Today I Got a Glimpse of How It Feels to Be Normal Again

Purpletree

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Okay, I need to start with some context: luck has never been on my side. I'm also short — 161cm — and I grew up in a very poor household where there wasn't much food. Because of that, whenever food appeared I ate it, whether I was hungry or not. On top of that, my father would eat food that was meant for my sister and me, which meant we ended up eating more than we needed. I also had intense food noise, especially since I gave birth nearly 5 years ago.

Before I started tirz, I was completely certain that the route to being fit, skinny, and everything else I wanted was to tally every single calorie. I'd been doing that for about the last 4 ish years, to the point where I could roughly count calories in a food just by assessing what was in it. And since awful food noise was something I dealt with, I was well aware of the reason I wasn't losing weight: my daily eating included 2-3000kcals worth of binges.

That's why I'm utterly fed up with counting calories. I know I should keep doing it, but it sets me off. Now that the food noise has finally quieted, I can actually live without tracking every bite. I still do the math in my head, but it's nothing like the obsessive way I did before tirz. Today I had a huge AHA! Moment. I asked my husband — 194cm/99kgs, someone who has stayed fit all his life — why he doesn't constantly think about food or what he'll eat next. He told me that once he's full, he can be offered pizza or dessert and he'll turn it down, because if he isn't physically hungry, he won't eat it. I was stunned. I remember, back before tirz, eating huge amounts of ANYTHING until I felt sick, then 20 minutes later opening the fridge for another snack. Apparently their minds just don't work like that??? He can be full from some boring meal, be offered KFC, and say no simply because he just ate???? Lol my flabbers were gasted….

Anyway… I feel that way now too, so right now I have the luxury of not weighing or counting my calories. I realize some people get this by default… for free… and I'm honestly surprised and a bit jealous haha. I just love being normal. I also know obesity is a disease that needs lifetime support to prevent relapse, and I'm gradually accepting that I'll never stop this stuff ever again. I'll be on it for the rest of my life. I'm only 26, so I like to think that will be a long time (hopefully, lol), and it makes me feel at peace with myself.
 
Purpletree said:

Okay, I need to start with some context: luck has never been on my side. I'm also short — 161cm — and I grew up in a very poor household where there wasn't much food. Because of that, whenever food appeared I ate it, whether I was hungry or not. On top of that, my father would eat food that was meant for my sister and me, which meant we ended up eating more than we needed. I also had intense food noise, especially since I gave birth nearly 5 years ago.

Before I started tirz, I was completely certain that the route to being fit, skinny, and everything else I wanted was to tally every single calorie. I'd been doing that for about the last 4 ish years, to the point where I could roughly count calories in a food just by assessing what was in it. And since awful food noise was something I dealt with, I was well aware of the reason I wasn't losing weight: my daily eating included 2-3000kcals worth of binges.

That's why I'm utterly fed up with counting calories. I know I should keep doing it, but it sets me off. Now that the food noise has finally quieted, I can actually live without tracking every bite. I still do the math in my head, but it's nothing like the obsessive way I did before tirz. Today I had a huge AHA! Moment. I asked my husband — 194cm/99kgs, someone who has stayed fit all his life — why he doesn't constantly think about food or what he'll eat next. He told me that once he's full, he can be offered pizza or dessert and he'll turn it down, because if he isn't physically hungry, he won't eat it. I was stunned. I remember, back before tirz, eating huge amounts of ANYTHING until I felt sick, then 20 minutes later opening the fridge for another snack. Apparently their minds just don't work like that??? He can be full from some boring meal, be offered KFC, and say no simply because he just ate???? Lol my flabbers were gasted….

Anyway… I feel that way now too, so right now I have the luxury of not weighing or counting my calories. I realize some people get this by default… for free… and I'm honestly surprised and a bit jealous haha. I just love being normal. I also know obesity is a disease that needs lifetime support to prevent relapse, and I'm gradually accepting that I'll never stop this stuff ever again. I'll be on it for the rest of my life. I'm only 26, so I like to think that will be a long time (hopefully, lol), and it makes me feel at peace with myself.
Counting, restricting, and logging just don’t work for me—there are a number of reasons why. What suits me better is understanding what nutrition actually sits inside different foods, and which options fit my own “needs” (crunchy, chewy, creamy, savory/umami, salty, cold, warm, protein-y, possibly even acceptably sweet, etc.) more effectively than the alternatives. Tirzepatide quiets the background clutter so I can pay attention to that, and to whether the signal is hunger or thirst (water, tea, or vegetables with a high water content come to the rescue).

