13 Reasons I've Chosen Not To Take GLP-1 Weight Loss Medication (even though I've been tempted)
Why I’ve chosen not to take GLP-1 medications
Before I begin, I want to be clear that I’m not interested in policing or judging anyone else’s decisions about GLP-1 medications. They have an important place in healthcare and are genuinely beneficial for many people. This is not a commentary on what anyone else should or shouldn’t do.
It’s my personal reflection on why, despite moments of temptation, I’ve chosen not to take them.
My decision is shaped by my own history with disordered eating, my recovery, 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, it feels increasingly clear.
1. I didn’t spend years recovering from diet culture only to return to it
I believe GLP-1 weight loss drugs are, in many ways, a newer and more socially acceptable expression of diet culture. They reinforce the idea that our bodies should be controlled, managed and reshaped, and that we must change them before we can feel good about ourselves.
Recovering from diet culture took me decades. It asked a great deal of me: 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’ve spent years learning to trust my body rather than control it, to listen instead of restrict, and to find freedom beyond the pursuit of thinness. 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 want my wellbeing to depend on a medication indefinitely. I want to keep cultivating my 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 leave me increasingly dependent on an external solution.
3. We don’t know the long-term effects
These medications are still relatively new for weight loss. Even though they have a place in medicine, I’m not comfortable taking a drug that alters appetite signalling, digestion and brain chemistry when we don’t 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 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-1 medications. Whether that happens to everyone or not, it’s not a trade-off I’m willing to make. I’ve spent years reclaiming my aliveness, and I don’t 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. It’s a culture I was born into and never chose, and I participated in it for a long time. Deliberately stepping away from it feels freeing.
For most of my life, I tried to fit in. I looked outside myself for what was “right,” often at the expense of what I knew in my bones. I think that’s one reason I’ve been so activated by this conversation.
I no longer want to follow a standard I never consciously chose, one that profits from our dissatisfaction and keeps moving the goalposts. I’m much more interested in belonging to myself than belonging to an ideal.
6. I want to keep healing my relationship with food, and enjoy it
One of the greatest gifts of recovery has been reclaiming the pleasure of eating. Sharing meals with friends. Eating cake without guilt. Savouring food as nourishment, connection and culture.
Food is no longer the enemy, and that freedom took years to recover. It’s worth protecting.
7. My inner health matters more to me than my appearance
I’m more interested in the quality of my life than the size of my body. What matters most to me is my mental and emotional health, my relationships, my integrity, my vitality, and my capacity to create and contribute.
I hope people remember me for my kindness, humour, courage and wisdom, not for how my body looked or the size of my bloody thighs. I am so much more than what I look like.
8. I want to practise 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 they don’t have to shrink themselves to be worthy. They don’t have to earn belonging through weight loss, self-improvement or being someone they’re not.
If I’m asking others to trust their bodies, soften the war with their inner critic and come home to who they are, then I want to walk that path too. I want women to see that it’s possible to age, change and live a full life without being in constant pursuit of a smaller body.
9. I want to put my energy into living a full, happy life, not managing my weight
For much of my life, body weight took up far too much mental and emotional space. Counting calories, tracking steps, controlling my emotions, worrying all the time.
I have all that energy back now, and I’d rather spend it teaching, writing, gardening, eating cake and walking our dog. My life is far too valuable to be organised around the size of my body.
10. I’m learning to trust the wisdom and felt sense of my body
For years I treated my body like a project. Yoga has taught me something different: my body is my companion and my home for this lifetime.
As I move through midlife towards elderhood, I want to deepen my relationship with my body and appreciate it, rather than override it. I’m more interested in vitality, mobility and inner peace than in an ideal body.
11. The practice of non-attachment
One of yoga’s greatest gifts has been aparigraha, non-attachment, 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 appearance, with what others thought of me, and with whether I measured up to the cultural ideals I was swimming in. Yoga keeps pointing 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. I’m far more than the body I inhabit, and I can still care for it with kindness and respect.
12. Ayurveda has taught me that digestion is the foundation of health
Ayurveda sees digestion (agni, the digestive fire) as the cornerstone of health. Through it we transform food into energy, nourishment and life force.
GLP-1 medications work, in part, by slowing gastric emptying and reducing appetite. That may support weight loss, but it sits at odds with what Ayurveda has taught me: cultivate healthy digestion rather than override it.
Over the years, I’ve come to see hunger, fullness, appetite, cravings and digestion as forms of communication from my body. My practice has been to listen more closely, not less. I want to support my body’s natural intelligence with nourishing food, gentle movement, massage, rest, and care for my nervous system and digestion, rather than controlling or overriding it.
13. I’d rather spend my money on other things
At roughly $300–$400 a month, that’s around $3,600–$4,800 a year. Stay on it for 20 years and it’s close to $100,000.
That’s a significant investment. I’d much prefer to spend that money on a holiday, books, learning a new skill or a massage. None of those promises a smaller body, but they do promise a richer life.
Before I finish, I want to acknowledge my husband of 25 years, Peter. I couldn’t have asked for a better person to stand beside me through all the ups and downs, the body changes, the self-doubt, the healing and the unlearning. He has always loved me exactly as I am. His love has never been contingent on my size or shape (even though it has softened and expanded, LOL), and his unconditional acceptance 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.
Recovery has taught me that freedom is not the absence of struggle. Freedom is having a choice about how I respond when challenges appear. I can always choose to meet life where it is.
I hope this is helpful to 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.
.