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Ever since I started taking a glp-1 I initially noticed that I would get full easier, but overall it didn’t affect my desire to eat. After 1 month my dosage went from 1.5 mg to 4 mg and I think this has been a larger difference in like, how I exist. I was telling a friend that I feel like instead of saying ‘no’ to food I’m just ‘not saying yes’ (the implication of saying ‘no’ to food is that I want to say yes but I’m actively depriving myself, whereas with ‘not saying yes’ there is no desire to eat to begin with and thus no reason to say yes to something I have no desire for). This was when I was traveling in Asia and there was plenty of food to be eaten + was walking 20k steps a day. But yeah I felt that given the circumstances of me traveling I did not feel like my diet was super different, only slightly different. Like I felt like I was still eating quite a bit especially in variety but I wouldn’t feel internal pressure to finish everything (which is a habit ingrained in me from childhood, plus if there’s food I feel like I always used to finish it because it was just satisfying to have an empty plate). But now that I’m back in nyc and I’ve returned to my life I’m noticing a bigger difference. Like I can’t figure out what to eat for lunch and I almost feel a certain sadness because I think of lunch as a small mundane but joyful thing that breaks up my day from the first half to the second half, and yet nothing sounds good to eat right now. Typically I would eat eggs with scallion pancake, and then after my annual checkup I switched it to eggs with a dill yogurt sauce (for less carbs and more protein). Now that doesn’t sound good to me anymore. And normally if I didn’t know what to eat I would get a sandwich but that also doesn’t sound good. I know this sounds crazy but I’m in tears writing this like. Idk food was always a way of emotionally comforting me throughout my day / life, and now I feel like I’m losing it and I just don’t feel like myself. Maybe if I can come up with a lunch that sounds good I can feel better but I just had this twinge of fear that I’ll never feel normal again

Edit; ok I just forced myself to eat last night’s leftover salmon rice with furikake and soy sauce and I feel better

Some additional thoughts and observations:

I noticed that a bunch of my friends who I have told about being on a glp-1 got lowkey triggered by learning that I’m taking it or my friends who I traveled with watching me take it in the morning. I always thought this was kinda odd because if I knew someone was taking it I wouldn’t really have such strong feelings or judgments about it because it’s someone else’s body and choice?

Also I think my relationship with body image and weight and food is pretty different from other women. From a young age every time I tried to ‘diet’ I would give up after maybe a few days, and just decided that losing weight wasn’t really a possibility for me. It wasn’t until I went to college where I had these really large weight fluctuations (initially gaining 25 pounds from unlimited dining hall food and then losing 15 pounds from suddenly becoming really into rowing and weight training) that I internalized that losing weight is not something that happens for me if I try to lose weight, it only happens by accident or as a byproduct of focusing on something else (like working out to be a better athlete, or just trying to be healthy in general re: lifestyle). I also gained weight during covid lockdown but lost all of it when I moved to nyc and was walking so much / partying all the time / still cooking most of my meals at home. I would often not say yes to certain foods or drink because I was money conscious, not because I wanted to lose weight. So this experience of weight fluctuation also reinforced this idea that weight loss and weight gain are just natural cycles of life that don’t require things like ‘discipline’ specifically for the goal of losing weight.

So when I decided to go on the glp-1, my thought process was not that complex; I knew my parents were on it because of their diabetes, and I am pre-diabetic so it would help my health. I was starting to get a little unhappy with my body image because I had gained weight since being in my relationship, but I hadn’t actively tried to lose it (again because I don’t believe in that). I just thought, I’ll try this for a few months and see what happens, maybe I’ll be happy with my body and it’ll be a little easier to maintain once I learn what it’s like to have a slightly smaller appetite

But my friends both brought it up to me multiple times throughout the trip. Like despite the way this post sounds and the length of it, I don’t actually think about any of this that much I’m just processing things right now. In my day-to-day, I don’t often think about how much I eat or my body image. It’s only when I’m shopping and something cute doesn’t fit me right, or if some of my favorite clothes no longer fit me. But once I put on clothes that do fit me, I kind of forget about it. Meanwhile, my friends would talk about podcasts they have listened to about people who take it and what the side effects are other than weight loss. Or they would ‘get sad’ when I would say no to sharing food with them because I wasn’t hungry. Like if I bought something to eat and offered some to my friend and they politely declined I don’t think I would feel some sort of way about it? I would be like sweet, more for me!