Let me tell you what nobody puts in the wellness content.
Eating for your health can be miserable. Not always. Not forever. But right now, in this season, for me – it is a part-time job I did not apply for and cannot quit.
I am on Retatrutide. If you know, you know. If you don’t, it is a weight loss medication that among other things turns your food noise all the way down. The constant background hum of wanting something, thinking about food, planning your next meal – gone. Quiet. For someone who has navigated that noise her whole life, the silence is remarkable.
And then, I did more research.
Two hundred and twenty grams of protein a day. That is the number I landed on for my weight and my goals. Not a suggestion from a pamphlet. My number, for my body, that I have to hit every single day.
I want you to understand what that number means in real life. That is not a goal. That is a part-time job with no benefits and too many dishes.
The math is not the hard part. The eating is.
I know why the protein matters. When you are on a GLP-1 type medication and your body is losing weight, it will take muscle right along with the fat if you do not feed it enough protein to hold on to what you have built. Add strength training – which I also do, under duress, because I do not like to exercise and I want that noted for the record – and your body’s protein demand goes up further.
I understand the assignment. I just did not know the assignment would involve this much chewing.
I am a carnivore by nature. I like meat. Past tense. Present tense, complicated. When your appetite is suppressed and your stomach is running a tight ship, the idea of sitting down to another chicken thigh is somewhere between unappealing and offensive.
I bake chicken pieces twice a week. I eat small quantities of steak. Every salad has meat or fish on it, no exceptions. I do not do much dairy, so the protein shakes and cheese and milk solutions people keep suggesting are not going to move the needle on 200+ grams of daily protein. And honestly? The cleanup alone is enough to make me leave the shaker bottle in the cabinet and stare at it resentfully.
My stomach has opinions. Loudly. It will tell me it is not hungry. It will tell me we have been through enough today. It will tell me that another piece of grilled salmon is a personal attack.
I eat it anyway. Because I know who I am doing this for.
This is what committed looks like. It is not cute.
The wellness industry wants you to believe that once you decide to get healthy, your body falls in line and everything tastes like purpose. That is not my experience. My experience is negotiating with myself at 3:30pm over whether I have hit my numbers and whether the three ounces of chicken I do not want counts toward the goal.
It does. I eat it.
What I have learned is that healthy eating, real healthy eating built around an actual goal and an actual body with actual needs, is less about enjoying every bite and more about respecting what you are trying to build. I am not eating for pleasure right now. I am eating for function. For muscle. For a body that works the way I need it to work.
Some meals are fine. Some meals are a negotiation. Some meals I am genuinely tired of chewing before I finish the plate.
And somewhere underneath all of it, my quickly-becoming-flat tummy is grateful. Even when my stomach is not.
If you are in this too, here is what is working for me.
Batch cook the protein twice a week and do not think about it again until it is gone. Chicken thighs over breasts – more forgiving, more flavor, less cardboard energy. Steak in small portions hits harder gram for gram and feels like less of a punishment- get the good stuff- ribeye, don’t be cheap, gotta make it appealing. Salad with protein at every sitting is non-negotiable and easier than a full meal when your appetite is low. And find the two or three things your body tolerates and rotate them without guilt. This is not a food show. This is maintenance work.
You do not have to love it. You just have to do it.
And if your stomach talks back- mine does it constantly- just remind it who’s in charge.
Are you navigating protein goals, GLP-1 medications, or just trying to eat in a way that actually supports your body? Drop it in the comments. We are not going to pretend this is always easy.
