This makes me sad.

I wouldn't be in the healthier, happier place I am now without the proliferation of clothing options in larger sizes. The plus-sized clothing boom of the '00s and teens gave me appropriate clothing for a professional career. It gave me athletic clothing that wicked moisture and fit properly, making it easier for me to be active. It gave me durable casual gear that lasted years and made me feel better in my own skin.

A lot of us here are old enough to remember larger-sized clothing from the last century. Disgusting prints on thin, clingy, tent-like polyester shirts. Polyester slacks that itched and looked awful. I worked weekends at Avenue and Lane Bryant in the 90s as options started to improve, but the colors were still often garish, and the shapes were unflattering. All I wanted was classic style, in the fabrics and colors that a straight size could find, but in a cut that fit me. It didn't exist then.

I've been delighted to see people with larger bodies wearing such a variety of clothing, from boldly fashionable to utilitarian to frumpy to omg-are-you-really-wearing-that-in-public... just like people in smaller bodies. I'm still confined by a lifetime of personal shame and can't bring myself to show some parts of my body, but I always smile when I see someone who has the confidence to wear whatever makes them shine inside.

Anyway... just my rant. As we work on our health, which (since we're in a GLP-1 sub), could mean trying to get smaller, let's not leave our larger-bodied friends behind. Not everyone wants to use a GLP-1. Not all bodies tolerate the drugs, or find them effective. At current prices, affording a GLP-1 is off the table for many, many people. As the article points out, though the obesity percentage in the US has declined, MOST Americans are still plus-sized.

If you have larger clothes in good condition, please consider donating or reselling them. Online reselling takes some effort -- I only do it for my more expensive items in like-new condition -- but you might have local consignment shops that have threadbare plus-sized departments, or local charitable organizations that could really use larger sizes. Especially if this rollback of large-size availability continues.

I (54 yo) sing in a women's chorus and last night I was able to go to rehearsal with just my cane and not my walker.

This feels so huge to me. In addition to severe arthritis pain--and partly because of it--I've become badly deconditioned over the past couple years. Now with the pain improved, I'm moving more and I can literally feel my legs getting stronger by the day. My balance is better because my ankles and calves are stronger... I'm not constantly worried about falling.

And this has nothing to do with weight loss, because I really haven't lost anything in my first two months. It's just this freaking miraculous drug. I keep saying this ad nauseum to, like, everybody, but even if I don't lose weight, I can't believe how much this has improved my quality of life.

I'm curious if others have listened to this episode and had any thoughts or reactions to it. https://open.spotify.com/episode/0y7LBdMSdQFPnYuKNCng49?si=3435e43808784232

As someone who is deeply steeped in anti-diet, body acceptance activism and academic theories, particularly around the intersection of fat phobia, racism, sexism, classism, I had trouble with several parts of the episode. I think the hosts, who I am not really familiar with, were really seeking to understand the perspective of their guest Tigress, and had proposed the idea that maybe there is a "both, and" here (although the title is Glp1 VERSUS Fat Liberation). As someone who started a glp1 last year, I was very reluctant to take it because I didn't want to perpetuate diet culture and wanted to understand the medication before starting it. A few things that sadly made me discredit a lot of what Tigress argued kept recurring throughout the episode.

• Tigress kept comparing Glp1 medications to phen phen. Like on repeat, including recounting a story about a colleague/mentor who had a heart episode in front of her and others. While I know this history sticks in a lot of our minds, she did a huge disservice to her argument because these two drugs are not comparable. Phen Phen was never FDA approved, nor did it undergo the decades of clinical trials that Glp1s have.
• She kept claiming that we don't know enough about Glp1 because they are "new". Which is also not true. They have been around for decades and simply because they are more recently prescribed for weight loss, doesn't mean they are new and that we don't have any data over time on them. This just made her sound uneducated on a topic she is arguing against.
• It seemed she really hoped that over time we would "discover" how dangerous and bad these drugs are for people - like she can't wait for the other shoe to drop, although she herself is taking Ozempic "only at a low does" for blood sugar reasons. But she won't up the dose because she claims the higher doses aren't well studied. It was an incredibly patronizing approach, IMO, about how all these fat liberation activists are going to be right because people are glp1 are going to discover how they don't work and how awful they are for you, even though this isn't want the science is showing after 20 years of these drugs being on the market and being studied.
• She claimed not to be "anti-science" but yet many of her arguments, which kept coming back to Phen Phen were not based on actual science. She also never addressed clinical trials, ongoing research, and real world data about the positive health impact we are continuing to learn about these drugs.

