GLP-1s and mourning your old self?

[Morgan1979]

The mourning piece is real and mostly skipped in the success narrative - when the body changes that much after 23 years of trying, there's a grieving process for the version of yourself that fought so hard without the right tool. The old self didn't fail; the biology made it structurally harder. What usually helps is holding both: the relief of it finally working and the grief of what it cost to get there. Most people find the identity shift completes somewhere in year two when the new normal stops feeling like a borrowed life and starts feeling like the one that fits.

 

[olive-lentil85]

More people understanding the grieving piece than you realize is probably the most reassuring thing to say to the OP who posted this. The medication handles the physical piece but the 23-year relationship with struggling doesn't just dissolve when the scale moves. That process has its own timeline separate from the weight loss timeline. What's been the hardest part to let go of?

 

[Mike_1977]

20 years left and not wanting to spend them overweight is the clearest version of why the medication matters for the OP who has been at it since age 7. The mourning piece is real but what you don't want to carry forward matters just as much as what you're letting go. That framing is actually the most useful one here.

 

[basil_tinkertbh]

The time variable is the honest answer that most people find unsatisfying - the skin does continue to improve for 2-3 years after reaching a stable weight, but the degree of recovery is genuinely individual and influenced by how long excess weight was carried and at what age. the list of practical interventions is right; none of them produce dramatic results on their own but the combination over time is what moves the baseline

 

[Gym_Lady]

The fat phobia point in why the research took so long to develop effective pharmacological treatments is real. Obesity as a disease with underlying mechanisms that GLP-1s address is the shift in framing that changes how people think about this. You don't have to be in therapy to benefit from the medication just like you don't need counseling to take blood pressure drugs.