r/antidietglp1

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’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!!!!!!!!!! the wl has also impacted how i feel like I’m perceived and interacted with by fellow lesbians and gay people which is really trippy and I hope a therapist can help me understand what’s happening there bc that’s soooo far beyond my understanding rn.

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.

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.

I would love to hear from you all:

• When your weekly dose is starting to wear off, what changes do you notice?
• Do you notice any mood changes?
• If you've ever taken your shot a day or two late, what was that like?
• Also, how did your first shot feel? Besides the typical GI side effects and lower appetite, did you notice any other effects?

I ask because I think I may have a rare genetic issue that causes hunger associated panic episodes, partly because I'm getting the sense that my response to tirzepatide has been unusual. I wanted help confirming that my response actually is unusual before my next endocrinologist appointment in a couple weeks. It would really help if you all could describe your experiences so that I could compare! I want to know how common or uncommon my response was, so it would be wonderful to hear from people with different experiences.

Here is my experience:

A couple hours after I took my first dose of tirzepatide I felt an overpowering sense of happiness and calm, like finally for the first time in my life my body truely believed that I was safe. I had been going through a stressful period, but once the shot kicked in I just felt completely secure, content, and satisfied. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. This wonderful feeling of euphoric peace lasted for about four or five days and returned after each shot day for the first couple months I was on the medication. Now that I've been on tirz for a bit, the first sign of the medication wearing off for me isn't hunger or returning food noise. It's depression and anxiety. I find it impossible to focus on anything and everything in life feels so unfair and overwhelming. But then a few hours after my injection everything is suddenly fine again.

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?

posting in this sub because I get repeatedly shamed in r/zepbound for expecting the medication to help me lose weight without hardcore calorie counting and dieting.

my story is basically I’ve been on zepbound since January and have titrated from 2.5mg all the way to 15mg, with no weight loss. I’ve actually gained weight.

I’ve barely ever felt the quieting of food noise nor appetite suppression many people describe, at best a marginal increase in my ability to get fuller sooner.

I posted a few times in r/zepbound looking for ideas or others with similar experiences only to get shamed for expecting the medication to work without also hardcore calorie counting and dieting, or you know, what I could be doing to lose weight without the med.

My wife and I had our first baby in March, so of course all the lack of sleep and stress that brings has probably hampered me. But I simply don’t have the bandwith to calorie track on top of taking care of a baby. But I’m the idiot for expecting the zepbound to help me stay in a calorie deficit by default as many people claim it does. It’s pretty defeating to feel like the only one it hasn’t worked for.

For context I exercise almost everyday (weight lifting and cardio).

Anyways, rant over, screw some of the self righteous people in that sub who don’t even actually absorb what I write before acting all high and mighty.

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?

My husband had been struggling with GI reactions now that he's on the higher doses of zep. I was wondering how the pill compares, if that might be a good switch for him. I know they are new, so maybe there are not many who have done both, but I figured I'd ask. If you did, is it any better for side effects?

Hello! Does anyone know of any spaces specifically for people with ME/CFS who are taking GLP-1s?

I'd love to find a supportive space for people who do, both for symptom discussions and support, "is this normal"-type things, and also a community of people where you can talk about these things without having to explain every time someone well-meaning but uninformed says "get more exercise" (maybe where recommendations to exercise more are specifically banned in the rules). Ideally with the vibe of this group, where it's not all about IWL.

I'd consider setting up one myself if there isn't one, but I've never done anything like that?

(Note to non-ME/CFS folks; exercise recommendation being banned is important because, unlike most chronic conditions, exercise can be *extremely* detrimental to health, and cause temporary or permanent harm. It sucks, but it is very real, you can go to CDC or NICE if you would like to learn more. Please no ableism!).

Anyone else notice that they started finding vegetables and salads much less appetizing than before? Or wonder if more fiber might ease their digestion?

I sometimes look at raw foods or even some cooked vegetables and feel that they just won’t go down easy enough. Like they’d be literally hard to swallow. This is still the case for me after taking GLP-1 medication for a year. And I would like to keep my lower GI happy.

Some people like vegetables and some don’t. What are some of your favorite ways to easily get a bit of fiber? Any other tips?

Hi community!

I’m about to max out on Zep and may need to consider trying Wegovy. I’m a little anxious about changing things up and would love to hear from folks who made the switch. I’d love to hear the good and the bad.

TIA!