So, first things first. How does an Executive Vice President of a weight loss company that has a proven dynamite weight loss plan, and who has lost 100 pounds using that plan, end up using a GLP-1? Great question! I’m so glad that you asked. Let’s fill in some backstory…

The Unexpected Health Setback

Exactly one year ago today, I stood up from my chair to leave my office and an excruciating pain that I have never experienced before shot through the inside of my hip. It felt like a bolt of lightning and made me immediately question if the Lord was still mad about that candy that I took from the 7-Eleven in third grade. It immediately took my breath away. I quickly grabbed the corner of my desk realizing that I could not completely stand up nor could I sit back down. Holding myself up, and my mind racing, I was frozen in pain. With the help of my husband who was standing nearby, it took several minutes before I could get my mind and leg to work in unison. Slowly I managed to get my leg all the way underneath me for support in order to sit back in my chair.

I could not for the life of me figure out what had happened. For the next couple of months, I could barely walk. The pain was constant and baffling. I mean, who stands up to leave work and then all of a sudden walks like a newborn giraffe? A friend of mine working in the naturopathic space referred me to an anti-aging clinic for some possible answers. Let me stop here to say that when it comes to pain, I’ve always been the girl that if one pill was good then two pills are better! To me, a naturopathic clinic sounded like a meeting hall for crunchy moms. Yeah, I was skeptical – but I was also desperate.

Exploring Peptide Therapies for Pain and Healing

My initial consultation resulted in introducing me to different peptide therapies. I was not familiar with peptides or their functions, so I delved into any available research that I could find. I learned that peptides work by telling specific cells in your body to act in a specific way. I was intrigued. They prescribed me two different injectable peptides that were known to be regenerative and promote healing. One was BPC-157 which I injected into my hip daily and also, BPC-500 which I injected twice a week. These peptides promote healing, reduce inflammation, increase blood flow, relieve joint pain, and improve muscle strength, as well as a host of many other things. Hmm, who knew? They seem to do everything but your taxes. I was willing to give it a shot – literally.

Within a couple of weeks, my pain had lessened considerably and I was able to regain some level of mobility. I continued this therapy for ninety days and saw measurable results. I was grateful for some relief, but I also wanted answers. Without taking pictures of my hip (ironically, the very same part of my body that I never want photographed) there was no way to know what was really going on.

I made an appointment and visited a hip specialist who did imaging. He informed me that there was absolutely no cartilage in my right hip. Yep, at forty-nine years old, I now had a hip that was completely bone-on-bone. Somehow that seems awfully young to have that diagnosis, but I digress *insert eye roll here*. We discussed physical therapy to manage pain for the immediate future and then a total hip replacement to restore complete function within the next few years – provided that I could wait that long. If the pain persisted or worsened, we could schedule surgery sooner. Needless to say, I was less than impressed with these new answers and opted to press pause on the “bionic hip” option for now and continue the naturopathic path that I was on instead.

Why I Turned to a GLP-1: Addressing Inflammation and Weight Gain

Since my 100-pound weight loss on the SkinnyBox® EZ123 program just two years earlier, I had managed to remain in maintenance while fluctuating occasionally within a ten-pound window. Some days it felt like a bay window, but a window nonetheless. However, with this new hip condition, I experienced constant swelling and chronic inflammation as I nervously watched the scale climb. There were days when I felt like my bathroom scale was the big wheel from the Price is Right game. I just held my breath to see where it would stop.

By the time I was sitting in the specialist’s office, I was looking at a total 25-pound increase – and feeling every pound of it! The lack of exercise that had become such an enjoyable part (shocking, I know) of my new maintenance lifestyle was desperately missing and it was evident that I would need to move from maintenance back into active weight loss again.

I would like to tell you that this was an easy transition for me. It should have been. I mean, it had been in the past when I wanted to keep myself in check and drop a couple of pounds. Seriously, easy as 1-2-3! But somehow, being in constant pain for six months, sleeping an average of three hours a night, adjusting to hormone replacement therapy in menopause, while desperately trying to protect my mental health had left me completely drained. Not to mention, I was working to build a business, working in ministry, and also going to school for a specialized certification during this time. Put a fork in me – I was done! Overwhelmed is an understatement.

