NEW ORLEANS — Tommy Tucker has been a radio personality since the 1980s.
Slowly over the decades, his weight rose, to the point where a doctor told him he was prediabetic.
Many fad diets had failed.
So, he decided to try the latest medication after doing an interview about it on his show.
You've heard his familiar voice for decades, but you may not have recognized the person behind it. And WWL Radio morning host Tommy Tucker said he got to the point where he didn't recognize himself either.
“I kept getting bigger pants, and I'd start wearing Hawaiian shirts without tucking them in, and I'd think, ‘Ya know what, that doesn't look that bad,’” Tucker remembers.
And he felt helpless over his extreme sugar cravings.
“I would have weekends built around bakeries. When I was ordering birthday cakes for a fictitious person, I knew it was time to do something.”
That time came when the scale hit 230 pounds. With every other fad diet and his exercise routine, his weight would yo-yo up and down. And then he did an interview on his show about the GLP-1 injections for diabetes, or weight loss. And what doctors call "food noise" went instantly away.
“I didn't have that constant craving for food. I wasn't going to graze in the kitchen, and just open the refrigerator looking for something to eat. And the other thing was that I'd get full,” he said.
When asked isn't that freedom in some ways?
He replied, “Absolutely. It's freedom. I felt like, it's like freedom from an addiction almost.”
To demonstrate how much extra weight he was carrying around all the time, he picked up two 40-pound dumbbells that he uses to exercise. Tommy lost 80 pounds.
“And I'm doing things now that I never would be able to do before, cleaning out the attic for example. Something as simple as that. I love to exercise now. Yard work used to wear me out. Every year I would think is this the last year I'll be able to do the yard work.”
When Tommy got down to 150 pounds, he went off of the medication and quickly realized what doctors had been saying about the drug. It helps regulate hormones, and physiology in people where they are dysregulated.
“And I noticed the cravings coming back, and the weight crept from 150 to 160 because I was starting to spend a lot of time at bakeries again,” Tucker remembers.
He understands, just like someone who needs hormone replacement, or insulin replacement for a chronic condition, he will need treatment of Mounjaro along with his regular exercise routine.
“Constantly. I thought it was weakness. I thought it was just a lack of determination and willpower, but I realized it's not it's the way I'm wired up.”
Mounjaro is a prescription for people with diabetes. The weight management version is called Zepbound, and is also by prescription only.
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