My First Big GLP‑1 Test: Surviving the Dessert Club Without a Banana Split

Jean wonders if willpower shows up in the small, unglamorous moments — the ones no one applauds, the ones that happen at a farm table or a dessert club or in the quiet recalibration of daily habits. In this post, she writes about a surprisingly triumphant Thursday: a slice of lemonade cake, a room full of banana splits, and the complicated business of changing her relationship with food while navigating the opinions, assumptions, and whispered commentary that swirl around weight loss. It’s a story about discipline, dignity, and the delicate art of keeping one’s own counsel... AI

I did it. I got through a meeting of our First Thursdays Desserts Only Club without ordering a HUGE banana split like everyone else. And I didn’t have to out myself as a new recruit in another group: those of us getting the GLP‑1 Zepbound shots for weight loss. There I was, surrounded by eight people all enjoying my favorite food group in the whole wide world, and I didn’t have food envy and I didn’t feel deprived. The only thing I felt was miffed that I got charged fifty cents more for my small slice of lemonade cake with strawberries on top — while the banana splits came with three gigantic scoops of ice cream, chocolate syrup, nuts, whipped cream, three cherries, plus a whole banana. I’d worried this challenge would test me beyond my ability to resist going off my diet.

I was also worried others would ask why I wasn’t indulging, especially since I was one of the two founding members of the group nearly a year ago. A couple of people even offered me some of their ice cream since I said I didn’t like the cake — that was my excuse for only eating half of it. That’s what Zepbound GLP‑1 does. It’s a natural hormone our stomachs produce that tells you when you’re full, and if you know what’s good for you, you stop eating when it makes that call. I haven’t been able to finish a meal since I started the shots two weeks ago. And the “food noise” in my head is entirely gone. To be honest, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard that ‘you’re full’ message before in my life. As a child who had to sit at the table until my plate was clean I’m guessing that trained me not to hear it.

Still, you have to count calories every day while on GLP-1, but the strangely foreign part is you count them to make sure you’re eating enough calories and protein. Every time your weight changes, you have to re‑calibrate your DTEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure), then deduct 500 from that number — that’s the number of calories you try to eat each day to lose two pounds a week. If you fall short, you’re burning muscle instead of fat.

I’ve lost 15 pounds in 27 days, but part of that was before I began the shots, just by doing the DTEE‑minus‑500 trick and doubling my protein. I’ve since been trying to triple my protein, but that’s really hard when I don’t cook my own meals and institutional food is high in carbs and sauces. I’ve also been walking every day and going to the gym every other day. For the naysayers who poo‑poo those of us on GLP‑1, thinking we’re taking the easy route, they don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s a tool, but it doesn’t make you lose weight without putting in the work of changing old habits.

The first sign that I’ve lost fifteen pounds is that it made my shoes — of all things — feel too big and my face look slimmer. The second sign was being able to get into a size‑smaller pair of blue jeans. So far one person has noticed, and when she asked if I was losing weight, I faked surprise and said, “What? Did you find some?” Everyone in the elevator laughed, and I added that I’ve been walking more. I don’t intend to lie (except by omission), but I’m not going to share what I’m doing if I can help it.

Why? Because I was sitting at our farm table when our tech guy went past — he’s lost 140 pounds on GLP‑1 — and I heard some unkind comments about how could “he let himself get so fat” and how he’s “cheating to lose weight.” Lots of positive comments were made, too, but you know how it is: you can hear twenty good things, but it’s the one or two bad things you obsess about. I think that’s human nature, or it could just be Jean Nature.

There are three of us in my Independent Living building who are obese, and I’m number three if anyone were to rank us from heaviest to lowest. I’m frequently at the farm table with the guy at the top, and the way others talk about him when he’s not there is awful. And while I’m probably 75 pounds lighter than him and 50 lighter than the woman in the number‑two spot, I imagine I’m the topic of a few snide, body‑shaming remarks as well.

It’s easy to see that he struggles with “food noise” in his head. He never leaves leftover bread or butter on the table. He’ll ask us all to pass them down so he can take them back to his apartment because he “doesn’t want to see it get thrown out.” I struggle with seeing food wasted too. A lot of us in my generation are in the Clean Plate Club because of those poor kids in China who didn’t get enough to eat.