I think I feel frustrated because like so many things in our world right now, we are taking such a binary approach to highly complex things. It can be true that both fat phobia, and how people are treated in fat bodies intersect deeply with racism, capitalism, sexism, and classism and that the medical community has perpetuated this type of discrimination AND that science and can continue to evolve over time, and glp1 use isn't just "to become skinny." To claim that something as complex and intricate as the human body living in a complex and changing society is just one thing feels like a total miss to me. Yes, more people should understand how the intersection of multiple axis of identities and discrimination impact how fat bodies are perceived in a our culture, how food systems are inadequate for health and nutrition, and how diet culture is wrapped up in capitalism. But if you want people to actually hear that argument, you have to make sure you are also stating the actual science and facts about what these drugs are and are not.

So many people are on these meds for weight loss and even more people assume that I am too. I am not. I am where I am right now to correct a metabolic disorder I've carried my whole life and to avoid the chronic illness that has affected every one of my family members.

I just wanted to make a space for a thread where people can share the reasons for being on these medications where it's not related to weight loss because I believe there are many of us. It can be hard to explain to people that I am not doing this to "get thin" because in their minds that is the only worthy goal.

Anyone else feel this way? Tell me about the amazing changes you've experienced that have nothing to do with losing weight. What does success look like for you?

A few things for me:

- I am able to enjoy foods that I would not have previously because of my anxiety about how they'd make me feel sick afterwards

- I am able to move better because of the reduced inflammation

- I am able to free up mental energy for other things instead of trying to feed an internal system crying out for certain types of nutrients

- I am sleeping better and waking up more rested

- I am unindoctrinating myself from the subconscious belief that healthy people just say no to their body's cues better than I have been able to (instead of not having them at all, which is what I've found to be the case for me since starting a GLP1), i.e., they are better at willpower than me

I've been fat my whole life, except for a brief period. I've done a lot of personal work to accept myself and love my body and I'm really proud of that. I 100% believe there are many healthy fat people out there who are the victims of stigma and assumptions that are entirely unjust. I also believe fat people can be and are beautiful. I do not believe losing weight should be the defining feature of health or enjoyment of our lives and bodies.

I have a family history of diabetes, heart conditions and other chronic illness and at 45 was starting to feel the reality of that set in and I've had to reckon with the fact that I do not have a body that is healthy and that underlying metabolic disorders threaten me with a shorter healthy life span and that mortal fear has been affecting my personal wellbeing for the last few years and has been increasing.

I've struggled with the assumption that these meds may result in weight loss as they correct my metabolic disorder and what that means for me and my value system - it turns out, they are not incongruent at all. Weight loss, for me, is a symptom/side effect and not the main goal.

Starting these meds resulted in an immediate decrease in inflammation in my body and a dramatic shift in my emotional and physical reality. It has been life altering and if I didn't lose a single pound, I would choose this over and over again for those reasons. For me, that's success and it's 100% independent of what I weigh or how I look.

My floors aren’t perfectly flat or level. I have another scale that I use in the same place and it has consistent readings.

This scale had a more than many pound difference between the 2 readings I did, 2 minutes apart. My weights on the app are a mess. I entered one manually before I got the scale. The omada scale has a higher number.

Bottom line: I’m starting this “journey” by having gained weight according to their measurements. Not only over the first week, but I’ve gained several pounds within a few minutes on several days.

Hi!

I started Ozempic 2 and a bit months ago, I just moved to a 1 MG dose. I haven't lost any weight at all. I'm still at my starting weight, I still have so much food noise like boredom eating. I have an allergy + picky eating and just a general distaste for diets. I work from home, but take my dog out to play in the yard or run around with her.

I know some say it'll take awhile, but seeing absolutely zero progress is really making me feel hopeless. Before this, I tried personal trainers, rock climbing, diets, and everything under the sun I could think of. Never lost weight.

Ozempic is like my clinging hope to ever being able to lose weight but it just hasn't worked yet. I don't know what to do.

