For as long as I can remember, I was overweight. I grew up in an “eat everything on your plate” kind of family and drank nothing but soda, if that paints a picture. Healthy habits just weren’t modeled for me.
By seventh grade, I couldn’t fit in the desks at school. I spent all of high school on some type of diet, tracking calories, drinking weight-loss shakes, and working out excessively. During the decades following, my weight fluctuated—but even when I managed to lose 40 or 50 pounds on Weight Watchers (which I joined and quit probably 30 times, no exaggeration), I was still overweight. And I was always thinking about food and counting the minutes until my next meal, especially when my diet consisted of precisely measured servings of chicken breast and green beans. My brain was constantly calculating how much I’d have to exercise to make up for what I ate, shaming me for “screwing up,” or justifying that I’d get back on the bandwagon after the weekend.
Regardless of what direction the numbers on the scale moved, the mental load of trying to get to a healthy weight drove me into the ground.
Fast forward to December of 2022. Nearing 40 years old and weighing 250 pounds, I had a call with a surgeon about gastric bypass. He told me I was a great candidate, but that I’d have to gain 30 more pounds for insurance to cover the procedure. My response? Hell no.
Enter Mounjaro®, Stage Left
Weeks later, still reeling from the bypass situation, I heard about Mounjaro® from my hairstylist. I’d never heard of it! (It hadn’t blown up the internet yet at this point.) I asked my primary care doctor—who had witnessed my struggle with weight for years—about it, and he told me to diet and exercise more. As if those two things hadn’t consumed my life since I was a teenager.
Needless to say, I found a new doctor, and she told me I was a prime candidate for Mounjaro®. I got an earful from lots of people in my life who were concerned about this new drug and its potential long-term effects, but I was desperate, sluggish, and unhappy. So, in February of 2023, I started the medication.
Read More: How To Fill Nutritional Gaps If You’re Taking A GLP-1 Weight-Loss Drug
Within three or four days, the craziest thing happened: I realized I wasn’t thinking about food all day long. Instead of itching for lunch from the moment I finished breakfast, I looked at the clock, saw it was suddenly noon, and thought, Oh, I should eat! I also felt fuller much quicker (I could only eat half a Chick-fil-A sandwich and a few fries instead of a sandwich, large fries, and a milkshake).
In those first few months, I experienced some nausea, but it popped up here and there and didn’t get in my way too much. The bigger hurdle was navigating people in my network constantly offering their two cents around GLP-1 weight-loss drugs or suggesting I just needed to try harder to lose weight on my own. I put those comments in a little drawer of my mind, shut it, and kept living my life.
Enjoying The Ride
At this point, I’ve lost 90 pounds and am currently taking a maintenance dose of Mounjaro®. I’m 40 years old and feel the best I’ve ever felt in my life. I go for walks because I want to, not because I think I have to walk four miles to burn a certain number of calories. I can go out with my friends without stressing about eating foods I used to label as “bad.” And when I speak onstage for work (which I do often), I’m happy to do it because I feel plain old good in my body.
For too long, we were told that obesity could (and should) be fixed with dieting and exercising alone—and let me tell you, I had been trying that since middle school. This medication has fundamentally changed my life, and I’ve seen it change the lives of people I love (seven of them and counting!), too. What The Vitamin Shoppe is doing to increase access to these medications with Whole Health Rx is transformative, and I’m so grateful that it exists.
Find out if you qualify for Whole Health Rx’s GLP-1 medical weight-loss program.