This is my personal experience with GLP-1 medication, not medical advice. GLP-1 medications can have serious side effects and should be used under the guidance of a qualified healthcare professional.
My first experience with a GLP-1 ended with me accidentally overdosing and barfing my brains out for three days.
Naturally, I tried again.
Let me explain.
I was very excited when my medication arrived in the mail.
I read the directions.
Sort of.
I wish I could tell you I’m the kind of person who carefully reads the fine print on important things. New medications. Car manuals. Legal documents.
I am not.
What I do have is a very well-developed “figure it out” muscle.
I’ve spent most of my adult life operating under the assumption that if shit hits the fan, I’ll figure it out.
And to my credit, I usually do.
Unfortunately, this is not always the healthiest approach to beginning a new medication.
I opened the box and found a small vial and a bunch of tiny syringes.
How hard can this be?
Famous last words.
The instructions I did bother to read seemed pretty idiot-proof.
Or so I thought.
So I filled the syringe with what I believed was the correct amount, squeezed my belly and injected myself right there in the middle of the foyer where the box had been delivered.
Apparently walking fifteen feet to the kitchen would have made the whole operation unnecessarily formal.
As soon as I pulled the needle out, I had a thought.
That seemed like a lot.
Fuck.
I looked at the directions again.
Then the syringe.
Then the directions.
Then the syringe.
Fuck fuck fuck.
I had badly misread the dosing instructions and injected myself with far more medication than I was supposed to take.
And here’s the particularly horrifying thing about realizing you’ve injected too much medication into your body:
You cannot un-inject yourself.
That ship had sailed.
The medication was in my body.
I immediately jumped onto a chat looking for help (also not great advice), which scared me sufficiently enough to call Poison Control.
God bless the nurse who answered.
She talked me off the ledge, helped me understand when I would need emergency care, reassured me that I was certainly not the first person to screw up an injection, and prepared me for what the next few days might look like.
What they looked like was me barfing my brains out.
For the first time in my life, I truly understood what people mean when they say they “can’t even keep water down.”
I had always assumed that was at least a tiny bit dramatic.
It is not.
This was no joke.
Eventually, I recovered.
And underneath the physical misery was another feeling:
Embarrassment.
I was already embarrassed that I had resorted to using a weight-loss medication.
And now I had to add woman who cannot properly operate a tiny syringe to the situation.
So I mostly dealt with the whole ridiculous episode quietly.
Then, after I’d recovered and enough time had passed, I did something that might surprise you considering everything you’ve just read.
I started again.
Carefully.
This time, I followed the directions.
Actually followed them.
And I’ve been taking a GLP-1 ever since.
That was more than a year ago.
I’ve lost 60 pounds.
And until now, I’ve barely talked about it.
Why Was I So Embarrassed?
This is the part I’ve been trying to understand.
Because have you met me?
I’ve written publicly about quitting drinking. I’ve written about businesses failing. I’ve written about money, marriage, grief, midlife and my body. Labiaplasty anyone?
I’ve shared plenty of things normal people might prefer to discuss privately with a therapist.
But admitting I used medication to lose weight?
Apparently that’s where I draw the line.
And I think I know why.
I thought I should have been able to do it myself.
I have PCOS and I’ve struggled with my weight for more than 30 years.
Thirty.
Years.
I’ve lost weight.
I’ve gained it back.
I’ve exercised.
I’ve dieted.
I’ve tracked.
I’ve planned.
I’ve researched.
I’ve started over.
I’ve promised myself I’d be better on Monday.
And then another Monday.
And another.
Underneath all of it was some version of the same belief:
Maybe I’m just not trying hard enough.
Eat less.
Exercise more.
Be more disciplined.
Track more carefully.
Stick with it longer.
Try harder.
And if it didn’t work, or if I couldn’t maintain it, I didn’t question the method.
I questioned myself.
I think that’s why admitting I was taking a GLP-1 felt like admitting something much bigger.
That I hadn’t done it myself.
That maybe I’d taken the easy way out.
That after 30 years, I finally gave up and let a medication do the work for me.
Except that’s not what happened at all.
There Is Always Harder
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how often I’ve confused doing something the hard way with doing it the right way.
Hard has always felt a little bit like proof.
Proof that I’m disciplined.
Proof that I’m committed.
Proof that I really want something.
Proof that I’m willing to work for it.
Proof I’m not lazy.
And the trouble with asking yourself Could I have tried harder? is that the answer is almost always yes.
There is always harder.
I could have eaten less.
Worked out more.
Tracked another calorie.
Tried another program.
Started over one more Monday.
There is always another unit of effort available if you’re determined enough to find it.
Which means Did I try hard enough? is a question I could spend the rest of my life trying to answer.
Maybe the better question is:
Why did I believe this needed to be so hard in the first place?
Because I took a medication.
And my body responded.
