13 Reasons I've Chosen Not To Take GLP-1 Weight Loss Medication (even though I've been tempted)

Before I begin, I want to be clear that I am not interested in policing or judging other people’s decisions about the use of GLP-1 medications.

These medications have an important place in healthcare and are genuinely beneficial for many people.

This is not a commentary on what anyone else should or should not do.

It is my personal reflection on why, despite moments of temptation, I have chosen not to take them.

My decision is shaped by my own history with disordered eating, my recovery journey, my understanding of my physical, mental and emotional health, through the lens of yoga and Ayurveda, and the values I want to embody as a teacher and guide.

After many years of healing, unlearning, and reclaiming myself from diet culture, my decision feels increasingly clear.

1. I Didn’t Spend Years Recovering from Diet Culture Only to Return to It.

I personally believe that GLP-1 weight loss drugs are, in many ways, a new and more socially acceptable expression of diet culture. They reinforce and normalise the idea that our bodies should be controlled, managed and reshaped. The underlying pressure and message of diet culture is that we must change our bodies before we can feel good about ourselves.

For me personally, divesting and recovering from diet culture took decades, and asked a great deal of me. It required courage, patience, grief, a lot of support, and a willingness to challenge deeply held beliefs about my worth, beauty, and belonging.

Why would I undo that work now?

I have spent years learning to trust my body rather than control it, listening instead of restricting, and finding freedom beyond the pursuit of thinness.

For me now, that freedom is precious.

2. I Don’t Want to Be on a Medication for the Rest of My Life

Many people find GLP-1 medications helpful, and I fully respect their choice.

But when I imagine my own future, I don’t wany my wellbeing to depend on a medication indefinitely. I want to continue cultivating a relationship with my body through nourishment, movement, rest, community and self-care.

I want health practices that deepen my relationship with myself, not ones that make me feel increasingly dependent on an external solution.

3. We Don’t Know the Long-term Effects.

GLP medications are still relatively new. And even though they have a place in medicine I am not comfortable taking a drug that alters appetite signalling, digestion, and brain chemistry when we do not fully understand the long-term consequences. Ten or twenty years from now, what will we know that we don’t know today?

4. I Don’t want to Dampen my Relationship with Feeling

Part of recovery has been learning how to stay present with the full spectrum of being human-hunger, satisfaction, desire, grief, joy, discomfort, and pleasure. Some people report feeling emotionally flattened or less interested in food, social connection and other simple pleasures while taking GLP medications. Whether this happens to everyone or not, it is not a trade-off I am willing to make. I have spent years reclaiming my aliveness, and I do not want to mute it.

5. Choosing Another Path Feels Counter-Cultural

We live in a culture obsessed with shrinking, fixing, optimising and improving our bodies. After being an active participant in a culture I was born into, and did not choose in the first place, deliberately divesting from it feels liberating.

For most of my life, I tried to fit-in and looked outside myself for what was ‘right,” often at the expense of what I knew in my own bones.

I think this is one of the reasons that I have been so activated around this conversation.

Learning to know myself, to listen to my own body, and to discern what is right for me is liberating for me.

I no longer want to follow a standard I never consciously chose – a standard that profits from our dissatisfaction and keeps moving the goal posts.

I am much more interested in belonging to myself than belonging to an ideal.

6. I Want to Continue Healing My Relationship with Food and Enjoy It.

One of the greatest gifts of recovery has been reclaiming the pleasure of eating and enjoying food.

Sharing meals with friends.

Eating cake without feeling guilty.

Savouring food as nourishment, connection and culture.

That food is no longer the enemy- this freedom took years to recover.

For me, that is worth protecting.

7. My Inner Health Matters More to Me Than My Appearance

I am more interested in the quality of my life rather than the size of my body.

Nurturing and caring for my mental and emotional health, my relationships and connections, my integrity, my vitality, my creativity and my capacity to create and contribute, are the things that matter most to me.

I hope people remember me for my kindness, humour, courage, wisdom and humanity – not for how my body looked or the size of my bloody thighs.

