The quality of life I was living was not sustainable
The belief that almost stopped me.
Last weekend, I posted about GLP-1 on my Instagram stories. Injection day. Hit me with your questions.
I wasn’t prepared for what came back.
Not the questions, those I expected. It was the DMs. Private ones. Women who’d been watching quietly, not commenting publicly, not wanting to be seen. Ashamed. Carrying this alone. Asking me things they clearly hadn’t felt safe asking anyone else.
That’s what this piece is about. Not the medication. The silence around it.
The belief I carried for two years
I called it aging naturally.
What I actually meant, if I’m honest, was: accept the changes, don’t make a fuss, don’t need too much help. Move through midlife with as little intervention as possible. I told myself it was dignity. I told myself it was wisdom.
It took me two years to say yes to HRT. Two years of symptoms I now know didn’t have to be that bad. Night sweats. Brain fog. Anxiety that came from nowhere. Not recognising myself in the mirror or in my own reactions. I had a gynaecologist who suggested HRT early. I thanked her and moved on.
I was going to age naturally, remember.
Within 24 hours of starting HRT, some of my symptoms were almost gone. Within days, I felt like I’d come back to myself from somewhere very far away. That’s not a metaphor. That’s what it felt like.
Then came the next question.
When my GP suggested GLP-1
I hadn’t gone looking for it. My menopause GP raised it at a follow-up. She looked at the full picture: a waist circumference of 94cm (20+ more than my normal), prediabetes, metabolic dysfunction, a strong family history of heart disease and diabetes, 25kg of weight gained over three years that hadn’t shifted despite everything I knew how to try. And I knew a lot. I was a qualified weight management coach.
She said:
Everything you’ve been doing isn’t working, and the way you’ve been doing it isn’t sustainable. There’s another option.
My first thought?
This is the easy way out.
I’m telling you that because I think most of the women reading this have had exactly that thought, or will have it. The cheating thought. The idea that if you didn’t earn your results through sheer willpower and suffering, they somehow don’t count. That you need help means you failed a test that the rest of us passed.
I didn’t take her word for it immediately. That’s not how I’m built. I consulted an obesity doctor. I did my research. I did my own risk analysis.
The risks of staying where I was, metabolically, were greater than the risks of the medication.
That calculus was mine and my doctors’ to make together.
But I want to be honest about that first thought. Because it almost stopped me.
What GLP-1 actually does (and doesn’t do)
Here’s the concept I keep coming back to, because I think it’s the most honest way to describe it.
It opens a window.
It doesn’t walk through the window for you. It doesn’t furnish the room on the other side. What it does is create a biological window of capacity that, for many women in midlife, has been jammed shut by a combination of hormonal disruption, metabolic dysfunction, decision fatigue, and a nervous system running perpetually at capacity.
The work was still entirely mine. Three to four strength sessions a week. Two runs. 130g of protein daily, 30g of fibre, minimum. Four DEXA scans to track what was actually happening in my body rather than guessing. Working closely with my exercise physiologist, my menopause GP, and a dietitian.
The medication didn’t do this. I did. The medication made it biologically possible to do it without white-knuckling every single day.
What 18 months of data actually looks like
I shared my weight chart on Instagram stories over the weekend. Starting weight around 93kg in late 2024, sitting around 71-72kg now. That’s not a quick fix. That’s 18 months of consistent work.
More importantly to me than the scale: my lean muscle mass is in the optimal range. My visceral fat, which was the genuine health concern, is now in a healthy range. My bone density is strong. These are the numbers that matter for the next thirty years of my life, not the number on the scale.
My goals were never really about weight. They were about recovering from chronic fatigue. About having the body composition to support me into older age. About preventing the diabetes that my family is riddled with. About being able to run, lift, and keep up with my life.
I’m doing all of that now.
Why I’m writing the book
I am not glorifying medication use. I’m not naive about the risks. I worked in joint decision-making with multiple health professionals, and we weighed up what staying the same would cost me against what getting support alongside genuine lifestyle change could offer.
None of us are getting out alive. The quality of life I was living was not sustainable.
The DMs I got after sharing my stories on Instagram tell me there are a lot of women sitting in exactly the place I was sitting. They’ve been handed a prescription with no context. No framework. No “here’s what actually needs to happen for this to work.” Just a script and a wave goodbye.
That’s the book. The belief that almost stopped me. The biology. The window theory. The muscle and protein work nobody warns you about. The hormones-first framework. The full data. And how to have this conversation with your own doctor.
I’ve written the first chapter, and I’m giving it away free. Grab it here, and I’ll send it straight to you.
Robyn x
Not medical advice. Always work with your healthcare team.