Taking the GLP-1: my field report

Three weeks ago I injected myself with a drug my clinic prescribes to other people. My last dose was last Friday.

One of the tools we use are the class of drugs known as GLP-1. You might have heard of Ozempic/Wegovy/Mounjaro. For patients who fall below the line - measured by visceral fat, waist-to-height ratio and detailed blood tests - our medical team will recommend the drug where appropriate.

But the drug is one part only. Because the lifestyle change needs to dovetail with that. Because our goal is to wean you off the drug, and by then, you need to have the lifestyle of a healthy person. Else, back into the same hole you are going to go into.

Twenty years ago, in grad school, my team was handed a national park to design, to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. One of us wore a blindfold for a day and went about our daily routine. Another one of us was walked up to the top of a fire tower - being extremely scared of heights, this was a stressful scenario. The third was in a wheelchair, going about the day. This exercise, while we knew was temporary, allowed us to understand at least one tiny layer of what a person would be going through.

One lesson I’ve taken from that project was I must always know how it feels, as much as sensible and possible. I will always experiment on myself.

Taking the drug was just that. I put it on to understand the people I coach. And I want to tell you exactly what I felt and went through.

Here are the positives: it was extraordinary. Not the weight. The ease. The way the background hum of wanting-more simply switched off. I wanted simple foods. Too greasy immediately turned me off. Eating out at a restaurant was difficult as many restaurants serve hyper-palatable average food that’s too sweet and greasy.
I have coached food for fourteen years, and I have never experienced anything like the quiet of not having to fight. It was, and I mean this precisely, addictive. I understand now why people don’t want to stop.

And the negatives.

• A dull headache that sat behind my eyes for days.

• Nausea.

• My resting heart rate rose 10–15%.

• My heart-rate variability dropped 15%.

• Palpitations.

• A cotton-wool fog I’d only felt once before, on migraine medication, where you function but you’re not quite in the room.

Now, the honest context: I was on the starter dose, 2.5mg, for three weeks, in a lean man who did not medically need this. This gave me a peek into what the people in my clinic go through from a deeper level but I am still me i.e. a strength coach without metabolic disease and all that. Just like the grad school project, it provided me a lens.

So what did three weeks actually teach me? This:

The injection is the simple part. The life is the hard part. The needle takes seconds. The other 23 hours - the groceries, the food you prep needed, the pantry/environment arranged so the wrong thing isn’t in it, the sleep you protect when a toddler/work/stress is dismantling it, that is the entire job, and no drug touches it.

And you cannot coach the hard part unless you have done the hard part. And this is something I’ve been coaching for 15+ years.

If you need this drug, the part that actually decides your life is everything the drug doesn’t reach. And yes, that is what my clinic sells, the wrap around the molecule, the slow handover into a healthy person’s ordinary life. I profit from saying this. I’m saying it anyway, because it’s true, and because the people selling you only the needle are selling you a return ticket and calling it a journey.

There’s no such thing as a good drug or a bad drug. The GLP-1 is a great tool. Like any tool, it can be abused, misused, misunderstood, sold badly, prescribed to people who don’t need it, and handed over without the instructions that make it work.

Which is what the clinic is actually for.

Metabolic health is your body’s ability to produce, store and use energy while keeping blood sugar, blood pressure, blood fats and body fat in range.

When that capacity fails, you get diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, fatty liver. For patients below the line — measured on visceral fat, waist-to-height ratio and detailed bloods — our medical team may recommend the drug. But the drug is one part. The goal is to wean you off it, and by the time we do, you need the lifestyle of a healthy person. Otherwise you go back into the same hole you came out of.

If you need this drug, the part that actually decides your life is everything the drug doesn’t reach. And yes, that is what my clinic sells; the wrap around the molecule, the slow handover into an ordinary healthy life. I profit from saying this. I’m saying it anyway, because it’s true, and because anyone selling you only the needle is selling you a return ticket and calling it a journey.

In one of my future posts, I will write about how my waist moved, as well as skeletal muscle mass. During the GLP-1, during strength training, and how an experimental training protocol I am working on affects body composition, how a fasting-mimicking diet did and all that.

Like with all protocols, the key is to observe what happens after. Let’s see how the next 6 months go. I will write all about it and share.