The Skinny Scoop

You’re welcome. That’s the whole post. See you next week.

…okay fine. Sit down. We’re doing this.

It started with a number. On a scale. In my bathroom. My tiny five foot one frame, holding two hundred and seven pounds.

I just stood there. Staring at it. Like maybe if I looked long enough it would change its mind.

It didn’t.

Now, I want to be clear — I didn’t wake up one day and suddenly realize I’d gained weight. I have mirrors. I have jeans that haven’t buttoned since the Obama administration. I knew. But there’s something about a number — a specific, awful, undeniable number — that makes the fuzzy thing suddenly very sharp. Two hundred and seven pounds is not a soft knowing. That’s a fact. Sitting on your chest. At seven in the morning.

What I told myself in that moment was that the scale was my wakeup call. And that’s true. But if I’m being honest — and I always am, it’s literally my whole thing — my body had been screaming at me way before that morning. My neck. My back. My…. oh shit. I can’t say that here. Moving on. All of them were running a group chat I was trying very hard to ignore. The scale just finally said what they’d been saying for months: girl. come on.

So I made a call. Got on a GLP-1. And nothing has been the same since — in ways I expected, and in ways that would have been genuinely useful to know upfront.

Hence: this post.

The Stuff Nobody Mentions — Physical

Let’s start with your body, because your body will absolutely start with you.

Before I got on a GLP-1, I did what any reasonable person does before a major medical decision — I Googled it at midnight and read approximately four hundred Reddit threads. And yes, people mentioned nausea. They mentioned appetite changes. Cool, noted, moving on.

What they did not adequately prepare me for was the sulphur burps.

If you don’t know what those are, congratulations on your blessed life. If you do — I see you, I am so sorry, and yes they are exactly as bad as they sound. We’re talking rotten egg. From your face. Appearing at any time, with zero warning, and absolutely no respect for where you are or who you’re with. I will not be elaborating further because I have some dignity left and I’d like to keep it.

Then there’s the nausea. Which is not the polite, manageable, oh I feel a little off kind of nausea. It’s the kind where you look at a plate of food — food you used to love, food you would have fought someone for — and your stomach just says absolutely not. Hard no. Don’t even.

But here’s the one that really got me, the one nobody puts in the brochure: never wanting to eat. Not “eating less.” Not “making better choices.” Just… not wanting food. At all. Forgetting it exists. Looking up at 3pm and realizing you haven’t eaten since yesterday and also you don’t care.

For a normal person, maybe that sounds fine. Great, even.

For me? That was its own kind of loss. But we’ll get to that.

The Stuff Nobody Mentions — Psychological

Here’s what I was not prepared for: the quiet.

My whole life, food has had a voice. A loud one. Not in a clinical, diagnosable way — just in the way it is for a lot of women who grew up in homes where food was love, and celebration, and comfort, and also the thing you ate your feelings with when the feelings got too big. Food was the background noise of every day. What’s for breakfast. What sounds good for lunch. Do we have snacks. What are we doing for dinner. It was a constant, low-grade hum. I didn’t even notice it until it stopped.

And then one day — it just stopped.

No hum. No voice. No what sounds good. Just silence where all of that used to be.

I’m not going to pretend that wasn’t disorienting. Because it was. I’d been in a forty-year relationship with food and this medication just showed up and said she doesn’t live here anymore and that was that. No warning. No transition period. Just — gone.

Who is this person? Who is this girl who could eat a green chile cheeseburger for every meal and never once be tired of it? Who put hatch green chile on eggs, on pasta, on things that had no business being near a green chile? Who considered queso a food group and had opinions — strong opinions — about the correct chip-to-dip ratio?

She’s still in here somewhere. But she’s quiet now. And I’m still figuring out how I feel about that.

You’re not sad. You’re healthy. You’re losing weight. Everything is going great.

And also something that was part of you is just… different now. Both things are true.

The Stuff Nobody Mentions — The Comments

People have thoughts about your body. Shocking, I know.

I don’t know what it is about a woman losing weight that makes the people around her collectively lose their entire filter, but here we are. Seventy pounds down and suddenly everyone has something to say. Unsolicited. Unprompted. With complete confidence that you asked.

You did not ask.

