I also lost a bunch of weight pretty rapidly last year and also don't recognize my own face for the same reasons you describe. It's very jarring! I wrote about it recently ("skin deep" on my page if you wanna read it). I'm glad I found your essay. I very much can relate. Looking at photos of myself from two years ago is always so shocking because those physical changes are hard to see when they're happening to you until you see the evidence right there in front of you.
It’s great that Zepbound works so well for you. I suffered horrific GI issues while on it and had the opposite reaction that you had — my motivation to do anything while on it was gone due to bloating and constipation, worsening my clinical depression. I also developed gallstones. So I’ve gone back to the diet and exercise method and, of course, it’s not easy, especially in the early weeks. After 10 weeks, though, I’m seeing results both physically and mentally, which makes it easier to keep going. Now I’m focused on recomposition as much as losing weight — you can lose weight and gain muscle with the right approach and enough patience and persistence.
Long term success will require maintaining a high level of activity and a balanced diet. Fitting into 20 year old clothes helps!
I’m 42, I’m also on Zep and I’m taking it every two weeks yet still losing and only eating in a fairly minor deficit. My nutritionist and I were discussing that there haven’t been enough studies yet but there MUST be something going on in women that is causing us to gain or not lose weight even with proper diet and exercise, specifically in peri/menopause. She thinks it’s high cortisol. My glucose was always fine, my thyroid was fine. GLP-1 finally changed everything for me, it made what I was already doing actually effective.
I suspect that I am not your target demographic. I'm not even sure how this made its way onto my feed, but there are a few things in this essay that really stood out to me.
I have spent a good portion of my adult life being fat. I'm not that old, 38, but I've been fat for as long as its mattered (when I started being interested in girls). It's always been a strong-fat, I think I always made it more of a problem in my own head than it was to other people, but it was enough to cause crippling self doubt when I was in college.
Then after college I got it together and managed to lose the weight. I was in phenomenal shape! I could do 20 pullups consecutively, people marveled at my arm muscle definition. The attention was amazing. I remember texting a friend that I wanted to "take the new gym bod out for a test drive" meaning I wanted to talk at girls at the bar for the first time ever (a hilarious failure for other reasons). Then, like that it was gone again. I lost the discipline that had earned my victory; a failing relationship eroded my mental health and with it my will to be meticulous and consistent.
Recently I was reviewing my own medical records (I was curious to see what kind of documentation my own PCP did) and I saw that in the middle of my graduate education my weight was 290lbs. I was absolutely dumfounded, I do not recall ever weighing that much, and fortunately I had lost a significant amount of it after school, hovering around 260 lbs. But eating has always been a struggle for me. Some people eat to live, I live to eat, and Ill eat everything not nailed down.
I have probably lost 200 lbs total in my life. Each time getting to about 220 lbs which for my height (6'3" is a good look for me), and each time I bounce off it like a trampoline, back to 250-260. Finally I got tired of this and got semaglutide, I took it for about 6 months before i got married and I still struggle to believe the difference between how i feel about food with and without it.
"But one thing that I am only aware of at the moment — because whether I stay on it is tenuous, currently — is that for me, I am able to eat intuitively when I am taking a GLP-1."
This is something I don't think most people understand. When I was on semaglutide, there is a moment that really crystalized this for me. I was holding a bowl with food in it still, I set it down and said "I'm done," and I meant it. It wasn't the lie I tell myself when I'm trying to eat less, "No, you're definitely full now and don't want to eat everything left in this bowl, and maybe another." The experience was actually shocking to me. It left me kind of bitter for a moment, thinking "Is this how other people feel? Is this how I'm SUPPOSED to feel?" I think about that moment now that I'm off semaglutide and the intuitiveness of eating enough is gone and I do have to fight it every day. Sometimes I can summon that feeling, but most often I just have to force myself to put the bowl down to keep the weight off.
I have lots of other thoughts as a prescriber of these medicines. Your fear about not having access to them resonates with me as well, but from the other side of the prescription pad. However, I feel I've rambled enough already. I don't even know why. I doubt anyone will read this, but I felt like putting the words down anyways.
I know exactly what you mean about leaving a bowl half finished. I’m done? Wow. Never felt that before. And the killer is having junk food in the house (I have kids, it finds itself way in) and just… leaving it there? I find myself thinking I might have that later, wandering off and not having it. Crazy to think that for some people, that’s just how it is without GLP-1. I do think there are also people like my mother who manage their weight with self punishment, and who really see this as cheating. So I haven’t told her.
Thank you for referencing the fabulous film, "Brazil." I reference it and the facelift scenes, and just get blank stares.
