This is part three of a three-part series documenting one woman’s experience taking a weight loss drug. Catch up on the first two parts here, Part 1: Holy Shit, I Love This and A Month of Mounjaro, Part 2: Oh Shit, This Is Bad.
After three weeks on Mounjaro and a quick 12 pounds of weight loss, I was unable to sit up to work at my computer just a few feet away from my bed. I could barely manage making dinner for my family. I felt like I was going to scare my teens to death with my incapacitation. I was terrified myself because I could no longer eat anything at all. In what might have been a fabrication of my own brain desperate for help, I was overwhelmed by the sensation that my body was consuming my muscles to stay alive. I feared it was drifting closer and closer to shutting down completely.
My doctor hadn’t seemed terribly concerned when I called to tell him about the whole body muscle weakness. The urgent care doctor I went to see saw no issues with a perfectly healthy woman being unable to eat or continue her normal daily activities. Neither one of them suggested that I stop taking Mounjaro, but that was the obvious answer to me.
When I left urgent care, I pushed myself to walk the one mile to my apartment. I’d taken a cab there but wanted to prove to myself that I could make it home. I wasn’t going to give up and let my body waste away. I was going to take back control of my brain and my body starting now. The doctors shouldn’t have brushed me off, and I wasn’t going to let their lack of concern soothe me. No amount of weight loss was worth becoming bedridden. If this horrific feeling was just a “phase” that all people pass through when they’re on one of these drugs, it wasn’t one that I had the luxury to endure. I had to work for a living. I had kids to solo-parent. I had a life to enjoy. As I slowly plodded my way home in the late afternoon sun, I decided I was not going to inject that last pens-worth of Mounjaro sitting in my refrigerator.
It was a Tuesday, 72 hours after my last dose. If I hadn’t ruined my body forever by giving myself stomach paralysis—which was a distinct fear—I should start feeling better by Thursday. Tirzepatide, the active drug in Mounjaro, has a half-life of five days; in other words, half of it would be out of my body by then. Over the past few weeks, Thursday was the day I’d start to become aware of food again. A thought as simple as I should probably eat something, would pop into my head in a very normal way; in a way that I’d never paid any attention to my whole life.
If my math was right, after a month I would be Mounjaro-free and feel like myself again. But on Wednesday morning I couldn’t get out of bed. I woke to a nightstand covered in electrolyte drinks, water bottles, pre-packaged protein shakes, and straws that I thought could help get nutrients into me one sip at a time. I called out of work for the rest of the week. I let my kids get themselves off to school again, and by the time I slowly swung my legs out of my bed, it was mid-morning. Well, shit. Today was no better than yesterday. I’d just have to persuade as many liquid calories into me as I could and hold out hope for tomorrow.
On Thursday afternoon, when I felt that tiny acid-like awakening in my stomach and had the thought, I could eat something, I nearly cried. If I were the praying type, I would have dropped down on my knees and thanked the stars for letting this part of my humanity return. But instead, I quickly scrambled two eggs before the feeling passed. I nearly ate the whole plate. And that’s it. That’s how I re-entered the world of The Eating. My stomach wasn’t permanently paralyzed and I knew I’d get back to normal again. It was only a matter of time.
I spent the next few days gently upping the amount of food on my plate each meal: from a couple bites of yogurt to 4 oz; from a quarter piece of a chicken breast to a half; from a few tablespoons of rice to a half cup. By the next Friday, I wanted a slice of cheese pizza from our usual spot with my kids. It felt achingly normal.
A part of my rat brain knew that the way Mounjaro made me eat—or rather not eat—was disordered. But in the beginning, it felt like something I could get used to. I wrote about how very happy I was to be “beyond food” (as naive a thought as there could be, in retrospect). I’d had a massive disconnect between feeling like I didn’t need food anymore and the straight up fact that I actually did. I don’t know how to explain the cognitive dissonance but once I felt like I was dying, I snapped out of it.
Having doctors prescribe drugs like Mounjaro fairly wantonly—without any blood tests for glucose levels or anything else—made it feel like there wasn’t really any danger. Not being able to eat at all is not one of the side effects listed on the drug pamphlet. All those happy commercials and celebrity “after” pictures made it seem so very easy. The only hurdle was the price, or so it seemed, and I got my first month for free. My deep dissatisfaction with my own body and the desperate desire for it to look like it did when I was younger, or like someone else entirely, was all the motivation I needed.
I don’t blame doctors for prescribing drugs for weight loss, even as casually as they seem to be doing so. It makes a lot of sense for a lot of people. I’m sad that using Mounjaro went badly for me and that I’m stuck with the body I have. If you cringed at the word “stuck” in that sentence, don’t worry, I did too. It’s a loaded word that exposes the wound inside of me. But that’s what it feels like. I feel like I was dealt a bad hand and I’m constantly trying to make the best play with a total shit deck. Some of us eat right and exercise and it will never make a difference. Some of us need drugs to be the kind of “normal” we’re told is acceptable by society. I still wish I could be one of those people for whom the drugs worked without complication.
If I stuck to the schedule, I should have taken the fourth and final shot of my box of Mounjaro the Saturday after I was able to eat again. Despite what I’d just been through, feeling like I was wasting away and unable to down a single meal, I laid in bed thinking longingly of that last dose like an addict jonesing for a fix. Should I take one last hit? Maybe it’ll drop me another 5 pounds and then I’d be done forever? Could I afford another week of not working just to get a little thinner? I rolled my Mounjaro-fueled weight around in my head not wanting to lose this new number, which I inevitably would when I stopped. Watching the numbers on the scale go down had felt so good and I wanted more.
I didn’t take that final shot. I decided to be kind to my body instead. Trying to make peace with this body of mine has never been easy. I’ve felt betrayed by it since puberty when fat started collecting at my hips and thighs, and breasts that only ever attracted unwanted attention willed themselves through my clothes. I’ve never understood body positivity. I get it in theory and am happy others can embrace their bodies. But I haven’t loved this body of mine. I haven’t even respected it for carrying me through this life.
This traumatic experience has pushed me toward being kind to it and maybe even appreciating it a bit, though. Baby steps. Losing the ability to function on my normal level of cooking and cleaning and parenting and working and exercising truly made me yearn to do those simple things again. Because as it turns out, 47-year-old me is entirely capable, healthy, and active. I was much less so when I was younger. My diet was trash. I barely did any physical exercise outside of commuting to work. Twenty-something me couldn’t do push-ups. My anxiety was off the charts. I cared deeply about what people thought of me. Now? I don’t care even a little bit. And with Monjouro out of my system, I am truly elated that I can do all my normal things again.
I heard something about aging the other day that gave me hope: The 40s are the decade when women decide they don’t care what other people think. But in their 50s, women finally accept themselves. My 50s aren’t that far away. Perhaps when they come, I’ll learn to accept my body. And maybe by then I’ll finally have thrown away that last injection sitting in my fridge.
Postscript: If you missed the first two parts of this experience, you can read them here, Part 1: Holy Shit, I Love This and A Month of Mounjaro, Part 2: Oh Shit, This Is Bad.
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Lili Zarghami lives with her teenagers in Brooklyn. She’s been writing for and providing editorial direction at women’s websites like Redbook, HGTV, Better Homes & Gardens and more since the turn of the century. She can remember the addresses of all the places she was a latchkey kid but has no idea what her email password is.
