When getting smaller became a secret

Last week the scale showed 137. I did what I do now: I called my mom. She lost a good amount of weight on a GLP-1 herself, so she gets it — she is the one person left who receives these reports. I didn’t mention it to my S.O. at all. I don’t say anything about the dieting to anyone anymore.

That is the strange part of where I’ve landed, after losing almost 150 pounds. Not that the smaller sizes stopped feeling like a reward. They didn’t. I keep waiting for the feeling to wear off, and it keeps not wearing off. What changed is what I do with it. The reward went underground.

It didn’t start as a secret

In the beginning the feeling was closer to disbelief. I’m so lucky. It’s finally happening. Around fifty pounds down, people start noticing and commenting, and for a while the whole thing runs on that — the noticing. Shopping turned into buying proof. Every store that suddenly carried my size felt like a door someone had unlocked.

At size 12, I thought, wow, I did it. And I can tell you now exactly what “did it” meant that day: I’m normal sized. Maybe I can fit in a restaurant chair like a normal person.

The first time a size felt like a reward instead of just a fit, it wasn’t anything glamorous — it was waterproof dog-walking pants, and the reason they meant so much goes back to an earlier loss. Years ago I was invited on a half-day fishing trip on the Alsea River, and I ran all over town looking for pants that would fit me at all. I found one pair, wore them through a whole happy day on the water (caught nothing), and only discovered when I went to take them off that night that they had split right up the back — I’d spent the entire day like that without knowing. That was the era I was coming from, when a size that fit was a small miracle you found out about later, in the worst way. So when I pulled on a pair of waterproof pants that simply fit, off the rack, I thought: holy crap, I made it. That is not a feeling you can buy at Lane Bryant.

What the number was actually standing in for

During the loss itself, the scale is the only fact you get. Day to day the whole project is a grind — easier on a GLP-1, but still a grind — and you cannot see yourself changing. Everything else is feelings. The number is the one thing that says: the plan is working.

But the sizes were standing in for something bigger than the plan. They were a prediction about whether the world would hold me. I have scanned the seating in every restaurant and public place I have ever walked into: the rickety outdoor chairs, the booth question (does that table move, so I can fit in?), the reason I pay top dollar for first class. A size 12 held out the possibility of sitting down without doing any of that math — walking in, taking whatever chair was open, and thinking about literally anything else. That is what the label was telling me that a mirror couldn’t.

I went to a theater show and fit in the seat with room to spare on the sides. I was thrilled before the show even started. I sprint around the park with my dog now — we don’t “do runs,” I just chase him — and sometimes I stop mid-chase and think, whoa, this is nice. I can brush him on the floor and get right back up. Rewarding. None of that is a number, but the numbers were the mile markers on the way to it.

Then the audience changed sides

Somewhere in the last stretch, the commentary flipped. There’s a public backlash now about weight loss — the “skeletal in the Ozempic age” conversation — and it has reached my actual life. At my regular haunt, some people are not shy about telling me “enough already.” People close to me started using words like “scrawny.” My S.O. told me I looked older and that my face had gotten too thin. So now when the scale goes down, the first thought is not I did it. It’s oh no. Do I have Ozempic face? Am I too skinny? Am I unhealthy?

The reward and the criticism arrive on the same number.

And there is a second kind of policing: not how much, but how. People sometimes talk about GLP-1 weight loss as though the medication did the whole thing for you, or as though doing it “the old-fashioned way” would have made the result more legitimate. Losing nearly half my body weight did not happen by luck, and the medication did not erase the work.

I did confide in someone who was new to the medication, to make exactly that point: it isn’t magic, you still have to do the work. He has since told at least two people how much weight I’ve lost, right in front of me, as if it were his news to share. So that experiment is over.

Add it up and you get where I’ve landed: the excitement is real, and the audience is unreliable. That is why the phone call goes to my mom. She lost the weight the same way, so a number like 137 reaches her as plain information — she knows what it costs and what it’s worth, and she doesn’t convert it into concern, or judgment, or competition, or somebody else’s news. With everyone else, I’ve gone quiet.

Meanwhile the number itself stopped making sense

I don’t know my size anymore. The numbers are unreliable, but the thrill is not. If I fit into a 10 somewhere, I dismiss it as a brand anomaly — that’s not me. J.Jill has always run small on me, so when their 16s started falling off, and then the 14s, I knew perfectly well the number wasn’t reliable information — and I still stood there thinking, holy wow, what is going on? The label has become untrustworthy and thrilling at the same time.

I ordered a pair of jeans in a size 29 that I wanted badly and honestly could not afford. When they arrived, they slid right on and were too big. I felt two things at once: OMG, wow and ugh, the return. The smaller number still felt like a win, even though buying the jeans had been a bad financial decision and they did not fit anyway. Too small would have been worse. I do not even want to think about that. It was the reward and the money spent on a size that did not last, delivered in the same box.

I used to be waiting on a number. I’m not anymore — not because I got wise, but because the number stopped holding information. The number is a trap.

Where it actually stands

I won’t pretend the pull is gone. The mirror is still exciting — and a little scary, because sometimes I don’t recognize myself. Does this smaller body feel like mine yet? Maybe next year. Maybe when things stabilize I’ll feel some ownership of it. I’m in the off-ramp stage now, which is its own fear: what if I keep losing? Part of me still wants certain areas of this body to get smaller, and another part is afraid of looking gaunt — and those two outcomes now feel uncomfortably close together. Even the novelty of the cool-girl clothes is wearing off a little. There are only so many days in a week to wear cool-girl clothes.

What I trust now is a different set of measurements. I try things on from my own closet regularly — it’s a better check-in than the scale. A linen pencil skirt hangs flatter than it did a month ago, even though the scale has barely moved. That tells me more than the label does. Maybe the little exercise routines are finally counting for something. Clothing fit, and how long I can jog before I can’t breathe. Those are the important measures to me now.

If you’re mid-loss and asking permission

Should you let yourself enjoy the number? Yes.

It may be inconsistent. It may stop meaning what it once meant. Other people may turn it into concern, judgment, or commentary. The joy can still be real.

When the scale showed 137, I called my mom. The celebration was quieter than it used to be, but it still counted.