Another thing I’ll never grasp is how, for some people, an effective mode of action centers on being physically full (gastric emptying that is slower). Being full never prevented me from eating more when I wanted to, and on tirzepatide that remains true.

My assumption is that tirz/reta (or a superior option once it appears) will be part of my life permanently, and needing that isn’t shocking. As long as the root cause of the global obesity epidemic remains unknown—one that spread year by year across states in the USA and then through much of the world starting in the 1980s, affecting many but not everyone, and that appears to inflict permanent harm on the body in a way that lifestyle-modification generally cannot remedy over the long term—these stopgap medications are the best available for those with metabolic syndrome.

My hope is that future generations will be able to dodge metabolic syndrome entirely, once the cause has been found.
 
For ages, the phrase 'calories in, calories out' has been repeated until it feels stitched into our thinking.

If that really were the whole story, then a person could eat sensible meals for seven days and see several pounds of fat disappear. We all know packing on a few pounds in one week is possible, so why doesn't dropping them happen at the same speed?

What actually happens is that many people develop insulin resistance. Once that occurs, the body's ability to shed weight is either partly or completely impaired, while its ability to store weight becomes stronger. This is a fundamental biological feature of insulin resistance: gaining is easier, losing is harder.

Then throw 'food noise' into the equation, and instructing someone to drop weight is no different from telling an addict to simply 'willpower' themselves free of addiction. They face unending mental strain and nonstop biological pushback.

I witnessed this myself with my primary care physician (PCP). That doctor claimed I required no testing and no assistance to lose weight. In their view, the only missing ingredient was willpower. 'Just try harder.'

Later, bloodwork ordered by a different doctor showed my labs were not good. I had a severe clinical Vitamin D deficiency. Other nutritional markers were low enough to hover barely above the lowest acceptable limit.

Much time has gone by since then, and I now understand that I was fully insulin resistant and beginning a well-documented path of metabolic dysfunction. My pancreas was releasing insulin at levels multiple times higher than normal, exhausting itself in the process. Because of complications I won't go into here, I am certain I had no more than a year before I would crash and present as a full Type 2 diabetic.

The sole treatment plan my PCP gave me was 'Just willpower it out. I know you can do it!'

So I sought better guidance and reversed course. Before I began a GLP-1 medication, I did manage to lose 20 pounds. That process was awful. I starved myself to make it happen, and my bloodwork showed the toll. Earlier, when I asked that first PCP for help, the answer was, 'You don't need lab work for your lack of energy. You're just out of shape.'

'Oh, you're tired and exhausted? Well, get to the gym more.' That was the full medical guidance I received for my lack of energy.

When you look into the cycle the body becomes stuck in during metabolic dysfunction, two lessons emerge. One, a GLP-1 is an ideal instrument for making a temporary opening in that cycle. Two, whatever you do once that cycle is interrupted is completely your choice.

Bringing this back to your original post: having a more normal body feels wonderful. Considerable time has gone by. The metabolic resistance and insulin resistance have vanished. If I slip up, I can gain two pounds, yet I can immediately turn around and lose those same two pounds. If this is what normal means, I am thrilled by it. Even back in my twenties, shedding fat demanded ten times the effort that gaining it did. These days, when I eat properly, the weight drops away. It seems like magic. Honestly, I enjoy it.

Still, recovering from the poor nutritional state I was in will take more than a year. I am reluctantly accepting that I will hit my ideal body weight before my body has fully healed from this nutritional deficit.

Micronutrient deficiencies—the clinical face of malnutrition—are frightening, and they can leave behind nearly more problems than the weight gain did. Even now, I still hear some food noise, but based on other people's accounts, mine is far less severe than most. I remain hopeful that I can eventually taper off the GLP-1. People dealing with severe food noise might not have that choice.

Do not allow an obsession with calorie counting to take over your mind. Nutrition is the part that genuinely counts, and that is why I wanted to pass this along.