Number Two in our little obesity club has a husband who is an enabler. He’s normal weight and she has mobility issues because of her weight, but when we have buffets he’ll fill up a plate of all the desserts because, he says, “he doesn’t know which one his wife wants,” and you guessed it — she eats them all. He does the same thing with the main courses. He’s a retired minister who lovingly looks at his wife through strong rose‑colored glasses. You can’t help but like the guy, but he’s killing her with kindness.

Not that we fatty‑fatty‑2x4s can rightly blame our weight on someone else, but the world and people around us do influence our choices. If I were going to make a true confession along those lines, I’d say I’ve always been a ‘closet eater.’ Whenever someone would say, “Should you be eating that?” or “Is that on your diet?” I would put it down — then later I’d find a way to eat in secret, out of resentment for the control that person tried to have over me. And in between the admonishment and the secret eating the food noise in my head was so loud I’m surprised others couldn’t hear it.

And there, dear readers, is the main reason I don’t want to reveal that I’m trying to lose weight. I don’t want anyone looking at my plates and saying, “Should you be eating that?” or “why aren’t you eating?”

Change is hard enough without an audience, and this stretch of my journey feels like something I need to protect. So for now, I’m keeping my little GLP‑1 secret tucked away like contraband in a spy movie. I’ll keep showing up at dessert club with an alternate choice besides the 695 calorie banana splits, pretending I’m just “not in the mood”,” while everyone else demolishes their architectural ice cream masterpieces. If the weight keeps dropping, people can assume it’s from all my virtuous walking or possibly divine intervention. And if anyone else asks if I’m losing weight — and they will — I’ll just shrug and say, “Yes I am and don’t tell me where you found it. I don’t want it back.” ©

This is my New Mantra

                               

The CCC Chronicles: From Foot Doctors to Reflecting Pools

 

In this week’s dispatch from Jean’s Continuum Care Community, the everyday rhythms of aging collide with the absurdities of modern life — from firefighters hauling residents upstairs to a foot that stages a midnight rebellion to a national monument wrapped in drama like a bad home‑improvement project. Jean brings her trademark blend of humor, candor, and side‑eye to the small dramas of communal living and the larger drama unfolding in Washington. As always, she finds the thread that ties them together....AI

“Who got picked up by the ambulance last night?” That’s a frequent topic of conversation at lunch or dinner tables here on my Continuum Care Campus. But today it was a different twist. The question was, “Why was the fire department here so long?”

The answer: the elevator in one of our buildings quit working, stranding several of our more fragile residents on the first floor when the repair crew couldn’t get a needed part until this morning. So the firefighters (stationed three minutes away) had to carry people up to their apartments. It was either that or they’d have to cuddle up on the couch in front of the lobby’s fireplace which wouldn’t be such a bad choice if it was winter, and not so close to the forth of July.

There are other times when our mealtime conversations turn into a litany of aches and pains, sounding like the very jokes younger people make about our age group. As Maxine of calendar fame says, "At my age, a 'balanced life' means 50% aches and 50% pains."

But for the most part, we leave our aches and pains at our apartment doors. Still, here’s a piece of advice if you’re thinking of moving to a CCC: don’t downsize your greeting card stash. I’ve written more “get well” and “thinking of you” cards (and “birthday,” and “sympathy cards”) since moving here than at any other time in my life. Not a week goes by that I’m not digging through my card drawer.

I’m no exception when it comes to having my own list of medical woes. I have a foot doctor, a hand doctor, and an orthopedist for the rest of the bones in my body. I’ve got an ENT, a dermatologist, an eye doctor, a gastroenterologist, a sleep doctor, an urogynecologist, a primary doctor, a nurse practitioner — and a dentist. Who could ask for anything more? Not me. I’m one of the lucky ones, though. A few  of my fellow residents have cancer and heart doctors on their lists.

Despite having all those people on my medical team, last week I decided Dr. Google was a better choice. I typed in my symptoms, and their AI “doctor” told me that shooting pain around an open sore meant I should go to Urgent Care immediately because it could be an infection. Not wanting to do that, I called my foot doctor’s office. They tried to schedule me a month out — until I repeated the magic words “shooting pain” and “open sore.” Suddenly I had an appointment the next day. Thank you, Dr. Google, for the buzzwords.