Sitting in the office of my nurse practitioner, we began to discuss some options. She graciously listened. She also explained that because of the now chronic inflammation and constant high cortisol levels, I may need a little help. See, cortisol is our primary stress hormone – and apparently mine was working like it was getting paid! Cortisol does lots of key things like enhances the brain’s use of glucose and increases the availability of substances in the body that repair tissues. However, the long-term activation of the stress response system and too much exposure to cortisol and other stress hormones can disrupt almost all the body’s processes. In other words, I was kind of in a pickle.

She suggested that I may want to use a compound GLP-1 called Tirzepitied. She also explained that it would “play well” with the peptides and bioidentical hormones that I was currently on, and she felt like it could potentially bridge the gap that I was trying to hurdle.

Of course, being in the weight loss industry, I had certainly heard of GLP-1s. I was familiar with the more popular name brands like Ozempic® and Wegovy® or Mounjaro® and Zepbound® and how they had recently skyrocketed throughout the medical weight loss space. I knew that these medications were being hailed as the holy grail of weight loss by many, but that there was still much controversy surrounding them. Seriously, I have found that if you want to divide a room then just mention religion, politics, or GLP-1s.

I was very resistant at first. After all, besides being a part of a weight loss company, I had an awesome plan that I KNEW worked! I had used it two years earlier to lose 100 pounds within a span of ten months. And I am not the only one with that story. We have thousands on our program who have lost incredibly significant amounts of weight upwards of 100 pounds or more. No, I was content to keep truckin’ down the figure-it-out-highway with all of the other things going on in my body, while becoming more and more overwhelmed.

It wasn’t until she mentioned that, not only could it potentially help me shed a few of the newly acquired pounds, but Tirzepatide has been shown to have major anti-inflammatory effects on the body. If we could get my body moving away from a stressed state by reducing the inflammation and pain, and begin to be able to rest and sleep more, then cortisol could begin to come down. Having all of this work together could bring me back to a better place of normalcy. I discussed this decision at length with my husband, business partners, and of course, healthcare professionals. I decided to give it a try.

Combining GLP-1 Therapy with SkinnyBox for Better Results

For the next three months, I used the weekly injectable “loading dose” of 2.5 mg of the compound Tirzepitide (with B-12) administered and monitored by my clinic. I had heard and seen nightmare stories of how using the higher therapeutic doses could cause major side effects such as extreme constipation (yay!) or severe vomiting (joy!) or even anxiety and depression (sign me up!) Umm, no thank you. I decided that if I experienced the types of side effects that can come with those doses, they would only cause more stress on my body and be counterintuitive to the plan.

I immediately began to feel better within the first week or so. Inflammation was being reduced and my side effects were very minimal. (To be fair, two years earlier, I felt this same thing on our SkinnyBox® program as my inflammation was drastically reduced within the first week.) I could feel appetite suppression immediately, and all of the “food noise” was gone. I joined GLP-1 groups with 50k to 100k members on social media as I wanted to be able to ask more questions and learn about others’ experiences.

I learned quickly, from my own experience and theirs, that despite what you hear in the media, this medication is not a magic bullet. Yes, it will help many metabolic things on its own within your body and with no effort from you, but weight loss is not always one of those things. You will still have to put in the work to see results. For most people, you will need to remain in a calorie deficit of -500 of your maintenance calories, drink 100 oz of water daily, consume upwards of 100 – 120 oz of protein daily, do light cardio, and also, strength training three times a week in order to see weight loss while using a GLP-1. Many who do not do these things tend to lose at an extremely slow pace, if at all.

Another thing that I found out was that the typically reported and also, physician-recommended weight loss on this medication was .5 to 1 pound a week. I was stunned! The way that the media talks about this medication, you would think that just smelling it would cause you to drop two dress sizes. Apparently, not true. My first week previously on our SkinnyBox® plan (eating six times a day) I lost 11 pounds. Here I was now, with complete appetite suppression, trying to eat, and was losing only a couple of pounds. This is when I decided that I would give this a few months and then pair it with our program for personal comparison. I was also aware, through an anonymous customer survey, that a very small percentage of our customers were utilizing a GLP-1 along with our program. I reasoned that at the very least, continuing would enable me to better understand their journey as well.

