that miraculous offer was only there to lure people like me into buying the gummies in the first place. I clicked purchase, even though unlike every other thing I’ve bought online, the final price with taxes wasn’t on the screen. I checked my email. I had a receipt. No amount. Damn, I thought. I checked my credit card activity. There it was Health1*TP21. I looked at the charge of $198.78 and I freaked the fuck out. I had been hoodwinked. 

I did some research, the exact sort of research I should have done before purchasing. I looked up the Time interview with Oprah. Guess what? It didn’t exist. I went to Oprah’s Instagram account looking for any mention of the gummies. Nothing. I went into a silent rage. I called my credit card company, told this nice woman that I had done something incredibly stupid because I was desperate to lose weight and Oprah had allegedly represented the product. She asked if the purchase had been made by someone else, or if my card was at risk. I told her no, that I was the dumbass who had made the purchase ten minutes ago. I told her the company was a scam. I had called Keto Blast, “the company” that sold the gummies and nobody answered. She said there was nothing I could do while the charge was pending. She did offer to block any future charges from the company, which I thought was nice. 

I called Keto Blast again. Finally an operator told me that the wait time was 4 minutes. I stayed on the line for well over 20 minutes before a real person picked up my call. I wanted to ask the customer service rep why she worked for a fake company with a fake endorser that scammed chubby people at the end of their rope like me? Instead, I calmly explained that I had purchased the product less than one hour ago and realized I was allergic to one of the ingredients in the gummies. There was no information on the ingredients inside the gummies, which also seems a little illegal. She didn’t ask what I was allergic to, and I didn’t offer any details. 

It struck me as odd that this woman didn’t know there was no ingredient list. She told me that I would have to wait for the delivery and send the bottles back and that the company would buy them back from me. No fucking way was I doing that. Instead of turning into a huge asshole, which is what I wanted to do, I re-mentioned that I had purchased the product less than an hour prior. Wouldn’t it be easier, I asked, for her to cancel the order, before it gets boxed and shipped? She told me she would check with her manager. I waited another 10 minutes.

My gal came back on the line and said she would cancel the order and refund the money for me. I thanked her profusely. I felt a tinge of guilt for lying, but I also figured if this person, or her manager, didn’t realize there was no ingredient list available for the public and never bothered to ask what I was allergic to, then didn’t they deserve to be deceived? I mean, they had deceived me in the first place. My guilt perplexed me for a second. Then I remembered that I am Italian and Irish and I had been raised Catholic. Crazy how that feeling of guilt never goes away, even when you’re the one who has been wronged.

Immediately, I checked my credit card account. Sure enough, there was a full refund. The refund was listed as Keto Blast, which was a different name than the name for the charge. I sighed with relief. I truly couldn’t believe how gullible I had been. Clearly, this company knew the power of using Oprah as the endorser for their product. How sick, though. Here is a scam that will use the most trusted person in America to allegedly sell their product to someone who is so desperate to lose weight that they will try anything. 

I am roughly 50 pounds overweight. That’s the weight of a child. So basically I am carrying around a child everywhere I go. Again, not what I signed up for. My blood sugars are all over the place, without good reason. Unless you call stress a good reason. I guess it’s not a good reason, but it always seems to be everywhere you look. I’m like the rock stuck in a hard place. I have been told by medical professionals that essentially I am screwed because insulin is a hormone and extra insulin gets stored in the body as fat. If I don’t have insulin, not only could I not eat again, but I also wouldn’t survive for long. I have to keep buying and using the thing that is causing me to be obese. My frustration knows no bounds. I got a call today that my latest prior authorization went through my insurance after nearly a month of waiting, so things are finally looking up.