A few months ago, I stood on the scale and it read 199. For the first time since high school, my weight began with a one. I stepped off, stepped back on. It was still 199. I didn’t cry, cheer or take a photo. I just stood there, blinking down at the number.
Being under 200 means something, but also nothing. It’s a milestone I thought would glow brighter than it does. A part of me thought the world would feel different, but really the world is the same. I am the one who feels different.
Here’s the thing: I’ve been on Ozempic, then on Mounjaro, and now I’m off both. Not because I wanted to stop, but because I couldn’t afford to keep going. These drugs are expensive. While generic versions of semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, are now on the horizon, with Canadian companies allowed to make them as of Jan. 5, it remains unclear exactly when these will hit pharmacy shelves or how much relief they will actually offer my bank account.
Beyond the cost, taking these medications is complicated. The public conversation likes to reduce GLP-1s to headlines and hashtags: the miracle of modern medicine, the celebrity shortcut, the latest threat to body positivity. But none of those capture what it’s like to live inside your body while the numbers drop, or what it’s like when they stop.
I first started Ozempic in February 2024 after a high cholesterol, prediabetic health warning spooked me more than I admitted at the time. I didn’t expect to feel a new relationship with hunger overnight, but the gnawing urgency that used to hum in the background of my mind just went quiet. Food became something I remembered to do, like taking out the garbage or paying a bill. I wasn’t hungry, I just ate because I knew I should.
Meals became shorter, grocery runs became smaller. The rhythm of my days shifted. I used to plan around cravings, comforting late-night snacks, and boredom- or stress-relieving treats. Suddenly, there was space where desire for food used to be.
Then Mounjaro entered the picture: stronger, steadier and somehow scarier. I’d read online that it worked much faster than Ozempic, and I would soon find that to be true. Almost overnight, my hunger disappeared, and I wasn’t sure where my willpower over when and what I wanted to eat ended, and the drug began. The key point, though, was that it was more affordable. My insurance still wouldn’t cover any of the cost, but out of pocket was below $500 per pen, which lasted a month.
The pounds dropped faster. Everything about my life felt like it was shrinking: my body, my appetite. The only thing growing was my uneasy pride as I got smaller; a kind of reluctant joy tied to looking slimmer that I couldn’t deny, followed by immediate guilt on behalf of my past self.
I’m learning that weight loss doesn’t just change your body, it changes the way you move through the world. When I catch my reflection in a window, it startles me. Clothes fit differently. I think about bridesmaid dress shopping in September 2022, smiling for photos in a gown that wouldn’t zip up, pretending it didn’t matter that my size wasn’t available. It wasn’t my first time as a bridesmaid but it was my first time in that particular boutique, and in the end, I couldn’t get the dress I wanted from the shop the bride had chosen.
When I returned to the same store in August 2025, every dress I tried on fit. Both visits looked nearly identical — the same mirrors, the same soft lighting, the same gorgeous dresses — yet the experience couldn’t have felt more different. I do love the dress I bought this time, but there’s a sadness in realizing how much more effortless everything feels, just because I take up less space.
People looked at me differently too. Strangers pay more attention to me. The lost pounds helped me shed the invisibility that can come from living in a fat body — you blend in to your surroundings, while also feeling like you stick out. Acquaintances look at me longer, as if seeing me for the first time. Friends treat me like I’ve unlocked a secret.
Compliments feel like a trick. When someone says, “You look amazing,” I don’t know how to hold it. I don’t know what they are seeing: Is it me, or just the absence of what I used to be?
Sometimes it’s confusing. Sometimes it feels like grief.
I grieve the body that was mine for so long, even as I celebrate this new one. I have always been confident in whatever body I’m living in, even on the lowest day, and I dislike that I am openly more celebrated and accepted at this size.
Insurance never covered any of the medication. When I went to the pharmacy for a Mounjaro refill, I was told that since the dose increases as your body becomes adjusted to the drug, a month’s supply would cost just under a thousand dollars. I stood there doing the math in my head, realizing my body’s next chapter wasn’t up to me anymore.
Without the injections, the hunger has come back. Not all at once, but enough to remind me that my body has always known how to ask for what it needs. The question is, do I trust myself to respond?
I have to relearn what fullness means, how to pay attention to what feels like enough. How to eat because I want to, not just because I should. It’s like trying to speak a language I used to speak fluently but can no longer recall. The words are there, but I’m out of practice.
At every meal, the back of my mind reminds me that my blood charts are better and my BMI number — mythical as it is — is lower, and doctors say that is a good thing for my health. It cost a lot of money to get here. If I binge-eat after a long day at work, was that all a waste? When I cook now, I measure oil too carefully, think about protein before pleasure. I catch myself scanning recipes for calories instead of flavour. Even grocery shopping feels different. I reach for the things I used to love — pasta, bread, cheese — and wonder if they still belong to me. I’m trying to relearn how to make food about nourishment and comfort, not control.
Most stories about Ozempic and Mounjaro are obsessed with the extremes: The miracle and the disaster; the before and after; the side effects (which I didn’t have). But no one talks about the small daily adjustments, the private negotiations, the quiet unravelling of habits and the slow stitching together of new ones.
No one talks about how it feels to be congratulated for being less than you were. How silence around your body suddenly becomes noise. Or how lonely it is to be living a story that everyone thinks they already know.
I find myself wondering if I’d go back once those more affordable generic medications become available. Honestly, I think I would. Despite the guilt and the weirdness, the positives — the surge in energy, the quieted mind, the sheer physical ease — outweighed the negatives for me. It’s strange knowing that the only thing truly standing between me and the version of myself I felt best in is a price tag.
So here I am, under 200 pounds for the first time in my adult life. That is a fact, but the truth is more complicated. Maybe this is the real story. It’s not a miracle, not a disaster, but a journey to becoming someone who can live in a body that is both lighter and heavier at once.