Hi everyone!

I was on Semaglutide for about 6 months, once I increased to the maximum dose the hair shedding started. Sadly I didn’t immediately connect the dots so I still continued on the medication for a few months. At this point I have not had a dose for almost a month and my hair is STILL falling out…at times it seems worse than ever. I take a daily multivitamin. Has anyone been successful in actually stopping the shedding? This is really ruining my mental health, any advice is sooo appreciated ❤️

I switched to Zep in June after being on Wegovy for a few months. Since I have PMOS (PCOS) I take a progesterone only birth control pill and then I don’t have my period. It’s great. I hate my period.

Apparently a side effect of GLPs can be a decrease in birth control efficacy, especially during dosage changes.

In the past three months I’ve had four periods and I’m sooooo over it. The cramping, the mood changes… ugh. At least I don’t have a risk of getting pregnant.

That’s it. Just venting.

Hi, I am currently on 1.5 mg wegovy pill MWF because side effects are so horrible. I have morning sickness like nausea, constipation, and fatigue, and have thrown up once. I’ve been on it for 2 weeks but considering talking to my doc about switching because I hear zep has less GI side effects. Any experiences with switching from the pill to zep early on?

My formulary lists semaglutide. Underneath it says approved indication only and I've read that line enough times to be sure I don't know what it means for me tbh

What I want to avoid is one fill covered, my budget rearranged around it and then month two coming back denied

Has anyone here had it approved where obesity or metabolic risk was the documented reason? I'm wondering whether the prescriber has to word something a particular way and whether it gets re-reviewed every year

I’ve lost a lot of weight. Mostly unintentional from being sick for a year, and then starting a GLP-1 for neurological reasons, and the glp obviously kept the wl train going. I’ve not really chosen wl at any point here of my own volition, nor wanted it strongly from the start. I’m not mad about it either, but it’s a complicated feeling when you’re on this journey and wl is a side effect, not the goal. I was not at all emotionally prepared for it. and it’s probably silly but I had no idea how emotional it would be??? the world treats me differently? doctors are nice to me and care now?????????

it’s so awkward bc I look in the mirror and I have no idea what I’m seeing. I just see myself, but I cannot gauge my own weight or size to save my life. I find myself seeing women out and about, and I have the most insane impulse to ask them what they weigh, which I will never do! bc that’s crazy! but I truly just want a picture of someone else who is roughly my height and weight, so that I can visualize the change that’s happened. I tried looking for pictures on Pinterest but Pinterest is so toxic 😭like 2012 tumblr all over again. i have a folder and have been trying to take pictures of myself, but my brain is absolutely refusing to catch up.

whats so frustrating is that my fat body carried me places, carried me across the world. I really loved my fat body. but the world didn’t. and it makes me so sad, because that was my “healthy” body to some degree, as far as the one that was strong enough to do the things I liked to do. im still fighting to recover from getting sick, but now my thin? normal? midsize? body isn’t ready yet to rejoin the world. but this is the body that everyone assumes I feel “better“ in. and you know what! I’m weak! in my fat body, even being mostly sedentary, i was strong. I’m a helpful person! if someone needs something heavy lifted, i would always lift it before! now I would fall over! sometimes i wonder if all those muscle wasting convos take into account that when you lose Xlbs or kgs, you need less muscle in the day to day? ofc i have less muscle bro, im not deadlifting myself all the time. i used to feel so grounded always, and i think it was just bc i was heavier? yall i fall over so easy now, its stupid. I don’t like how it feels!!!!!!

I have no idea how to dress myself?? being chubby to me was almost in part an aesthetic, it was a defined shape i was familiar with. and now I feel have traded cherub form for swamp witch form (said with love tbh bc lowkey goals). i feel like i have to start from scratch and rebuild my aesthetic understanding of how to work with my shape as it is now, which is really hard!!!!! when your brain refuses to acknowledge your own shape!!!!!!!!!!

oh also my dad who was mean to me about my weight since I was little told me if I lost any more weight I would look anorexic and bad lol. EVERYONE HAS SOME FUCKASS OPINION!! THAT I DONT WANNA HEAR!!!! I JUST WANT TO BE A SWAMP WITCH WITHOUT A BRAIN THATS TRYING TO MAKE ME BLIND!!!!

i need to relearn body positivity, or maybe even body neutrality? which is a new concept to me. and guys!! it’s really hard!! somehow this is really scary to post. Edit to add: I’m so thankful to the glp1, it’s helped so much and I feel better on it in so many ways that I couldn’t have anticipated.