Because I am so much more than what I look like.

8. I Want to Practice What I Teach

As a yoga teacher and recovery advocate, I want to embody the values I speak about.

I want the women who sit in my classes to know that they do not have to shrink themselves to be worthy. They do not have to earn belonging through weight loss, self-improvement, or being someone that they are not.

If I am asking others to trust their bodies, soften the internal war of the inner critic, and come home to who they are, then I want to walk that path too.

I want women to see that it is possible to age, change, and live a full life without being in constant pursuit of a smaller body.

9. I Want to Invest My Energy into Living a Full, Happy Life, Not Managing My Weight

For much of my life, body weight occupied far too much mental and emotional space. Counting calories, tracking steps, controlling my emotions and worrying all the time.

I now have all that energy back.

I would rather spend my precious life teaching, writing, gardening, eating cake, walking our dog, and contributing to something meaningful in the world.

My life is way too valuable to be organised around the size of my body.

10. I Am Learning to Trust the Wisdom and Felt -Sense of My Body

For years I treated my body like a project.

The practice of yoga has taught me something different.

My body is my companion and my home for this lifetime.

As my time on Earth gets shorter and I move through midlife towards elderhood, I want to deepen, respect and appreciate my relationship with my body rather than override it.

I am more interested in cultivating vitality, mobility and inner peace than pursuing an ideal body.

11. The Practice of Non-Attachment

One of the greatest gifts of yoga has been learning about non-attachment (aparigraha) and loosening my identification with external things, including my body and how it should look.

For so much of my life, I identified with my body, my appearance, what others thought of me, and whether I measured up to the cultural ideals I was swimming in.

Yoga has always and continues to point me toward a deeper question:

Who am I beneath all of that?

I am not my weight, my clothing size or the reflection in the mirror. My worth is not determined by my appearance.

Yoga reminds me to remember that I am far more than the body I inhabit, while also caring for it with kindness and respect.

12. Ayurveda has Taught me that Digestion is the Foundation of Health

Ayurveda views digestion (Agni, or digestive fire) as the cornerstone of health.

It is through digestion that we transform food into energy, nourishment, and life force.

GLP medications work, in part, by slowing gastric emptying and reducing appetite. While this may support weight loss, it feels at odds with what I have learned through Ayurveda, which seeks to cultivate healthy digestion rather than override it.

Over the years, I have come to see hunger, fullness, appetite, cravings, and digestion as important forms of communication from my body. My practice has been to listen more closely, not less.

I am interested in supporting my body’s natural intelligence through nourishing food, gentle movement, massage, rest, nervous system and digestive care. Health comes from supporting the body’s innate intelligence rather than controlling, dominating, or overriding it.

13. I Would Rather Spend My Money on Other Things.

At roughly $300-$400 per month, that’s around $3500-$5000 a year. If I were to stay on it for 20 years, that’s close to $100,000.

That is a significant investment.

I would much prefer to spend my money on a holiday, or books, learning a new skill, having a massage, and investing in more learning. None of these things promise a smaller body, but they do promise a richer life.

Before I finish, I also want to acknowledge my husband of 25 years, Peter.

I truly could not have asked for a better man to stand beside me as I navigated this journey. Through all the ups and downs, the body changes, the self-doubt, the haling and the unlearning, he has always loved me exactly as I am.

His love for me has never been contingent on my size or shape – even though it has softened and expanded LOL, and his unconditional acceptance of me has been a gift beyond measure and helped me realise that my worth was never found in a number on a scale, but in the fullness and Tanni-ness of who I am.

And as a bonus, he makes me laugh out loud every single day which brings a sense of lightness, even through challenging times.

Recovery has also taught me that freedom is not the absence of struggle. Freedom is having a choice about how I respond when challenges appear.

That I can always choose to meet life where it is.

I sincerely hope this has been helpful for anyone who, like me, has felt confused, conflicted, or even destabilised by the rapid rise of these medications, and perhaps tempted by them too.

May we each find the path that honours our body, our values and our deepest felt- sense of wellbeing on every level.