Right now, I have to record everything to guarantee my daily nutrition stays balanced. In practice, if a nutrient has an RDA (Recommended Dietary Allowance), I keep close track of it. I have learned that protein-to-carb-to-fat ratios matter, but the actual calorie count carries almost no weight for me at this point. I need to keep my vitamins in the upper ranges, and I monitor my minerals carefully. Potassium, I will admit, is extremely hard to get right. I could talk about nutrition for hours; I am so far down that rabbit hole that I can debate the tiniest details.

A goal of mine is to make these healthy eating habits so automatic that I no longer need to log my food. It will be great to glance at a meal and just know it is a good choice. At the moment, I can do that only with a handful of familiar items, but I keep learning and improving daily.

I don't think this counting will last forever, but it strikes me that you have two possible paths, particularly because you can already tell whether the food in front of you is a good or bad calorie choice. You can either move away from intense calorie tracking and rely on your instincts, or you can push it further. Pushing further means weighing your food and recording it. You can feed those logs into an AI and ask it to review your meals the way a nutritionist would, so you can improve your meal planning.

Ask it to examine far more than calories. At this point, calories are the least significant factor. Concentrate on macro balance, vitamins, and minerals. I even roughly track my amino acids, which showed my diet was low in glycine. Fixing my magnesium and glycine levels led to a major improvement in my tracked sleep statistics. This is not merely a subjective sense of sleeping better—my technology actually shows better sleep scores. Honestly, without technology, I would have no idea what was happening.

Eventually, I will reach a point where I can make good meals entirely on instinct. When that day arrives, I will gladly leave my food-tracking days behind.

I cannot say what the right answer is for you. I simply hear your frustration that you have ridden the calorie train all the way to the end, and there is nothing new left on the journey. I wanted to give you some alternatives.

If you choose to track your nutrition deeply, treat it like a long cruise: you do not intend to live there permanently; you only want to attend the seminars and absorb everything you can before going home. And when you disembark, you should absolutely leave the calorie counter on the cruise ship.
 
Around 10 weeks back, I contracted Cyclospora while I had already spent nearly two years on a GLP-1. That infection sent me to the hospital, where I was diagnosed with an ileus. For roughly seven weeks I was truly ill. I have been recovered for about three weeks now, yet I have not gone back on my GLP-1.

Honestly, I had lost touch with this sensation..... The relentless hunger. The mental chatter, the way food keeps tugging at you. It wears you down. It has also shown me how huge a shift had happened in my life simply because that constant barrage was under control.

To anyone who hasn't known the other side, this must sound utterly unremarkable.

With some of us, the issue isn't merely knowing the right foods or summoning sufficient willpower. That unending mental pull can be enormously draining.

So when you call it a luxury to simply live without weighing and counting every single thing, I understand completely. Right now I feel that missing piece very sharply. And honestly, I can't wait to return to that state of just being… normal with food.
 
My own story shares some common ground. I've struggled with obesity my whole life, tried numerous diets, and reached a normal weight several times, yet always regained it. During 2022-23, I dropped from 145kg down to 75kg by following a diet extremely high in protein, with low caloric density, minimal fat, and no high glycemic index carbs, rich foods, calorie-dense items, or addictive foods. I consumed 1600-1800 kcal per day, but after about a year, weight loss halted despite the same intake. This happened before I began GLP's. I clearly had serious issues with food addiction and binge eating. For me, completely avoiding high-calorie or rich foods was effective in managing binge eating, because even tiny portions of rich food would set off a binge: an hour or two later I'd be ravenously hungry, and controlling my eating became nearly impossible. This issue tended to be far worse after I lost weight. It was a rather extreme approach, but it did succeed, and avoiding trigger foods had to be total.

The reason I bring this up is that I doubt calorie counting is viable long-term; it ultimately becomes too draining to keep up indefinitely, particularly following weight loss when hunger increases. Instead, changing what you eat—not how much—can be effective, since it's less tiring and manages hunger more effectively, especially the high-protein and low-calorie-density aspects. For me, that meant completely steering clear of highly rewarding or high-calorie foods for a period of several years to keep binging in check. This approach alone did work, but absent GLP's, I don't believe even that could be sustained over the long haul.