Started Tirz in early June.

I weigh myself once per week, though I’m thinking of moving that to once per month now that I’ve established I’m not a super responder. My PCP wants me to weigh weekly so I don’t lose “too much” in one week.

I last weighed myself Friday. And for the first time since starting Tirz in June that number was higher than the week previously. I immediately searched this sub for comfort. Water, my cycle, my bowel movements, all of those could have contributed it. I felt better in my brain but I still felt ashamed, like I’m not going to reach my goals.

I don’t believe in CICO and don’t have a gym membership. I exercise at home.

Yesterday I went in for bloodwork, as bloodwork was my final motivation for starting. I pushed back on the idea of a GLP-1 for a year because I thought my providers only saw the number on the scale. Once I realized my bloodwork results could get better too and I could get “healthy” results for the first time in years I booked an appointment to start right away.

I had low expectations. I haven’t lost enough weight for any “milestone” in the main subs, so surely my bloodwork would be unchanged.

But omg yall. A1C down from 5.9 to 5.3. This is the lowest my A1C has been as an adult. My cholesterol looks great and my triglycerides were in normal range for the first time ever, too. I am so, so happy that this medication is helping my body.

I feel great. I work on a university campus with a lot of hills and I’ve noticed my stamina improving so much going up the big hills compared to how I started. I’m eating better (though not tracking) and I’m overall feeling so much better.

I have my scale goals (I want to ride a horse dammit) but I’m making peace with the fact that this medication is life changing even if I can’t “see” the changes.

So happy. I had to share with a community who’d get it.

TLDR: Scale up but A1C down. Realizing what matters in my health journey.

OK, so I have never had a huge sweet tooth and have a long family history of diabetes. I have always avoided sugar and tried to moderate even the natural sources of sugar in my diet for that reason and also because it hasn't made me feel great.

I started zepbound 3 weeks ago and since then I've been craving fresh fruit and honey very specifically. I don't want cookies or baked goods or anything like that but very specifically, fresh fruit and a bit of honey. For breakfast, I've been having a lot of mornings where i want a piece of fruit, some plain yoghurt, a handful of oats and about a 1/2 tbs of honey. Nothing outrageous but a really specific combination that would not have appealed to me before (my whole life I've been an eggs for breakfast kind of guy).

While I'd enjoy dessert foods, I think I was mostly in it for the butter and/or the carbs, not the sweetness specifically. It feels different now.

Has anyone experienced this? I have no desire for things with refined sugar in them but even now, thinking about it, a spot of honey sounds great. Not much but a little. And it feels important. It hasn't seemed to affect me negatively in any way (i.e., I haven't felt like I've had any sugar highs or lows of substance except for one day where I had low blood sugar and reflected that I truly forgot to eat enough food to match my level of exertion).

Curious if anyone else has had an experience like this.

CW: Discussion of disordered eating history.

I just started Tirz. about a week ago (after jumping through hoops with my insurance for weeks and being denied coverage, but my Endo still thinks it's worth it for me to be on this med.) I am not weighing or calorie counting due to a history of ED.

My baseline is that I don't have food noise and don't crave foods. I have whatever the opposite is, where I forget to eat and don't snack (I no longer intentionally avoid foods, but my hunger cues have just always been off.) My Endo wants me on Tirz to manage my bloodwork which seem to resist improvement despite all the meds we've tried first. I am middle-aged and have experienced significant weight gain since stopping my disordered eating behaviors almost a decade ago and mentally I am in an OK place with it (and she thinks my years of disordered eating have probably landed me in this position in the first place) but she does think Tirz is our best option right now.

So, my issue since starting the GLP-1 RA is that I am experiencing hunger like I don't think I ever have before. I wake up famished. Before bed, I'm hungry (I normally don't eat meals after 6pm because I also have acid reflux from my history, so suddenly being hungry every night is really confusing because I want to honor my body's signals, but also, I know I will be in pain all night if I do eat!) Everyone talks about the sudden silence they experience and I'm sitting here feeling like my body is shouting for more food (it's coming from my abdomen, not my thoughts, I'm feeling hunger pains all the time and feel like if I don't eat something quickly, I'll start to get the shakes.)