The first category is the Enthusiastic Alarmed. These are the people who grab your arm, eyes wide, and say things like “Oh my God, you’re so skinny!” in the tone usually reserved for emergencies. Like they’re not sure if they should congratulate you or call someone. You’ll smile. You’ll say thank you. You will not say what you’re thinking, which is that you were also a person when you weighed seventy pounds more, and nobody was grabbing your arm then.

Then there’s the Investigators. “Gurl, what are you DOING?” They want the full breakdown — the medication, the dosage, the cost, your before photos. You are now a case study. Welcome.

My personal favorite — and by favorite I mean the one that makes me want to scream into a pillow — is the Concerned. “Are you okay? You look… thin.” Said with that little pause. That little head tilt. Like thin is a diagnosis. Like you might be fragile now. Like the version of you that could benchpress an emotional crisis and hold down a full-time job and raise three kids was somehow more sturdy than this one.

I am okay, Karen. I am fine. I am, in fact, the healthiest I have been in years. But thank you for your concern, I’ll be sure to eat a cheeseburger.

And here’s the part I wasn’t expecting: some of it would sting. Not the rude stuff — I have thick skin, always have. But the relentless focus on your body, in either direction, starts to feel like a lot after a while. You were a person before. You’re a person now. The number on the scale didn’t change that and frankly it’s nobody’s business what got the scale to move.

You didn’t do this for the comments. You did it because your knees were begging you. Because a number on a scale cracked something open at seven in the morning. Because you wanted to feel better in your own body.

The comments are just noise.

Loud, very annoying noise.

The Stuff Nobody Mentions — The Mirror

Here’s what nobody tells you about losing seventy pounds: the mirror doesn’t automatically update.

You’d think it would. You’d think that after months of work, after watching the number on the scale drop from 207 to 137, after pulling on a pair of size four jeans and having them button — you’d think your brain would catch up. Would recalibrate. Would look at what the evidence is clearly showing and say okay, I see it, we’re good.

My brain did not get that memo.

I still see her. The 207 pound version. She’s still right there in the glass, same as she ever was. I know — logically, factually, undeniably — that something has changed. The scale says so. The jeans say so. The people grabbing my arm in parking lots say so.

But logic and mirrors have never been on speaking terms for me.

Seventy pounds apparently wasn’t enough to broker that peace.

This is body dysmorphia, and I want to say that out loud because nobody really talks about it in the context of weight loss. We talk about it in other conversations, in other contexts, but not here — not in the middle of what everyone around you is calling a success story. Because how do you explain that you’ve lost seventy pounds and you still feel like you haven’t moved? That you’ll catch a glimpse of yourself in a shop window and for one half second not recognize the person looking back, and then the next second see exactly what you’ve always seen?

It’s disorienting in a way that’s hard to put words to. And it’s lonely in a specific way, because from the outside everything looks like a win. And it is a win. I’m not saying it isn’t.

I’m just saying the win feels more complicated than the before-and-after photos suggest.

Size four jeans. One hundred and thirty seven pounds. And I’m still in there somewhere, negotiating with my own reflection.

The Part Nobody Warns You About

Let’s talk about my face.

I had a great face. I want to be clear about that upfront. Round, bright, full — the kind of face that photographs well and smiles bigger than it has any right to. I liked my face. My face and I had a good thing going.

Seventy pounds later, my face has… thoughts.

Specifically, it has decided to migrate slightly south. Not dramatically. Not catastrophically. But enough. Enough that I’ll catch myself in a certain light and think oh. oh no. that’s new. Enough that the round, fun, luminous situation I had going on has been replaced by something that can only be described as gravity’s little victory lap.

Nobody — not my doctor, not the Reddit threads, not the four hundred people who had opinions about my body in the parking lot — nobody mentioned this. The pamphlet did not cover it. There is no section in the GLP-1 literature that says by the way, your face is going to do a little thing. just so you know. heads up.

So here I am. Seventy pounds lighter. Knees that work. A back that doesn’t wake me up at night. Jeans I haven’t fit into since before I had children. A body that is, by every measurable standard, healthier than it has been in decades.

And a face that is taking its sweet time catching up to the vision board.

Is it worth it? Yes. Obviously. Unequivocally, without hesitation, yes.

Is it also a little bit devastating to miss your own face?

Also yes.

Nobody puts that in the brochure.

I’m putting it in the brochure.

— Moe