I maintained that weight for a year, then began low-dose ozempic for another year, and a year ago switched to tirz/reta, losing roughly another 13kg to reach 64kg. Even with a diet tailored to curb hunger and binging, without the GLP drugs I remained hungry, stuck in a dilemma: either be constantly hungry or be overweight. But by then obesity had given me health issues, and regaining weight could have serious repercussions. Fortunately, the GLP drugs greatly reduced hunger, cravings, and allowed me to feel full on far less food. Right now I'm testing whether I still need to be so rigid about food choices to manage hunger. So far, on my current fairly high doses of tirz15/reta6/cagri0.5/week, my appetite seems to regulate and keep my weight steady regardless of what I eat—like someone naturally thin, which I never thought possible. I am, however, still keeping protein at 50% of calories.
 
Congratulations — I'm with you, this has to be what normal feels like! Nothing gets counted, you eat sensibly, you have the odd "bad thing" in tiny amounts, and the weight comes off and then stays off.
 
Purpletree said:

Okay, I need to start with some context: luck has never been on my side. I'm also short — 161cm — and I grew up in a very poor household where there wasn't much food. Because of that, whenever food appeared I ate it, whether I was hungry or not. On top of that, my father would eat food that was meant for my sister and me, which meant we ended up eating more than we needed. I also had intense food noise, especially since I gave birth nearly 5 years ago.

Before I started tirz, I was completely certain that the route to being fit, skinny, and everything else I wanted was to tally every single calorie. I'd been doing that for about the last 4 ish years, to the point where I could roughly count calories in a food just by assessing what was in it. And since awful food noise was something I dealt with, I was well aware of the reason I wasn't losing weight: my daily eating included 2-3000kcals worth of binges.

That's why I'm utterly fed up with counting calories. I know I should keep doing it, but it sets me off. Now that the food noise has finally quieted, I can actually live without tracking every bite. I still do the math in my head, but it's nothing like the obsessive way I did before tirz. Today I had a huge AHA! Moment. I asked my husband — 194cm/99kgs, someone who has stayed fit all his life — why he doesn't constantly think about food or what he'll eat next. He told me that once he's full, he can be offered pizza or dessert and he'll turn it down, because if he isn't physically hungry, he won't eat it. I was stunned. I remember, back before tirz, eating huge amounts of ANYTHING until I felt sick, then 20 minutes later opening the fridge for another snack. Apparently their minds just don't work like that??? He can be full from some boring meal, be offered KFC, and say no simply because he just ate???? Lol my flabbers were gasted….

Anyway… I feel that way now too, so right now I have the luxury of not weighing or counting my calories. I realize some people get this by default… for free… and I'm honestly surprised and a bit jealous haha. I just love being normal. I also know obesity is a disease that needs lifetime support to prevent relapse, and I'm gradually accepting that I'll never stop this stuff ever again. I'll be on it for the rest of my life. I'm only 26, so I like to think that will be a long time (hopefully, lol), and it makes me feel at peace with myself.

Purpletree said:

Okay, I need to start with some context: luck has never been on my side. I'm also short — 161cm — and I grew up in a very poor household where there wasn't much food. Because of that, whenever food appeared I ate it, whether I was hungry or not. On top of that, my father would eat food that was meant for my sister and me, which meant we ended up eating more than we needed. I also had intense food noise, especially since I gave birth nearly 5 years ago.

Before I started tirz, I was completely certain that the route to being fit, skinny, and everything else I wanted was to tally every single calorie. I'd been doing that for about the last 4 ish years, to the point where I could roughly count calories in a food just by assessing what was in it. And since awful food noise was something I dealt with, I was well aware of the reason I wasn't losing weight: my daily eating included 2-3000kcals worth of binges.

That's why I'm utterly fed up with counting calories. I know I should keep doing it, but it sets me off. Now that the food noise has finally quieted, I can actually live without tracking every bite. I still do the math in my head, but it's nothing like the obsessive way I did before tirz. Today I had a huge AHA! Moment. I asked my husband — 194cm/99kgs, someone who has stayed fit all his life — why he doesn't constantly think about food or what he'll eat next. He told me that once he's full, he can be offered pizza or dessert and he'll turn it down, because if he isn't physically hungry, he won't eat it. I was stunned. I remember, back before tirz, eating huge amounts of ANYTHING until I felt sick, then 20 minutes later opening the fridge for another snack. Apparently their minds just don't work like that??? He can be full from some boring meal, be offered KFC, and say no simply because he just ate???? Lol my flabbers were gasted….