I didn’t suddenly become a more disciplined person.
I didn’t finally discover the secret diet I’d somehow missed during three decades of looking.
I got a better tool.
That has been surprisingly difficult to reconcile.
Because if a medication could change the equation this dramatically, what did that mean about all those years I thought the problem was me?
Maybe I wasn’t lazy.
Maybe I wasn’t weak.
Maybe I wasn’t missing some reserve of willpower everyone else seemed to have.
Maybe harder wasn’t automatically better.
And Then My Brain Got Quiet
I’ve experienced this kind of quiet once before.
When I stopped drinking alcohol five years ago, one of the biggest surprises wasn’t waking up without a hangover.
It was how much chatter disappeared.
Should I drink tonight?
How much?
Who’s driving?
Should I have another?
Do we have enough wine?
How am I going to feel tomorrow?
When I stopped drinking, the negotiation stopped.
Even five years later, I still notice the freedom in something as mundane as knowing I can drive anywhere at any time.
I can grab my keys at 9 p.m. and go.
I don’t have to calculate first.
My weight had its own version of that chatter.
And it had been running in the background for most of my life.
What am I going to wear?
Does that still fit?
Do I look okay in this?
How much do I weigh?
What did I eat yesterday?
Should I start tracking again?
Maybe I need more protein.
Maybe fewer carbs.
Maybe I should stop eating after dinner.
I’ll drink more water.
I’ll eat more protein.
I’ll quit eating after 7pm.
I’ll start Monday.
Actually, tomorrow.
Fuck it.
Next Monday.
And it wasn’t only about how I looked.
The chatter followed me into movement too.
Am I going to make it through this run?
Can I finish this class?
How much longer do we have?
Am I going to die at the end of this workout?
Can my body actually do this?
I didn’t realize how loud it was until it got quiet.
The Four Currencies I Didn’t Know I Was Spending
I’ve written a lot about what I call the Four Currencies: time, energy, attention and money.
They’re the resources we actually have to spend on our lives.
And holy shit was I spending them on my weight.
The attention alone was extraordinary.
Thinking about food.
Thinking about weight.
Thinking about losing weight.
Thinking about how I looked.
Thinking about how I felt about how I looked.
Thinking about what I was going to do differently tomorrow because apparently today had already gone to shit.
Then there was the energy required to execute whatever plan I’d decided was finally going to be The One.
The time spent researching, planning, tracking, exercising and starting over.
And the money.
Programs. Gym memberships. Supplements. Special food. Whatever promised to help me finally figure out the thing I’d apparently failed to figure out for decades.
I was hemorrhaging all four currencies trying to manage my weight.
And then I took a medication.
Not a magic medication.
Not a medication without side effects. See: three days of barfing my brains out.
Not a medication I think everyone needs to take.
Just a tool that happened to work extraordinarily well for my body.
And the leak started to close.
That’s the part no before-and-after photo can show.
Yes, I lost 60 pounds.
But I also got a tremendous amount of my attention back.
I got energy back.
I got time back.
And when those things became available again, something happened that I wasn’t expecting.
The Snowball Started Rolling
For more than 30 years, losing weight was the goal.
I assumed if I ever actually did it, that would be the end of the story.
Congratulations.
You lost the weight.
Buy some smaller pants and move along.
Instead, it became the beginning.
My golf game improved.
Walking got easier.
Running got easier.
I hiked up Zion and could actually look around and enjoy where I was instead of spending the entire climb wondering how much farther I had to go or whether my body could handle it.
I went back to hot yoga recently.
I was nervous.
Would I make it through?
Would I be able to keep up?
Would I die approximately 37 minutes into class and have to be discreetly rolled out of the room?
And then my body just…did it.
I started trusting that my body was on my side again.
And I want to be really clear about something here.
Not because I’m thinner.
I’m physically capable of doing more because I’m carrying 60 fewer pounds.
Those aren’t the same thing.
Every time my body does something I wasn’t sure it could do, I trust it a little more.
And when I trust it more, I’m willing to ask a little more of it.
Then it gets stronger.
Then I trust it more.
That’s the rolling snowball I didn’t know I needed.
The medication helped me lose weight.
Losing weight made movement easier.
Moving more made me stronger.
Feeling stronger made me willing to try.
Trying gave me evidence that I’m capable.
And that evidence makes me want to see what else I can do.
I Spent Decades Obsessing Over My Body Without Actually Listening to It
There’s another change I didn’t expect.
I started paying attention to how I actually feel.
For years, if I didn’t feel good, I had a pretty convenient explanation:
I was fat.
Tired?
Weight.
Sluggish?
Weight.
Didn’t want to work out?
Weight.
Didn’t feel comfortable in my clothes?
Weight.
Didn’t feel like myself?
Probably the weight.
It was such a constant source of frustration that I stopped being particularly curious about what else my body might be trying to tell me.
Now I pay attention.