This all started just after my six‑month check‑up with my sleep doctor, where I gave him a glowing report. I shouldn’t have done that — it jinxed me. That very night the shooting pains started, waking me up and refusing to let me sleep again. My foot looked like the photo below. Actually, worse — that picture was taken after a week of swallowing antibiotics and daily slathering the area with silver sulfadiazine cream. 

The foot doctor claims there are no broken bones, but I don’t believe her or her X‑rays because it hurts too much. The weirdest part is I have no idea what caused it. I don’t remember hitting my foot, dropping anything on it, or doing anything dramatic like letting a stranger suck my toes. All I’m told is that the X-ray shows no infection or broken bones, but "skin bruises easily on the elderly” and the foot is “the slowest place to heal.”

Yup, I know that, doc. I had a similar gash on the side of the same foot recently, and it took four months to heal without medical intervention.

Lest I give the impression that all we talk about here is ourselves and our woes — not true. Recently at our Tuesday Night Conversation dinner table we discussed the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the cost of repairing it, and the claim that “vandals” cut a 350‑foot slit down the center despite 24/7 security cameras. I’ve got a bridge to sell you if you believe that. (But not the brand new bridge between Canada and Detroit that Trump refuses to allow to be opened, but that's another scandal for another day.) 

We can all read the news and draw our own conclusions about the pool, but around our dinner table the story sounds a lot less like “vandals” and a lot more like, “someone had their head up his ass.” You don’t need a PhD to connect a few dots: With cameras everywhere they would have stopped anyone in the center of the pool long enough to cut a 350 foot slit; a no‑bid contract that included no oversight by manufacturers of the liner polyuria coatings; and the presidential motorcade running over the uncured coating so Trump could get a closer look. The presidential limo alone weighs about 20,000 pounds, which is roughly the size of a small whale — and we’re supposed to believe a mystery vandal with a box cutter is the culprit. Please.

It doesn't take a deep dive in cyberspace to learn the experts all agree the failed project is due to one or more of the following: 1) improper preparation of the surface, 2) not applying the polyuria according to manufacturer’s specifications, 3) speeding up the timeline for applying a second coating, 4) the solvent added to kill the algae, and last but not least, 5) vehicles running over the uncured surface. 

Everything shows its age eventually — our bodies, our buildings, even the places meant to inspire awe. Here at the CCC, we meet those changes with humor and a little stubbornness, because what else can you do. The reflecting pool could be funny too, if it weren’t such an expensive lesson in what happens when oversight and comment sense takes a holiday. We can’t stop time from aging us or our monuments, but we can at least insist that the people in charge stop accelerating the process. © 

Nabbed off Dawn's Bohemian Valhalla Blog

              

The Day Sinatra Made Me Cry in Public

In this week’s installment from Jean’s corner of CCC life, what starts as a simple outdoor concert — the kind you attend mostly because it’s on the calendar and the weather’s decent — turns into an unexpected brush with memory. A Sinatra impersonator, a rollator walker packed like a day‑hike, and a crowd of fifty neighbors set the stage, but the real story is how a single song can reach backward and tap a place you thought had finally gone quiet...AI

I saw Frank Sinatra today. Oops — I left a word out of that sentence. I meant to say I saw a Frank Sinatra impersonator. Good thing I cleared that up, lest you think I’ve hustled on over to the Land of Delusion, given the fact that he died in 1998. I was never a fan of his music, nor were my parents, so I didn’t cut my teeth on his many hit records the way a lot of my ninety-something neighbors did. But my Continuum Care Community booked him for the second time, and since the reviews were glowing after his first performance, I thought, What the heck, it’s something to do.

So I loaded up my rollator walker with a sweater, a bottle of water, my phone, a notebook and pen, and my apartment keys, then headed for the park nestled between the Memory Care and Assisted Living buildings. (Permanently in my walker are: binoculars, ear muffs, gloves, a bird call, sun glasses, and two books.) I don’t need a walker, but I use one outside because I’m proactive about preventing sidewalk falls. I’ve seen enough people with bloody faces and broken hips get picked up by ambulances to know the smart money is on those of us who aren’t too proud to admit we’re old and tend to shuffle along instead of picking up our feet properly.