Anyway… I feel that way now too, so right now I have the luxury of not weighing or counting my calories. I realize some people get this by default… for free… and I'm honestly surprised and a bit jealous haha. I just love being normal. I also know obesity is a disease that needs lifetime support to prevent relapse, and I'm gradually accepting that I'll never stop this stuff ever again. I'll be on it for the rest of my life. I'm only 26, so I like to think that will be a long time (hopefully, lol), and it makes me feel at peace with myself.

The way you describe your history and where you are now mirrors my own so closely, even including what childhood was like. I stand at 155 cm. Until I began taking GLPs, feeling full was something that essentially only happened after a holiday meal. It wasn’t that constant hunger ruled me; rather, my body lacked an off switch, and satiety never arrived. For the initial months of GLP medication I kept counting calories out of routine, and then one day I simply quit. That was profoundly liberating and took away a layer of pressure I hadn’t genuinely registered as constantly simmering underneath while I meticulously weighed and logged each bite I consumed.
 
Declining food at the table is an odd sensation for me. What matters most is that the pre-bed late-night hunger is gone; as a night owl, that used to be brutal for many years.

With a whole lifetime spent in ongoing diet fatigue and repeated setbacks, the feeling of being normal strikes me as unfamiliar.
 
Ah, crap—maybe I’m in trouble. I’m still tallying calories, though the amount I have to manage is smaller, and I don’t spend all my time feeling awful. If I ever reach my goal weight and stop lowering it, perhaps that will shift.
 
Purpletree said:

Okay, I need to start with some context: luck has never been on my side. I'm also short — 161cm — and I grew up in a very poor household where there wasn't much food. Because of that, whenever food appeared I ate it, whether I was hungry or not. On top of that, my father would eat food that was meant for my sister and me, which meant we ended up eating more than we needed. I also had intense food noise, especially since I gave birth nearly 5 years ago.

Before I started tirz, I was completely certain that the route to being fit, skinny, and everything else I wanted was to tally every single calorie. I'd been doing that for about the last 4 ish years, to the point where I could roughly count calories in a food just by assessing what was in it. And since awful food noise was something I dealt with, I was well aware of the reason I wasn't losing weight: my daily eating included 2-3000kcals worth of binges.

That's why I'm utterly fed up with counting calories. I know I should keep doing it, but it sets me off. Now that the food noise has finally quieted, I can actually live without tracking every bite. I still do the math in my head, but it's nothing like the obsessive way I did before tirz. Today I had a huge AHA! Moment. I asked my husband — 194cm/99kgs, someone who has stayed fit all his life — why he doesn't constantly think about food or what he'll eat next. He told me that once he's full, he can be offered pizza or dessert and he'll turn it down, because if he isn't physically hungry, he won't eat it. I was stunned. I remember, back before tirz, eating huge amounts of ANYTHING until I felt sick, then 20 minutes later opening the fridge for another snack. Apparently their minds just don't work like that??? He can be full from some boring meal, be offered KFC, and say no simply because he just ate???? Lol my flabbers were gasted….

Anyway… I feel that way now too, so right now I have the luxury of not weighing or counting my calories. I realize some people get this by default… for free… and I'm honestly surprised and a bit jealous haha. I just love being normal. I also know obesity is a disease that needs lifetime support to prevent relapse, and I'm gradually accepting that I'll never stop this stuff ever again. I'll be on it for the rest of my life. I'm only 26, so I like to think that will be a long time (hopefully, lol), and it makes me feel at peace with myself.
That's exactly it—my connection with food has felt ordinary for more than three years at this point. What a relief. There's no food noise, and I truly don't have to obsess over each thing I put in my mouth. Mostly, I have whatever I want, since it stays manageable without effort and portions remain sensible. Any urge to overeat has vanished completely.
 
Kingairhoonter said:

Declining food at the table is an odd sensation for me. What matters most is that the pre-bed late-night hunger is gone; as a night owl, that used to be brutal for many years.