I pay attention to my cycle.
I notice when my energy changes.
I notice how I sleep.
I notice when I’m genuinely tired instead of immediately deciding I’m lazy.
I notice when my body wants movement and when it might actually need recovery.
I notice how I feel.
Which seems like something I probably could have figured out before the age of 47, but here we are.
The irony is that I spent decades obsessing over my body without actually listening to it.
I was judging it.
Those aren’t the same thing.
As the weight chatter got quieter, I could finally hear everything else.
And the more I listened, the less my body felt like this disappointing thing I was dragging around and the more it started to feel like something I could work with.
A teammate.
I’m asking things of it.
It’s answering.
My Outside Is Starting to Match My Inside
This is probably the hardest part to explain because I don’t want to pretend losing weight suddenly bestowed confidence upon me.
It didn’t.
I’ve been confident in who I am for a long time.
I know who I am.
I’m capable.
I’m adventurous.
I’m ambitious.
I’m funny.
I like myself.
But for a long time, the way I felt about myself on the inside didn’t quite match the way I carried my physical body.
My confidence in myself as a person didn’t match my confidence in my body.
Those were two different things, even if I got pretty good at pretending they weren’t.
They’re starting to match.
Not because becoming smaller made me more worthy of confidence.
I already had that.
I’m simply experiencing my physical body differently now.
I trust it.
I feel capable in it.
I want to use it.
And yes, my clothes fit better.
Hell yes.
I can go into my closet and pick almost anything without wondering whether it will fit.
Do you know how fucking delightful that is?
I do.
I’m not going to pretend I don’t love that part because I’m afraid someone might interpret it as me saying thinner bodies are better bodies.
I’m talking about mine.
And I like how mine feels right now.
There’s a freedom in opening my closet and knowing I can wear whatever I grab that reminds me of grabbing my car keys and knowing I can drive wherever I want because I don’t drink anymore.
They’re tiny freedoms.
Nobody else would even notice them.
I do.
Relief.
Freedom.
Pride.
And maybe that’s why these two experiences feel strangely connected to me.
Stopping drinking didn’t make me a better person.
Losing weight didn’t make me a better person.
They both removed something that had been consuming an enormous amount of my attention.
They made my life quieter.
Maybe the Weight Loss Isn’t the Biggest Part of This Story
When I look at a before-and-after picture, of course I can see the difference.
Sixty pounds is sixty pounds.
But I can’t photograph the biggest changes.
You can’t see that I don’t wonder all day what I should or shouldn’t eat.
You can’t see the energy I’m no longer spending trying to convince myself to start over.
You can’t see me standing at the bottom of a trail and trusting that my legs will carry me up it.
You can’t see the mental freedom of grabbing something from my closet without negotiating with my body first.
You can’t see me noticing I’m tired and wondering where I am in my cycle instead of immediately blaming my weight or my lack of discipline.
You can’t see the space that opened up in my brain.
And you definitely can’t see what I’ve started doing with that space.
I move more.
I try more.
I listen more.
I trust myself more.
I trust my body more.
And perhaps most importantly, I spend considerably less time thinking about fixing myself.
That’s the part of this GLP-1 experience I wish I’d understood when I started.
I thought I was trying to lose weight.
What I actually wanted was relief.
I wanted the chatter to stop.
I wanted my body to feel like it belonged to me instead of feeling like a problem I was responsible for solving.
I wanted to stop spending so much of my one life thinking about the size of the body I was living it in.
And yes, medication helped me do that.
There.
I said it.
I’m not embarrassed anymore.
Actually, that’s not entirely true.
There’s probably still a little embarrassment hanging around.
But maybe that’s exactly why I needed to write this.
Because after more than 30 years of believing I should be able to solve this by trying harder, I finally used a tool that made it easier.
And easier turned out to be pretty fucking wonderful.
Not because I got to do less with my life.
Because I suddenly had the capacity to do more.
Golf.
Hike.
Run.
Practice yoga.
Pay attention.
Try things.
Trust my body.
Live.
After 30 years of trying to make myself smaller, losing weight somehow made my life bigger.
And maybe that’s the lesson I’m taking from all of this.
I don’t need to prove how much difficulty I can endure.
I don’t need to choose the hardest possible route just so I can say I did it myself.
There is always harder.
I’m starting to think the more interesting question is whether harder is actually better.
In this case, it wasn’t.
Sometimes there’s a better tool.
Sometimes there’s a different way.
Sometimes the thing that changes everything isn’t finally finding the strength to fight harder.
It’s realizing you don’t have to fight yourself anymore.
My GLP-1 Experience at a Glance
Started: 2025
Why: PCOS and 30+ years of struggling with weight
Weight lost: About 60 pounds
Biggest surprise: How quiet my brain became
Biggest physical change: Trusting what my body can do
Biggest overall change: Getting back time, energy and attention
