After trying to lose weight with “every known diet” and two bariatric surgeries that didn’t work long-term, Holly Figueroa O’Reilly says she felt trapped in her body.
Overweight all her life, she at one point reached 300 pounds. Then, when the weight came down for a while, a family medical crisis meant she couldn’t work outside the home. So in 2022, she started a home bakery and chocolate shop.
“It’s a lot of eating and tasting, and it’s not great when you’re trying to lose weight,” O’Reilly, 52, who lives in Seattle, tells TODAY.com.
Her weight crept back up to 250 pounds. But today, she weighs 145.
When people ask her how she did it, O’Reilly tells them she lifts heavy weights and eats a high-protein diet, but what really made the difference was Ozempic, the Type 2 diabetes drug that reduces appetite as a side effect.
“Before I started taking Ozempic, my brain was constantly thinking about food: When is my next meal and what am I going to eat?” O’Reilly says, describing the phenomenon known as food noise.
“It’s like your brain is always yelling at you, ‘Food, food, food,’ and my brain does not do that anymore.”
Concerned about diabetes
As a child, O’Reilly was always bigger than other kids since she was in preschool. She was especially heavy in middle and high school.
She says her family was poor, so meat was scarce, and cheap processed foods — like crackers and canned soups — helped fill the gap.
“There were four kids, so whatever you could grab first, you ate,” she recalls.
O’Reilly’s grandfather weighed about 400 pounds when he died from complications of Type 2 diabetes. Her father later developed Type 2 diabetes as well. She didn’t want it to happen to her, but her weight kept creeping up after she gave birth to her first child when she was 23.
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