Is Taking a GLP-1 Cheating?

Even after adjusting my HRT dosage, I was still struggling. The food noise was relentless. Zero desire to be active because I still overheat easily, and overheating triggers migraines. And that word — "obese" — from my doctor's chart was clanging around in my head.

I brought this up with my HRT provider, and she immediately suggested a GLP-1 medication.

I balked.

I'd seen some worrisome stuff about side effects. And isn't that... cheating?

The old tapes in my head

The way I've been programmed to talk to myself comes from my family in childhood, to the tv and movies of the 90s, the gossip sites calling J-lo "thick" and being relentlessly bullied about my heavy chest and weight from 3rd grade until high school graduation. Even with years of therapy on my personal growth and healing journey, the old tapes still play. Judgment around my inability to just control my diet. To just do the thing. To just be disciplined.

Here's the kicker: I started working toward a master's in nutrition in my early 30s. I completed about a third of the coursework before realizing it wasn't the right path for me. So I KNOW what to do. I know the science. I know what's worked for me in the past.

But knowing and doing are two different things when your body has completely changed the rules on you. Kinda like how crafting as a hobby and shopping for craft supplies are two separate hobbies, right?

I can't force myself to do things I hate anymore

And I hated all of it. The restrictive eating. The exercise that made me overheat into a migraine. The constant mental battle of trying to distract myself from thinking about food. The cycle of restriction, failure, shame, repeat.

It just wasn't worth it to me anymore.

My values are shifting as I go through this change — at the same time our society feels like it's in upheaval and everything is INTENSE and I feel helpless about so many things. The last thing I needed was another battle with my own body.

The podcast that changed my mind

Around that time, Dr. Mary Claire Haver did a two-part podcast with endocrinologist Dr. Rocio Salas-Whalen, who has extensive experience with GLP-1 medications. I watched both parts.

No fear-mongering. No judgment. Just science, context, and a perspective I hadn't heard before: that these medications aren't about willpower failure. They're about addressing what's actually happening in your body. As soon as she mentioned having patients who had struggled with "food noise" their entire life, I was like, oh, yeah, definitely me.

I messaged my provider the next day. She referred me to Willow for a GLP-1 consult.

What the process was actually like

My provider there is great. He walked me through everything — protein intake, dietary adjustments, what side effects to expect, why strength training matters now more than ever. No shame. Just information.

I started on the orally dissolvable tablets. The first week was an adjustment period of figuring out what foods I can and can't tolerate. I had some nausea the first three days, but the companion nausea medication worked, and I haven't really needed it since.

What's changed

The food noise? Gone.

I can't overstate what that means. For years — decades, really — a part of my brain was always occupied with food. Thinking about it, resisting it, planning around it, feeling guilty about it. I didn't even realize how much mental energy it consumed until it stopped. I mean, full out, stopped!

Now I can make conscious choices. I eat when I'm hungry. I stop when I'm satisfied. It's not a battle anymore. Feeling satisfied after eating is a whole new experience. I have spent my entire life hungry or overfull. I didn't know what feeling satisfied after a meal actually felt like until now.

I stay off the scale — it took me years to break the habit of obsessing over numbers multiple times a day, and I'm not going back there. But I can see how my body is changing. I feel more comfortable in my clothes. I have mental capacity to focus on projects again.

I'm cautiously optimistic.

So is it cheating?

Here's what I've decided: Calling it cheating assumes there's a fair game to begin with. But perimenopause changed my body without my consent. The rules I played by for decades stopped working. My metabolism shifted. My hormones tanked. My hunger signals went haywire.

Taking a medication that helps regulate what my body never really could regulate on its own isn't cheating. It's adapting.

I spent years white-knuckling my way through diets, feeling like a failure every time one stopped working. Turns out, I wasn't failing – hard to believe after participating in a very popular weightloss program in the late 90s when I only lost a single pound in a 2 month period, while feeling like I was starving every single day. Enter peri and my body was changing, and no one told me that was part of the deal.

If a GLP-1 helps me feel like myself again — helps me have energy for the things I actually care about instead of spending it all on food noise — then I'm taking it.

No guilt. No shame. Just one more tool in the toolkit.

— Shea