I Have Met The Enemy And She Is Wearing Lycra

The former gym bunny I used to be has returned to explain why losing weight is only the beginning.

I have shed 24 kilograms.

This sounds impressive because it is impressive. Twenty-four kilograms is roughly the weight of a Labrador, a small Israeli child, or one of those suitcases people bring back from international travel containing items that were perfectly available in Israel but somehow felt more important overseas.

There is substantially less of me than there was a year ago.

The culprit is Mounjaro.

Now, before anyone starts sharpening their opinions, let me save them the trouble. Yes, I know. Half the world believes these medications are a miracle. The other half believes they are cheating. Humanity has spent thousands of years searching for a cure for obesity, and when one finally arrived, our first instinct was to argue about whether people were allowed to use it. This seems entirely consistent with the species that invented social media and then wondered why everyone became anxious.

The truth is that Mounjaro has been astonishingly effective. The clinical trials were impressive enough that pharmaceutical executives were probably high-fiving each other behind closed doors while attempting to maintain expressions of scientific neutrality. Participants lost significant percentages of their body weight. Blood sugar improved. Cardiovascular risk factors improved. Everybody involved appeared delighted except the participants, who eventually discovered that losing weight is only one part of the assignment.

This is the bit everybody alludes to. Seasoned users warn you when you start…

You spend years believing the goal is to lose weight. Then you lose weight, and suddenly everyone starts talking about exercise.

I find this deeply offensive.

The betrayal is particularly acute because twenty years ago, I was a gym bunny.

Not gym-adjacent. Not one of those people who wandered around Virgin Active carrying a towel and discussing fitness while remaining suspiciously stationary. A proper gym bunny. I lifted weights. I did cardio. I attended group classes voluntarily. At six o’clock in the morning. There are photographs proving all of this. I hope they are destroyed before historians discover them because they undermine my entire current narrative.

At some point, however, life happened. Careers happened. Stress happened. Menopause arrived carrying a flamethrower and several unresolved grievances. Somewhere along the way, the woman who bounced enthusiastically into gyms was replaced by someone who regards parking at the far end of the shopping centre as an endurance event.

The truly irritating part is that I know better.

I know exactly how obesity happens. Human beings evolved in conditions of scarcity and then built a civilization dedicated to eliminating inconvenience. Food appears at our doors. Cars transport us everywhere. Escalators carry us up one floor because, apparently, stairs have become an extremist activity. Entire industries exist to ensure nobody experiences the burden of standing up unnecessarily.

Then we all gather around the obesity statistics, looking baffled.

This is rather like spending fifty years making cigarettes cheaper, tastier and available in every room of the house before commissioning a task force to investigate why people keep smoking.

The real problem is not ignorance.

I know exactly what exercise does. I know it preserves muscle mass. I know it improves cardiovascular health. I know it protects bone density. I know it helps maintain weight loss. I know all of this in the same way I know I should floss more often and spend less time reading comments sections written by people who should not be allowed near keyboards.

Knowledge is not the issue.

Action is the issue.

I know better. I used to do better. I have evidence. I have results. I have medication. And somehow, I am still conducting treaty negotiations with a ten-minute walk.

Every morning, the walk presents its demands. I reject them. The walk returns with concessions. I request independent mediation. The walk threatens sanctions. By lunchtime, neither side has achieved meaningful progress. The United Nations has handled simpler disputes.

Scientists, meanwhile, remain drunk on evidence. They continue producing studies showing that exercise improves almost every measurable aspect of human health. I read these papers with great interest because I enjoy scientific literature that promises a longer life. What I enjoy considerably less is discovering that someone expects me to participate in the findings.

I want loopholes.

I want researchers at a prestigious Scandinavian university to announce that reading books counts as resistance training. I want a peer-reviewed study proving that sarcastic Facebook posts burn calories. I want a Nobel Prize-winning endocrinologist to confirm that scrolling social media while thinking about exercise provides 80% of the benefits of completing a triathlon.

Science has stubbornly refused to cooperate.

So here I am. Twenty-four kilograms down. Eighteen to go. Standing between two versions of myself. One is the gym bunny from twenty years ago, dressed in Lycra and looking unbearably pleased with herself. The other is the woman currently negotiating terms with a ten-minute walk.

The irritating thing is that the gym bunny may be right.

I hate it when that happens.