I recently moved house, and in the process of unpacking found a Weight Watchers membership booklet from June 2002, the year I turned 17. Inside, I had filled out three weeks’ worth of data: my weight, and how much I’d lost or gained since the previous week’s meeting. That the fourth week was left blank is perhaps a testament to just how weight loss programmes don’t work, long-term.
I remember, so clearly, the effort of it all. The calculation of points in each food (banana, 2.5 points; croissant, a minimum of 7; Curly Wurly, 1.5), attending meetings, waiting in line to be weighed, learning about portion control and banana sizes (yes, really), and how to avoid “saboteurs” in the workplace.
Compared to Weight Watchers – and the myriad other weight loss methods I tried, including (but not limited to), Paleo, keto, Slimming World, juice fasts, weeklong sugar detoxes and, at a particular low point, a week at a weight-loss boot camp in Spain – losing weight on a GLP-1 such as Ozempic or Mounjaro is effortless (cost notwithstanding). I inject the drug (Mounjaro) once a week and I get on with my life.
I’ve always had a big appetite, and could, ordinarily, eat more than 4,000 calories (yes, I know this because I’ve tried calorie counting, too) a day and still feel peckish at bedtime. I’d feel full after a decent meal, but I’d feel hungry again pretty quickly, too. Every day was a struggle not to give in to the impulse to keep eating.
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On a GLP-1 – I take compounded tirzepatide (the brand name version is Mounjaro or Zepbound), although this effect seems to be across the board for semaglutide (Ozempic or Wegovy) too – I still feel hungry, but the urgent sense of hunger simply isn’t there.
I no longer experience cravings for specific foods; where, in the past, I’d feel hungry and be convinced this could only be sated by something crunchy, or salty, or a certain food from a certain restaurant, now I might eat a banana or a hard-boiled egg. Equally, I might eat a toasted cheese sandwich or some crisps. But no longer is any of it done with a sense of panic, or some kind of pressing need. It reminds me of how professionals talk about children’s appetites (something about which I have done a lot of reading, as the mother of a toddler who survives on Pop Tarts and cheese); I can trust myself to feel hungry, to eat and to stop eating when I’m full.
As a result, I no longer feel guilty about what I’m eating, when, or how much. I don’t think to myself, “I really shouldn’t eat that”, because, when I’m consistently losing weight, why should I?
But as the urgency has disappeared from my eating habits, so too has the joy. I no longer feel anything, really, when I eat, even when I eat my very favourite things, like Terry’s Chocolate Orange segments or garlic naan.
As someone who suffers from depression, I worry about this. Where can I go for my guaranteed dopamine hit, if food isn’t doing it for me any more? Shopping isn’t scratching that itch any more either. I’ve always found the idea of window shopping a bizarre concept, but now I can do it because I’m barely interested in what those windows contain.
Even online shopping is providing no thrill; in the past few weeks, I’ve been surprised, more than once, by a package arriving at the door that I’d forgotten I’d ordered. I would previously have been counting down to its arrival, anticipating the rush of having something delivered.
There is something freeing about no longer wanting things (food, new things), being liberated from thinking non-stop about food, and about divesting oneself of all of the feelings of guilt and shame.
But I have conflicting feelings about the whole thing, too: about giving in to the societal pressure to be thinner, about abandoning the fight for fat liberation, about failing in my efforts to escape the shackles of diet culture and accept my body, and my appetite, as they are.
It feels incredibly weird, confusing, and ever-so-slightly shameful to lose weight without the attendant effort. Praise for the weight loss feels misplaced – “sure, I’m on the jabs, I didn’t do anything”. If there is a morality attached to fatness – and there is, as any fat person will tell you – that means you are praised by everyone who’s ever laid eyes on you (truly) for losing weight, and it feels like there is an amorality attached to losing weight via GLP-1. Sure, you’re getting thinner, but you didn’t work for it; you didn’t suffer for it.
Since I started losing weight, a lot of people have asked whether I feel better, and I do. But not for the reasons you might think. I haven’t noticed it being easier to walk up the stairs; I’m not sleeping better; I haven’t discovered a love of early morning walks or Pilates. I still snore and I still have shin splints and I still have high cholesterol and I’d still rather eat ice-cream on the couch than go for a hike.
I feel better because I no longer feel embarrassed about my body. I feel better because I no longer feel as though people are looking at what I’m putting in my shopping trolley. I feel better because I fit into my clothes and I don’t feel ashamed of my lack of impulse control.
None of the ways I feel better are about weight loss at all, actually; they’re all about no longer being fat in a world that hates fat people. Luckily, we’ve found an effortless, if expensive, way to get rid of them.
Rosemary Mac Cabe is an Irish writer now based in Indiana, US