With a whole lifetime spent in ongoing diet fatigue and repeated setbacks, the feeling of being normal strikes me as unfamiliar.
The earliest change I noticed after starting ozempic was this: I’d sit down to the same modest portion I’d eaten nearly every day for months, and halfway through, I felt full. Usually, even after clearing the whole plate, I’d still be a bit hungry. I’m not sure I’d ever, at any earlier point in my life, felt full from so little.
 
The "clean plate club" no longer counts me as a member, as people like to call it - food left on the plate? So be it, that's fine by me. Wasting food doesn't stress me out.
 
Jfrick11 said:

Around 10 weeks back, I contracted Cyclospora while I had already spent nearly two years on a GLP-1. That infection sent me to the hospital, where I was diagnosed with an ileus. For roughly seven weeks I was truly ill. I have been recovered for about three weeks now, yet I have not gone back on my GLP-1.

Honestly, I had lost touch with this sensation..... The relentless hunger. The mental chatter, the way food keeps tugging at you. It wears you down. It has also shown me how huge a shift had happened in my life simply because that constant barrage was under control.

To anyone who hasn't known the other side, this must sound utterly unremarkable.

With some of us, the issue isn't merely knowing the right foods or summoning sufficient willpower. That unending mental pull can be enormously draining.

So when you call it a luxury to simply live without weighing and counting every single thing, I understand completely. Right now I feel that missing piece very sharply. And honestly, I can't wait to return to that state of just being… normal with food.
I’m really sorry you became ill : / To be honest, with climate change plus a US food regulatory system that keeps getting gutted, my concern about what we’ll have to eat is high.

The tiredness you describe—I don’t believe the people who shout that you should simply put your fork down understand it at all. When someone has metabolic dysfunction, “just” doesn’t exist. Every part of us other than our minds pushes toward eating too much, and staying alert enough to resist that takes everything. Telling us to “just” set the fork down is like telling another person to “just” complete a marathon weekly. As if it were nothing. Yes, we could burn every waking bit of energy fighting food, but who would want a life like that?

That “just” makes me laugh at the self-satisfied cluelessness every time I hear it.
 
That resonated deeply with me. If someone hasn’t lived with nonstop food thoughts, the contrast can be hard to grasp. The realization behind “wait… you can just be full and NOT think about food?” has to be astonishing. I’m glad you’ve found calm with eating and can now live without tallying every single thing.
 
Eating without tallying calories feels extremely freeing. lol, folks keep going on about counting calories, yet I spent my whole life doing that and it never helped.

The moment I started T, I wanted to drop all of that crap. Thankfully, food gives me far fewer problems/issues now, and I can live my life with more freedom rather than having food control it.
 
This is giving me a clearer sense of the gap separating me from the normie crowd that says 'just take the fork out of your mouth'. Believing/thinking I merely lacked willpower or was simply too lazy to quit eating used to drive me crazy. These days I can see where those people are coming from.

OP, I’m SO HAPPY FOR YOU that you’re so young and can escape that nonsense during your 20s — that’s fantastic.
 
Will people who were once obese end up behaving like ex-smokers? Harsher and quicker to judge anyone still carrying extra weight than the crowd that was never fat at all?
 
Seasonal1 said:

Will people who were once obese end up behaving like ex-smokers? Harsher and quicker to judge anyone still carrying extra weight than the crowd that was never fat at all?
Correct.
 
Seasonal1 said:

Will people who were once obese end up behaving like ex-smokers? Harsher and quicker to judge anyone still carrying extra weight than the crowd that was never fat at all?
Perhaps the reverse occurs: we end up resembling the mormans.

Hey—we’ve never met, but I saw your weight problem and felt like coming by, speaking with you, and saving you.

🤣
 
FamousGoodkitty said:

The "clean plate club" no longer counts me as a member, as people like to call it - food left on the plate? So be it, that's fine by me. Wasting food doesn't stress me out.
The tiniest plate on offer is what I reach for as well (by choi

cldfront said:

This is giving me a clearer sense of the gap separating me from the normie crowd that says 'just take the fork out of your mouth'. Believing/thinking I merely lacked willpower or was simply too lazy to quit eating used to drive me crazy. These days I can see where those people are coming from.

OP, I’m SO HAPPY FOR YOU that you’re so young and can escape that nonsense during your 20s — that’s fantastic.
Thank you! My sole regret concerning it is that I found out so tardily! I ought to have been using it 3 years ago at minimum
 
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