But I’m not a shuffler. Yet. I know that for a fact because — being proactive again — I took the Fall Prevention Study offered here last year. My only walking issue is that every five or six steps, the heel of my right foot hits the side of my left foot. I’ve known this since childhood because the side of my left shoe was always scuffed up. What I didn’t know was why. Turns out I walk with asymmetry: my right leg strides 21 inches and my left 24. I also walk with my feet only four inches apart when they should be six. Knowledge is power, or so they say.

A lot of my fellow residents were afraid to do the study for fear our “overlords” would use the information to move them down the road to Assisted Living. Paranoia is alive and well in senior communities like mine. If you failed the study — which I did not — you earned some physical therapy appointments, not an eviction notice.

The Sinatra singer was in his 60s, I’m guessing, and even with the classic hat and suit he didn’t look much like the real McCoy. But he sounded like him, and he had some of Frank’s characteristic moves down pat. With audience members from all three buildings plus the townhouses, we were fifty strong. The weather was perfect. The sky was bluer than it’s been all week and the sun was shining.

And wouldn’t you know — even though I’m not fond of that kind of music — I ended up with tears in my eyes during the last song he sang: My Way. I was sitting in the back row, and in my view was a Memory Care patient in a wheelchair with his wife sitting behind him. During that song she leaned forward and put her arms around his neck while the performer sang, “Regrets I've had a few...I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption.”

I felt like I was looking at a snapshot of my past life when I was Don’s caregiver. Those twelve and a half years were a test by fire, and I’m proud of how I handled them. But by the end of the song the wife was wiping tears from her eyes, and so was I. She’s still living the stress and devotion I went through. It’s strange how you can think old wounds are healed, but a damn song comes along and reminds you that some wounds never fully close. They may scab over, but bump that scab and the hurt comes back.

Places like this always book entertainers who play the era of music residents grew up with, built families to, danced to, so we hear a lot of '40s and '50s stuff. When an entertainer takes requests, I usually ask for a Bruno Mars song and they will say, "Don't know that one, but I'll learn it before my next gig here." Even after nearly five years of going to these musical events, I’ve yet to make it through one without tears (or hearing Uptown Funk). Sometimes they’re happy tears, but usually they're a jolting flashback of longing for what can no longer be. 

Another highlight of my week: I went to a Father’s Day banquet. At first, women weren’t allowed to sign up unless they were dining with a father or father figure, but eight of us raised a fuss. After all, for Mother’s Day they served the women afternoon tea and cookies, but the guys were getting a ribeye steak dinner with baked potatoes and asparagus. The injustice was noted. The ribeye was wonderful, and it was the last big meal I had before starting my GLP‑1 shots the next morning.

Then a few days later we had another musical event put on by a local favorite, The Beer City Blues Band. This time it was right outside my building on the piazza — impossible to avoid, not that I wanted to. They play more contemporary music, so fewer memories get stirred up for me. Not to mention I love their sound.

We have an active charity foundation that funds all our musical programs, including one‑on‑one music therapy sessions down in Memory Care, our summer concert series, and monthly birthday party entertainers. You might call it lucky, but I knew before I bought into this non‑profit CCC that our sister campus was heavily supported by this group. It’s kind of a shame, though, that the senior places where more Medicaid recipients end up don’t have the same kind of charity foundation. Maybe they do and I just don’t know about them?

Our charity sponsors golf tournaments, fancy‑ass balls, fashion shows and parties, and I suspect the reason they raise so much money is because the donors hope to live here someday. The guy who lived and died across the hall from me gave so much money they named our street — and a golf tournament — after him.

Music has always had a way of slipping past my defenses, but living here has made that truth unavoidable. Every concert is a gamble — you never know whether you’ll walk away smiling, crying, or both. But I keep showing up. Maybe that’s the point. These small moments, these shared songs and shared tears, remind me that living life doesn’t stop in a place like this. It just keeps unfolding, one performance, one memory, one unexpected pang at a time. ©

See you next Wednesday.

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