<\/p>\n
Perri is a 34-year-old New Yorker who started a GLP-1 in 2023 to reclaim her life. This is her story in her own words.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThe battery must be dead.\u201d That\u2019s what I thought the first time my Amazon scale couldn\u2019t register my weight.<\/p>\n At five feet three inches tall, I weighed more than 400 pounds, which I confirmed after purchasing a medical-grade scale. I didn\u2019t recognize myself in the mirror. Even worse I didn\u2019t recognize my life. Seeing the number was one thing, but the lived experience\u2014being unable to tie my shoes or walk a block without becoming winded\u2014was something entirely different.<\/p>\n I was 31 years old and beyond the point of no return, I thought. My flag wasn\u2019t just planted at rock bottom; it was cemented. Then, in April 2023, I decided to make a change. I started a GLP-1, a type of medication that aids weight loss, in part by causing food to move through the body more slowly and increasing fullness. Within days of my first injection, the screeching food noise that had always plagued me became a faint whisper. I hadn\u2019t even worked my way up to a therapeutic dose yet, but I could feel the tides shifting. After treading water my entire life, I was finally learning how to swim.<\/p>\n I first became aware of my weight as a child, standing on the scale at the pediatrician\u2019s office. I was eight years old\u2014maybe younger. In that moment I realized I wasn\u2019t just a girl who loved tennis and softball. My identity and personhood could also be tethered to a body and a number, one that would fluctuate but somehow remain an enemy throughout my life. When I look at photos from that time, I see a perfectly normal kid, yet I was treated differently. I\u2019ll never forget how, at family events, I was handed salads while my cousins were served burgers.<\/p>\n This experience, and others like it, planted seeds of shame about my weight that, as I grew up, blossomed into a thorny and distorted relationship with food. I tried every diet and weight-loss program out there: the Master Cleanse (you know, the lemon juice, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper concoction endorsed by Beyonc\u00e9), Jenny Craig, and the like. In fact, it was Weight Watchers that (inadvertently) taught me to binge eat as a pre-teen; I would starve myself the two days before weigh-ins. After that my cravings would explode, and I\u2019d overeat. The cycle would continue week after week. Similarly, after losing 80 pounds on a paleo diet, the weight all came back once I could no longer avoid the lure of grains and sugar. I had traded reckless excess for reckless restriction, and it was completely unsustainable. The pervasive stereotype that plagues folks in larger bodies is that fast food and ultra-processed foods are to blame. But it became clear that I had an issue with bingeing. No matter what diet I tried, I wound up overeating\u2014even \u201cclean\u201d foods like grilled chicken and sweet potatoes.<\/p>\n During the pandemic my life took a turn for the worse. As the world began social distancing, I fell into isolation. My apartment folded in on itself\u2014my bed was my home. The food noise in my head grew louder, and my binging worsened. I found myself at my unhealthiest and most miserable. I ordered nearly everything I ate. After all, I could barely clean my apartment without becoming breathless; I couldn\u2019t even imagine going to the grocery store. I either stayed home or at my parents\u2019 house. Those were the only places I felt safe. My personal life atrophied because the shame I felt about my health weighed so heavily on my shoulders. I completely withdrew from the world. I lost friendships because I didn\u2019t have the capacity to show up beyond a phone call or text.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Perri is a 34-year-old New Yorker who started a GLP-1 in 2023 to reclaim her life. This is her story in her own words. \u201cThe battery must be dead.\u201d That\u2019s what I thought the first time my Amazon scale couldn\u2019t register my weight. At five feet three inches tall, I weighed more than 400 pounds, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1091,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beauty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Reaching my breaking point<\/h2>\n