Life After GLP-1

September 02, 2026

I was on a GLP-1 for just under eight months, starting my first shot on August 16, 2025, and taking my last shot on April 9, 2026.

Unfortunately, stopping the medication was not necessarily my choice. The remaining GLP-1 medication I had stored in my refrigerator appeared to have been affected after someone in my household placed very hot food inside the fridge, drastically changing the temperature. The formula appeared crystallized, and I no longer felt comfortable using it.

Financially, I could not afford to pay for another round, so I just sort of concluded that maybe it was the universe’s way of telling me to get off GLP-1.

In the back of my mind, I had always been nervous about what would happen once I stopped.

But four months later, I feel really different from the person I was before I started taking GLP-1 (semaglutide).

I would estimate that my level of food noise has gone down by about 50%. Food noise definitely isn’t as muted as it was while I was taking semaglutide, but it is nowhere near as loud as it was before I started.

My main focus while I was on semaglutide was creating consistent, sustainable habits. I tracked what I ate, focusing primarily on portion sizes rather than calorie counting, although calories were tracked as well. I still track everything I eat.

My exercise fluctuates depending on my mood and what is happening in my life. I’m fairly consistent about going on walks, but that may mean walking two days one week and four days the next.

While taking semaglutide, I lost 25.6 pounds in under eight months.

I must admit, I was underwhelmed by my overall weight loss while taking the medication. But after a lifetime of dieting, I think I’ve finally started letting go of the all-or-nothing mentality.

Which leads me to the next phase of my life:

Can weight loss just become an ordinary, boring part of life instead of a lifestyle, an aesthetic, or a moral judgment about food?

What if, instead of moralizing everything I ate, making everything about willpower, clean eating, cheat days, or whether I had been “good” or “bad,” I simply took a more neutral approach to food?

I still need some form of tracking. I know myself well enough to know that it’s necessary for someone who is almost always kind of hungry. Currently, I prefer counting Weight Watchers PointsPlus. It was a program introduced around 2010, and it was the program I became familiar with during the era when Jennifer Hudson was a Weight Watchers spokesperson.

One of the greatest benefits of that program, for me, was the focus on portion sizes. Fruits and almost all vegetables were zero points, and over the years I learned a lot about balanced eating simply from following and tracking with that system.

If you’ve been through your own cycle of losing, regaining, starting over, or simply trying to make weight loss feel less consuming, I’d love for you to follow along and share your story, too.

Bakebit

Want to read more about real experiences on a GLP-1 journey? Read my article: My Honest GLP-1 Journey and What I Learned.