How I finally got over my GLP-1 shame

When I first started on a GLP-1 just over a year ago, I was so embarrassed that I didn’t tell anyone — not my mom, my sister, my best friend, or my husband. I was ashamed of taking (and for needing in the first place) a medication that so many people still consider “the easy way out.” A 2025 study in the International Journal of Obesity confirmed what we all know: Women who use a GLP-1 “often report feeling judged for taking a ‘shortcut’ to lose weight…‘cheating’...and perpetuating thin-culture.” Worst of all? I had been part of the hater chorus.

I remember in third grade when the kids in my class started calling me ogre and giant. As an adult, I’m almost 5’10” and I’ve always been tall, the only girl standing in the back row for all of my elementary school class pictures with the boys. Now I wonder if my classmates were commenting more on my height than my weight with the hurtful nicknames. But in that moment, and for decades afterward, I assumed they were calling me fat. Ever since then, I’ve tried everything I could to make myself smaller.

Once I had my first paycheck in hand at 16, I used it to buy over-the-counter diet pills, which I took regularly from then until I got pregnant at 29. The diet where you eat nothing but cottage cheese? Of course I’ve tried it. Same for the “cleanse” where you basically consume nothing but spicy lemonade. The book that promised “rapid fat loss, incredible sex, and becoming superhuman,” which requires entirely giving up fruit? Yep — it got me into restriction days and cheat days, falling into the belief that I could “supercharge” my metabolism after extremely low-calorie stretches by hitting a fast food drive-through three times in one day. And you know I tried the cabbage soup diet, longing to stick with it for enough days to “earn” a baked potato. I’d tried anything and everything to shrink my body.

So when I first heard about GLP-1s for weight loss, I rolled my eyes. Been there, done that with a million fads, diet plans, and medications before. Because these plans were usually based on restriction, they worked at first…until they didn’t, leaving me to regain whatever I’d lost and then some. Surely this “wonder drug” was just another snake oil fix in a long line of fake-outs and disappointments. And as GLP-1 hype continued to build, that’s exactly what I proclaimed to anyone around me who would listen.

I also noticed that as my kids had gotten a little older, they loved taking family photos and selfies together. Instead of appreciating the moment of togetherness or that they wanted to snuggle up to me, I would find an excuse to leave the room to not be in the picture. If I did have to be in one, I’d immediately grab the phone and obsess over how fat I looked, deleting most of the pictures, memories be damned. As another year of buzz for GLP-1s went by, I saw people’s incredible results, including one of my coworkers. I decided that if I tried it — in secret, so no one could try to talk me out of it — and it didn’t work for me, there wouldn’t be much harm, just another moonshot. And if it did work…well, I could barely let myself be hopeful enough to dream of that.

I started on tirzepatide in secret. I was ashamed both that I needed the medication and that I was a hypocrite. With my husband, I was able to explain my fatigue away as exhaustion from a long shift at work (I’m a NICU nurse). After three months, I had to fess up to him because I had drained my own savings and needed to start paying for the medication from our shared account, but I swore him to secrecy from our kids, family, and friends.

After a few more months, lots of people started noticing my weight loss — and complimenting me on it. Some nosy people did press after I offered a curt “thanks,” asking me exactly how I did it. Maybe they were suspicious I’d used a GLP-1. Because of my shame about it, I wanted to throw them off my trail. I’d workshopped exactly what to say and repeated it the same way every time: “I’ve just been working really hard on my portion control.” My word choice was no accident. Since so many people think of a GLP-1 as “the easy way out,” I wanted to emphasize how hard I’d been working, even using the word “control” to telegraph that I wasn’t on the medication weight-loss bandwagon, because I didn’t want people to think negatively of me. 

After 10 months on the medication, I was down 40 lbs. Getting dressed for my daughter’s soccer game, I decided to pull from the depths of my closet a pair of high-waisted jeans from my B.C. (before children) days, three sizes smaller than what I usually wore. They zipped! I felt sexy and snatched. I paired them with a cropped sweatshirt that I’d never worn outside the house and practically skipped to the car, greeting the other players’ parents along the sidelines like I was the mayor.

I felt so confident in myself that something suddenly clicked in my brain: Who had time to waste on shame? When I was at my heavier weight, I felt the constant burden of weight stigma and feeling badly about how I looked, and maybe that made me feel more ashamed for thinking about a GLP-1, because it meant admitting I needed one. Now that I liked how I looked, and I felt confident and proud, I had lost something even more important than the 40 lbs: the burden of caring what someone else thought of me.

After that, I started telling my family and friends that I was using a GLP-1 whenever someone commented on my body or weight loss. The response wasn’t the roaring thunder I’d feared, but a muted “Oh, good for you.” Seeing there wasn’t a backlash, I then started telling anyone who complimented me on my new physique, even if they didn’t ask how I got it, that I was using a GLP-1. I told friends that I would answer any questions they had if they wanted to start on it, and offered to use my nursing skills to be an injector for a friend who was going on a GLP-1 and nervous to do her own shots.

Though I couldn’t have imagined this a year ago, I went from taking a GLP-1 in secret to being a GLP-1 fairy godmother, sharing my experience and helping anyone and everyone who’s interested. Instead of living in shame and fear, now I feel proud — of the steps I’ve taken to get here, and what I’ve learned about owning my choices, no matter what anyone else thinks.