By the end of the three-month mark I had lost 15 pounds on Tirzepatide. This was while getting in all the recommended macros, water, and exercise (which for me was a minimum of three HIIT workouts during the week and eighteen holes of golf on the weekends.) Knowing that most of that 15 pounds I had just lost was only water weight, it caused me to really consider the long-term effort that this would take someone who wanted to burn fat. To compare, I had previously lost 40 pounds by that same exact time on our SkinnyBox® fat burn plan with no exercise. Okay, I may have gone to public school, but even I know that math ain’t mathing!

I decided to pair this medication with the SkinnyBox® plan to see what results it would yield. Not changing any of the GLP-1 regimen that I was on, I went back on our program. In three weeks, I lost 15 more pounds. I was thrilled! SkinnyBox® is truly the GLP-1 multiplier. What you won’t hear in the media is that using a GLP-1 therapy alone can be a very tedious and slow process, especially considering the impact of side effects and the amount of effort that it takes to see results. However, it seemed that when paired with our fat burn program, results DOUBLED in considerably way less time. Now, that’s some good math!

In less than four months, I lost a total of 30 pounds – 15 pounds in three months using a GLP-1 alone and 15 pounds in three WEEKS when the GLP-1 was paired with our SkinnyBox® EZ123 fat burn program! (For comparison, I had lost 50 lbs. by that same time using only our EZ123 program just two years earlier.) I should also mention that because our program puts you into a fat-burn state, I knew that I was burning stored fat and not just muscle, water, and bone. Actually, my InBody scans revealed increases in muscle mass while also showing fat loss.

In the end, I am grateful for the support of my clinic and amazing healthcare professionals, and for having this GLP-1 experience. It did help rid my body of inflammation and as a result, reduce my pain while allowing cortisol levels to become more manageable. It also completely controlled my appetite and eliminated “food noise” altogether (which I personally, believe are the two reasons that many people continue to use this medication even if they have very minimal weight loss results.) However, if I had to rely on it for weight loss alone, I think I would be severely disappointed.

The Reality of GLP-1 Weight Loss: What I Learned

While there are many people experiencing great success using this medication, there are also those who do not. Listening to others who have spent a year or more using a GLP-1 only to lose a very marginal amount of weight was disheartening, especially given the exorbitant expense that many have to pay out-of-pocket. Moreover, so was having to see so many women in these online groups post side-by-side selfies asking if others could tell whether or not their weight loss was noticeable. It broke my heart. I knew that the reason it was hard for them to tell was because of their lost muscle and not their stored fat. Fat burn has a recomposition effect to it that other weight loss processes just do not achieve. Now, that’s a side effect that I can get on board with! If you want to see the scale change then lose weight. If you want to see your body change then lose fat.

Finding What Works Best for Your Health

No, I don’t think that GLP-1s are the end-all-be-all that they are hyped up to be for everyone. Weight loss is actually more nuanced than that and can be highly individualized when you have biomarkers for different health concerns. However, I do think that GLP-1s work incredibly well for those with metabolic issues who need this therapy and I am happy that the medical community continues to make them available for those who need them. There is absolutely no judgment intended in this blog for those who choose or continue a path of medical weight loss. If you are pursuing better health, then my pom-poms are in the air for you (I’m still working on fitting into that little skirt!)

What I am sure of is that SkinnyBox® is a game-changer! Burning stored fat, while enjoying delicious, affordable, and perfectly portioned nutrition (that you don’t have to think about – whew, somebody say, amen!) just simply works. Whether by itself or paired with another tool, there is nothing like this program – which is exactly what I knew two years ago when it changed my life.

*As always, this is only my personal experience and should not be used in any way as medical advice. I am not a medical professional. Please consult your doctor before beginning any therapies or programs mentioned in this blog.

Until next time, remember…you be good to you!