I also lost a bunch of weight pretty rapidly last year and also don't recognize my own face for the same reasons you describe. It's very jarring! I wrote about it recently ("skin deep" on my page if you wanna read it). I'm glad I found your essay. I very much can relate. Looking at photos of myself from two years ago is always so shocking because those physical changes are hard to see when they're happening to you until you see the evidence right there in front of you.
It’s great that Zepbound works so well for you. I suffered horrific GI issues while on it and had the opposite reaction that you had — my motivation to do anything while on it was gone due to bloating and constipation, worsening my clinical depression. I also developed gallstones. So I’ve gone back to the diet and exercise method and, of course, it’s not easy, especially in the early weeks. After 10 weeks, though, I’m seeing results both physically and mentally, which makes it easier to keep going. Now I’m focused on recomposition as much as losing weight — you can lose weight and gain muscle with the right approach and enough patience and persistence.
Long term success will require maintaining a high level of activity and a balanced diet. Fitting into 20 year old clothes helps!
I’m 42, I’m also on Zep and I’m taking it every two weeks yet still losing and only eating in a fairly minor deficit. My nutritionist and I were discussing that there haven’t been enough studies yet but there MUST be something going on in women that is causing us to gain or not lose weight even with proper diet and exercise, specifically in peri/menopause. She thinks it’s high cortisol. My glucose was always fine, my thyroid was fine. GLP-1 finally changed everything for me, it made what I was already doing actually effective.
The drug is a miracle and I don’t ever want to live without it.
With it, I’m healthy and at a good weight. Without it — ON THE SAME DAMN GOOD DIET AS EVER— I’m fat.
And the loss of food noise is another miracle.
I have not changed my diet because I didn’t need to. But I’ve lost 60 pounds.
I will do whatever it takes to get this medication.
I suspect that I am not your target demographic. I'm not even sure how this made its way onto my feed, but there are a few things in this essay that really stood out to me.
I have spent a good portion of my adult life being fat. I'm not that old, 38, but I've been fat for as long as its mattered (when I started being interested in girls). It's always been a strong-fat, I think I always made it more of a problem in my own head than it was to other people, but it was enough to cause crippling self doubt when I was in college.
Then after college I got it together and managed to lose the weight. I was in phenomenal shape! I could do 20 pullups consecutively, people marveled at my arm muscle definition. The attention was amazing. I remember texting a friend that I wanted to "take the new gym bod out for a test drive" meaning I wanted to talk at girls at the bar for the first time ever (a hilarious failure for other reasons). Then, like that it was gone again. I lost the discipline that had earned my victory; a failing relationship eroded my mental health and with it my will to be meticulous and consistent.
Recently I was reviewing my own medical records (I was curious to see what kind of documentation my own PCP did) and I saw that in the middle of my graduate education my weight was 290lbs. I was absolutely dumfounded, I do not recall ever weighing that much, and fortunately I had lost a significant amount of it after school, hovering around 260 lbs. But eating has always been a struggle for me. Some people eat to live, I live to eat, and Ill eat everything not nailed down.
I have probably lost 200 lbs total in my life. Each time getting to about 220 lbs which for my height (6'3" is a good look for me), and each time I bounce off it like a trampoline, back to 250-260. Finally I got tired of this and got semaglutide, I took it for about 6 months before i got married and I still struggle to believe the difference between how i feel about food with and without it.
"But one thing that I am only aware of at the moment — because whether I stay on it is tenuous, currently — is that for me, I am able to eat intuitively when I am taking a GLP-1."
This is something I don't think most people understand. When I was on semaglutide, there is a moment that really crystalized this for me. I was holding a bowl with food in it still, I set it down and said "I'm done," and I meant it. It wasn't the lie I tell myself when I'm trying to eat less, "No, you're definitely full now and don't want to eat everything left in this bowl, and maybe another." The experience was actually shocking to me. It left me kind of bitter for a moment, thinking "Is this how other people feel? Is this how I'm SUPPOSED to feel?" I think about that moment now that I'm off semaglutide and the intuitiveness of eating enough is gone and I do have to fight it every day. Sometimes I can summon that feeling, but most often I just have to force myself to put the bowl down to keep the weight off.
I have lots of other thoughts as a prescriber of these medicines. Your fear about not having access to them resonates with me as well, but from the other side of the prescription pad. However, I feel I've rambled enough already. I don't even know why. I doubt anyone will read this, but I felt like putting the words down anyways.
I know exactly what you mean about leaving a bowl half finished. I’m done? Wow. Never felt that before. And the killer is having junk food in the house (I have kids, it finds itself way in) and just… leaving it there? I find myself thinking I might have that later, wandering off and not having it. Crazy to think that for some people, that’s just how it is without GLP-1. I do think there are also people like my mother who manage their weight with self punishment, and who really see this as cheating. So I haven’t told her.
My God, Elisabeth, what a beautiful, honest, and entirely relatable essay!
Oh thank u sister 😘