GLP-1 Shaming: Comment I Wrote Today

Yohann Hari’s bestselling book, Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs, was the topic on “The Jordan Harbinger Show” on YouTube. If you’ve not seen Hari speak yet, I ask you to. I finally downloaded the book and probably should have waited until I finished it, but this is not a book review.

Hurling Comments at the Fat Folks on GLP-1s: My Response

You all know the comments and what they said. They are the same comments repeated over and over to those of us who have dealt with our health and weight our whole lives. I write a lot of comments on YouTube, but this one was a doozy.

I wrote a piece called “Fat Activist on GLP-1s: An Oxymoron?” I’ve done everything possible to stay alive. Fen-Phen (with heart valve issues), RNY Gastric Bypass in 2001 (lost 200 lbs. regained 250 lbs.), Trulicity from 2022-2023, and now Mounjaro for 9 months. I will do anything to stay alive. As a Type 2 diabetic who has had horrific labs, they are all now pristine. HbA1c from 9.0 to 5.1.

Reading through the comments, I shake my head at the naivete and laugh at the ignorance around those of us who have to struggle, often with our lives, to get and remain healthy. Alllll the folks saying, “Just <fill in the blank>” as if we, who are clinically obese, haven’t tried every. single. thing. mentioned. You all must think we are the height of stupid to just roll along (almost literally) aching to get fatter and fatter and fatter still JUST so you all will humiliate us any way you possibly can. It doesn’t qualify as “fat shaming” to me (a term I despise), but just out and out cruelty towards humans who hurt so badly in our bodies and hearts because of people’s hurling advice and epithets.

Every one of you perfect people, if you have been on a diet, 95% of you have also regained the weight. Studies have proven that for decades. The others who have not had to ever diet, have struggled with something that we might say, “All you have to do is just <fill in that blank>” because we have The Answer to your issue. Compassion on all sides is required to find peace with our individual circumstances as well as others’.

And because the same people who threw eggs and moo’d at me all of my life now congratulate me on losing weight, I want to demonstrate your hypocrisy. I started as an immobile, sick, 405 lb. recluse and now am walking 3+ miles a day, off all obesity-related complication medications, flying to see kids and grandkids, and speaking out about the GLP-1 Shaming (a term I use often) because even if I only live 10 more years, losing 230 lbs. on Trulicity and Mounjaro was worth it. I can finally live in my 170 lb body. Unless you know my life viscerally, keep your advice and opinions to yourself.