The Walking Stick Isn't Climbing the Mountain

Imagine you're climbing a mountain. You've got a heavy backpack on your shoulders, and the climb is steep. Someone hands you a walking stick. Something to help distribute the weight, to give you better balance, to make each step a little easier. You take it. And then someone else looks at you and says you're cheating. That's the conversation happening right now around GLP-1s.

The "cheating" accusation comes up constantly. People see someone losing weight on a GLP-1 and assume they're taking a shortcut, that they're not really doing the work. But that misses the whole point. The walking stick doesn't climb the mountain for you. You're still putting in the effort, still making the ascent, still taking every step. The stick just makes it possible to climb without your legs giving out halfway up.

So why does this narrative persist? More than anything, it can feel like another way to bully people. When someone tells you that getting healthier is cheating, that's what it lands as. People who've never dealt with serious food noise don't understand what it's like. Before GLP-1s, a free doughnut in the office kitchen meant talking myself out of it twenty times a day. Every time I walked past it, the negotiation started over. Now I might have that argument once, and then it goes quiet. It feels like freedom.

When people tell me using a GLP-1 is cheating compared to diet and exercise alone, I ask them where they draw the line. Is taking creatine cheating? Is drinking protein powder cheating? Is taking a multivitamin cheating? We don't call any of those things cheating. We call them tools. So why is medication treated differently?

Everyone's different. Your food noise is probably different from mine. The level that a GLP-1 helps depends on how loud it was to begin with. For me, it was loud. Really loud. For someone who doesn't have that problem, telling me how to handle mine doesn't make sense. As long as it's working for you and it's bettering your life, that should matter more than anyone else's opinion.

Here's what I know: willpower isn't infinite. Decision fatigue is real. When you're making the same decision twenty times a day, you burn out. A GLP-1 can quiet the food noise, which means you might only have to make that decision once instead of twenty times. That's not weakness. That's using a tool to conserve your mental energy for things that actually matter.

If someone's hesitant to start a GLP-1 because they're worried about what others will think, my first answer is simple: it's none of their business. If you don't want them to know, don't tell them. But if it's someone close to you, someone you live with or can't hide it from, I'd think deeply about that relationship. If you can't be honest about trying to get healthier, if they can't see your health journey as a win for you, that tells you something important about that person.

When someone asks if GLP-1s are just the easy way out, here's my answer: I still have to eat right. I still have to hit my protein goals. I still have to work out. I still have to drink water and take care of myself. The GLP-1 isn't doing any of that for me. It's just making it easier to do those things by quieting the food noise. It's a walking stick. It's not climbing the mountain. You are. The stick just helps you climb without falling.