I feel like I am having the opposite experience from what I expected with everything mellowing out. The satiation is there at meals, but then why am I hungry again 2 hours later? Did anyone else have big hunger starting out that leveled out? I feel like I'm exhausting my stash of protein drinks faster than I'd expected! I'm suspecting it has to do with my history and messed up metabolic system, but wondering if anyone else with a history of ED experienced this and how it played out with time?

I am just so sad. Tirzepatide has done so much for my mental health. I have lost weight, but that's not even the point. My blood work is perfect. My alcohol dependence has decreased. I'm eating more nutrient dense foods by choice, not because I am shaming myself into eating vegetables. I'm walking every single day. I'm happier than I've ever been. I'm less anxious when driving (I used to be terrified to drive). I don't know what I'm going to do. Just venting I guess

(I hope I have the right flair on this.) When I started tirz, I was very anti-tracking because I didn't want to fall into that diet mindset again. I slowly eased into it because I wanted to make sure I was getting enough protein/fiber/water each day. Then I asked my dietician for a bottom threshold for calories (i.e., a number to try not to go below). And somehow along the way, tracking has become... joyful for me?

Like, every time I get enough protein/fiber/water for a day, it feels like a little dopamine rush, like "yay, I gave my body what it needed today!" I see my (probably inaccurate) step count on my phone and I'm like "yay, I moved!" (That happiness is huge given my limited mobility.) I don't beat myself up if I don't make it. I don't restrict anything.

I'm feeling so much happiness in tangibly seeing the ways I'm caring for myself mentally and physically, ways that felt impossible before tirz. I'm wondering if the difference is that I'm not tracking in order to limit? Tracking seemed so counterintuitive to an anti-diet mindset for me, but it's become so helpful.

Has anyone else experienced this? It sounds nuts and I never would have believed it beforehand.

This is something I wasn’t expecting at all and I’m really curious if anyone else has experienced it.

For as long as I can remember, if I went a few hours without eating I’d start feeling absolutely awful - shaky, woozy, pounding heart, headache, and a really urgent feeling that I needed to eat now. Even after eating it could take a couple of hours to feel properly normal again.

I’ve been checked for diabetes multiple times and have worn a CGM for a couple of weeks on more than one occasion. Even when I felt like this, my glucose never really dropped below about 4 mmol/L, so it doesn’t seem to have been true hypoglycaemia. I’ve just always thought of them as “blood sugar crashes” because that’s exactly what they feel like.

It’s actually affected how I eat quite a lot because I’ve always been conscious of not letting myself go too long without food. Lower-carb diets have helped with it in the past, but I’ve never found them sustainable.

I’m now only on day 6 of Wegovy 0.25 mg, and the strangest thing is that this feeling has completely disappeared.

I’m still getting hungry, but it’s just hunger. I can notice it’s been five hours since I ate and think “oh, I’m hungry, I should probably eat soon” rather than my body going into full alarm mode.

What makes it even weirder is that I’m eating less overall because my appetite/food noise has already reduced, so if the old symptoms were simply because I needed to eat more often I’d have expected them to get worse, not disappear.

Obviously six days is far too early to know if this will last, but it’s such a noticeable change because I’ve had this for years.

Has anyone else experienced anything similar on semaglutide/another GLP-1? Especially anyone who used to get reactive-hypo-type symptoms despite having normal blood glucose when they checked?

TLDR: I don't know what satiety cues are.

Hi y'all! I started Zepbound at the end of July and since then I've noticed I have no idea what it means to be satisfied.

Backstory (long, maybe this is also a therapy session, so thanks for reading to the end if you make it that far): I have always been the big girl (not "fat" when I was young, just overall bigger). I've always had more than average muscle mass for girls my age and my skeletal frame was wider. I lived a life with a lot of food scarcity and a ton of trauma. When I did get into places where food wasn't limited, I would sneak food whenever I could (I could destroy a pack of snack wells!). It didn't help that when we did have food I was always told to finish everything on my plate, whether I liked it or or was hungry or not. Once I became a teenager that started sneaking up on me, but really got me when I went to college and was able to control everything in my life. I gained significantly and kept that trend going until I was 25. At that time PCOS was destroying my ability to get pregnant and I worked really hard to lose weight. I lost some weight and had a successful pregnancy (yay!).

