Welcome to Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
In this piece, Bethany Mandel — wife, mom of six, and bestselling author — shares her positive experience with GLP-1 inhibitors, the weight loss drugs that have everyone talking. We hope you enjoy.
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I normally would be embarrassed to write something like this. Weight, bodies, medication: It all feels too intimate, too confessional, and too likely to invite judgment. And yet here I am — because I now find myself explaining the same thing to people almost every day.
Most recently it was at the grocery store. The clerk did a double take, stared at me for a second, and finally asked, “What happened? Are you okay?” (She didn’t want to congratulate me on my weight loss if it resulted from a terminal illness, I suppose). A few days earlier, while I was shoveling my sidewalk, it was my neighbor. Last week, it was someone at our synagogue. Somewhere along the way, I realized I’m constantly typing the word “Zepbound” into other people’s phones or scribbling it on sticky notes for acquaintances who ask what I did.
Whatever shame I once felt has been worn down by sheer repetition. When you say something out loud often enough, it stops feeling like a secret. I’ve lost 50 pounds with weight-loss medication, and I’ve never felt better. I fit into my jeans from before I had kids, and running up and down my stairs to change the laundry doesn’t wind me.
For about a year after I stopped breastfeeding my youngest, I circled the idea of weight loss medication without letting myself touch it. I had six babies in nine years. My body had been in a near-constant state of pregnancy, postpartum, or nursing for a decade. Wanting help to lose the weight felt vain and indulgent — and a bit like cheating.
So, I did what you’re “supposed” to do. I dieted and I exercised. I joined a gym and was actually going with regularity. I tried to be disciplined and patient. And nothing happened. The scale didn’t budge, not an inch.
I was deeply suspicious of GLP-1 medication. It sounded too good to be true, and experience has taught me that when something sounds too good, the bill always comes due later. GLP-1, or “glucagon-like peptide-1,” agonists are a class of medications that were originally developed to help people with type 2 diabetes control blood sugar by mimicking a naturally occurring hormone that regulates appetite and glucose metabolism.
Over the past few years, these drugs have exploded in popularity for weight loss, with brands such as Ozempic and Wegovy becoming household names as newer versions like Zepbound joining the market. The surge in prescriptions has been dramatic: About one in eight American adults says they have taken a GLP-1 medication at some point, and roughly 6% report currently using one. Now that the Trump administration has negotiated lower prices for these drugs, they may become even more popular.
Surely, I thought, there’s a catch. People on these drugs will get cancer, heart disease, or liver failure waiting down the road — right?
But the drugs have been on the market for over a decade, and I finally decided I was willing to suspend my doubts. What changed wasn’t vanity. It was a doctor’s appointment, the first one I’d had in years that wasn’t related to pregnancy, where I learned how close I was to being diabetic. Both my parents and my paternal uncles were diabetic. This wasn’t an abstract risk; it was family history catching up to me. My bloodwork told a story I could no longer ignore. That’s what changed my mind: not wanting to be thinner, but wanting to be around longer for my husband and kids.
I started the medication in June. Since then, I’ve lost 50 pounds. Yes, I look better. I’m not pretending that part doesn’t matter. But I’m also willing to bet that losing this weight will extend my lifetime, and that matters more.
We don’t actually know if there’s a hidden catch with these drugs. One viral tweet from last year read, “Registering my long bet on Ozempic being a massive civilizational monkey’s paw just for the record.” But given how long GLP-1 drugs have been in use, the odds are shrinking that there’s some dramatic side effect. What we do know is that obesity has a very real, very documented cost. My bloodwork showed it. I was flirting with diabetes, and my cholesterol numbers were off the charts. We know obesity increases the risk of cancer, heart disease, stroke, and early death. The “known known” is already bad. Even if there’s an “unknown unknown” with these medications, the alternative wasn’t neutral. It was a slow-motion worst-case scenario.
I’ve also been conservative with the medication. I stayed on the lowest dose, 2.5 mg, for four months, and I’ve been on 5 mg for two more. Honestly, the most important change wasn’t appetite suppression. It was resetting my relationship with food after years of pregnancy. I had hyperemesis (clinically bad “morning sickness”) with two of my pregnancies, and awful morning sickness with another. The only thing that prevented or eased pregnancy nausea was carbs: constant carbs and early carbs. The survival strategy was to shovel them in as fast and as often as possible. Over time, that hardwired a pattern: eat first, eat fast, eat carbs, just in case. I spent more than a decade reinforcing that loop.
The medication helped break it, but I did work too. I didn’t just eat less. I ate differently: fewer carbs and much, much more protein. Yes, my appetite is lower, but breaking the carb cycle was the real shift.
Six months after starting, in January, I reran my bloodwork. Every single number moved into the normal range: glucose, cholesterol, and diabetes markers. All of it.
I still don’t evangelize these drugs, and I don’t think they’re for everyone. But they are able to improve health outcomes, like they did for me. I’m no longer at high risk for heart disease, diabetes, or stroke. I also don’t whisper about them anymore. So when the grocery clerk asks, or my neighbor pauses mid-conversation, I tell the truth. I’m on medication, and it helped. And I’m okay with that.
Bethany Mandel (@bethanyshondark) is a homeschooling mother of six and a writer. She is the bestselling co-author, with Karol Markowicz, of Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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