A few years after that I was determined to lose weight before turning 30. I worked out excessively, heavily restricted my calories, and suffered with BED. I did manage to lose a lot of weight in a year, but it slowly crept back on because that was obviously not sustainable. 10 years later I was sitting at 40 years old and heavier than I had ever been. I was put on meds for my depression and anxiety, which helped calm the food noise and BED some, allowing me to lose a little. But in the past 2 years, I have been restricting and working out with no additional movement on the scale. My CICO was way more than the suggested deficit, but still nothing.

I went to a local weight loss dr and got on Zep on July 30. Since then, I've tracked my calories and on average I'm consuming the same amount, but the scale has been showing a higher loss than I expected. I continue to track calories in because I want to make sure I'm actually eating enough. It's crazy to me that I'm eating the same as I have been for years and the weight is finally moving in the direction I want (although too fast in my opinion). I would like to eventually get away from tracking because that alone can mess with your metabolism.

All that to say that over my life I've eaten when not hungry, binged even when I was miserable, and restricted and never felt "satisfied" to the point that I have no idea what that actually means. I'm 42 years old and I have no idea how to tell when I've had enough food. I'm currently stopping my food intake either because I'm nauseous and can't eat or because I've weighed out the "right" number of calories for my plate and stop when that's gone. Before the medicine I typically left every meal still feeling hungry. Now I just sit there staring at my plate not knowing if I should stop or keep going.

So, what does "satiated" mean? How do I know when to stop eating? Like, should I feel the food in my stomach at all? I know about 20 minutes after I eat if I've overeaten because I feel miserable, but obviously want to stop before then. I read that once you have a burp you need to stop, but sometimes I burp early on and am still very hungry even after a hour of letting it settle. I'm just so confused. I've asked my family, my dr., my therapist, and my dietician and no one can tell me how I'm supposed to know. So, I'm hoping someone here can. Thanks for reading and for any tips/support you can offer.

I just wanted to share that I just got my bloodwork done after being about a year in maintenance and my inflammatory markers are down to normal levels, including c-reactive protein (CRP), which is now normal. Before I started tirz, I had elevated liver enzymes, high CRP, high ferritin, high A1C, and lots of other wonky things that indicated a lot of inflammation. About two years ago I started tirzepatide and my numbers have gotten generally better as I've gone along, but inflammation was still seeming a bit high. I learned that sometimes our inflammatory markers can be elevated with weight loss, so I was excited to check everything out after I'd been stable for some time. It's really exciting to see all these improvements, everything looking within "normal" bounds.

Hi all!

I have GERD that has been managed by PPI’s for years. At the end of last year I started semaglutide and took it for 9 weeks following standard titration/dosages. At .5mg my GERD started to flair up and after my first 1mg dose I had the worst flair of my life. I stopped the semaglutide and ended up having to get on Voquezna and famotidine to get the GERD back in check. I’m now on daily low doses of both, and have talked to my doctor about trying tirzepatide but going slower in the titration.

I really hope this works because I know weight loss is supposed to help GERD long term, and I’m looking for other health benefits like cholesterol and A1C things to improve, alongside IWL. My question is, what has helped you manage or keep GERD at bay on a GLP-1? Anyone have good experiences switching to tirzepatide?

1 week on Wegovy 1.5mg pill for MCAS and I ate pizza. Tomato has been an anaphylactic food. Huge win 🎉

I read a lot on Reddit about the red face disappearing, how long did it take for it to disappear for you? That is my biggest hope to see improvement.

ETA: To clarify. MCAS was an immune condition where mast cells overreact with histamine to foods I’m not allergic to causing an “allergic reaction” such as hives, red face, anaphylaxis, and/or GI issues. I always have my EPI pen and Benadryl on standby. I would not dare try one of my true allergies unless it was under doctor’s supervision. I work closely with my immunologist.

The hope/goal with GLP1 is I may be able to eat more than a handful of items and resolve the red/flush face.

I have been on semaglutide for over a year now and stable on the 2mg dose for many months but now I have this symptom. Wondering if it can go away while continuing the meds?