"You Should Do It on Your Own": Is a GLP-1 Cheating?

Her name comes up at a birthday lunch, four women around a table, waiting on the check. She's lost weight, and everybody has noticed. Then somebody lowers her voice: "Well, she's on that shot." Another woman nods. "That's not really doing it, though. That's cheating."

You smile and reach for your tea. You don't mention the prescription that's been sitting in your purse for two weeks while you decide. Or that you started one last spring and haven't told a soul.

Here's what nobody at that table will admit: for a lot of Christian women, the hardest part of a GLP-1 isn't the medicine. It's the shame. And underneath the question "Is a GLP-1 cheating?" sits an older one we've carried for years: Shouldn't I be able to do this on my own?

That table is full of women asking it. A KFF poll from late 2025 found that nearly one in five American adults has taken a GLP-1 drug, and current use was highest among adults 50 to 64.

I'm not writing this from the outside. Most of you know I've been bold in saying that GLP-1 medications have been part of my own weight loss journey. And the one thing I've noticed most is this.

Since I started the shot, people have seemed very concerned about me. Some have openly told me so. But when I weighed 331 pounds and was merely existing, none of those people told me they were worried about me. Nobody said they were worried I'd have a heart attack, or develop diabetes, or face a higher risk of cancer.

That doesn't come from bitterness or anger. It's just the truth.

I'm not a doctor, and I'm not here to recommend anything for your journey. That decision belongs to you, your doctor and God. I am here to help you identify shame, so you don't have to keep living under it.

So is a GLP-1 cheating?

Cheating means there's a test, a set of rules and somebody keeping score. So it's worth asking who wrote this test.

Your doctor didn't. Scripture didn't either. "You should be able to do it yourself" sounds like a Bible verse, but it isn't one. It's closer to the old country pride a lot of us grew up on: don't ask for help, don't be a bother, carry your own load. Somewhere along the way, we started treating it like Scripture.

When I asked women in an anonymous survey this fall what they'd already tried, the list was long. Bible studies. Devotionals. Diets, apps, gyms, programs. One woman wrote down a GLP-1. Then came answers like these: "I never seem to stick to any program." "I just forget and feel like a failure."

That's the setup for the shame. After years of starting strong and quitting, a woman who finally finds something that helps often doesn't feel relief. She feels like she got away with something. Like she skipped the part where she was supposed to suffer enough to earn it.

Why it stings worse for women of faith

Most of us have heard one of two messages about our bodies, often from people who love God.

The first calls it gluttony, or quotes "your body is a temple" in a way that makes your own body sound like unconfessed sin. Add the fruit of the Spirit, where temperance is right there in the list in Galatians 5, and the logic writes itself: if a medicine quiets the constant pull toward food, didn't I just skip the Spirit's work?

The second message is silence. We'll ask friends to pray about a knee surgery or a scan by name. Almost nobody asks for prayer about "my weight" or "food." So it stays private, and private things tend to turn into moral failures.

Neither message helps the woman carrying this. The lunch-table verdict is only interested in how she got there. It never asks how she's doing. We don't ask whether a blood pressure pill is cheating, or whether reading glasses mean you lacked faith in your eyes.

And the pressure runs both ways now. The Boston Globe reported this summer that people get questioned whether they take these medicines or decide not to. If you've said no to the shot and feel judged for that, this post is for you too.

What Hezekiah's figs say about needing help

There's a story in 2 Kings 20 worth reading slowly. King Hezekiah was dying. He turned his face to the wall, prayed and wept. Before the prophet Isaiah had even left the palace courtyard, God sent him back with a message: I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears, and I will heal you.

Then comes the verse almost nobody quotes:

"And Isaiah said, Take a lump of figs. And they took and laid it on the boil, and he recovered." (2 Kings 20:7, KJV)

God said He would heal Hezekiah, and a lump of figs went on the boil. Nobody in the story calls the figs cheating. Nobody suggests Hezekiah's faith was weak because he let a poultice touch his skin. The prayer and the figs weren't rivals. God answered, and He used something ordinary to do it.

I'm not telling you a GLP-1 is your lump of figs. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. That's the conversation for your doctor's office and your prayer closet. What I am telling you is that needing help has never disqualified anyone from God's healing.

So when you bring this to Him, skip the courtroom question, "Lord, is this allowed?" Bring the real one underneath it. Something like: Lord, I'm ashamed I couldn't do this by myself. I'm afraid You're disappointed in me. I'm afraid of what they'll say if they find out.

He can handle that prayer. He heard Hezekiah's with his face to the wall.

Honest prayer takes practice. The free Make Room for Joy guide gives you seven days of it, about ten minutes each, with a KJV verse for every day.

One more plain word. If you're thinking about starting or stopping any medication, talk with your doctor first. And if food, weight or shame has started to feel hopeless, tell a counselor or someone you trust how heavy it's gotten. That's not weakness either.

Before the week is out

I'm not going to tie this up neatly. Some of you will finish this post still unsure about the shot, and that's all right. The shame is what I hope you'll look at.

So here's a question to carry into the week: If your closest friend told you she needed help with this, would you call her a cheater? If the answer is no, then whose voice is it that keeps saying it to you?

If you want to sit with that question alongside other women who carry more than they let on, come to Make Room for You, a free evening on Thursday, November 12, from 7:00 to 8:30 PM near Louisa. Nobody there will ask what you're taking. Details are here.

People Pleasing as a Christian: When Yes Is Really Fear

She catches you in the Walmart parking lot, the ice cream already softening in your cart. "I hate to ask, but could you do me a favor and help me out on Thursday evening? Totally fine if not."

Thursday was your one open evening this week. Before she finishes the sentence, you hear yourself say, "Oh, sure! I'd be glad to."

You weren't glad. You were scared not to.

That's the part of people pleasing as a Christian we rarely admit: a lot of our yeses aren't kindness. They're fear. Fear of looking selfish, or of being talked about on the drive home. Fear that once you stop being useful, you'll stop being wanted.

We've dressed that fear in church clothes and called it serving. Most of us have done it so long we can't tell the two apart anymore.

I know this one from the inside. Part of me truly wants to make other people happy. Another part of me doesn't want anyone to be disappointed in me, and I hate to admit it, but I think that second part has been given more power. For years I overstretched. I said yes when I knew it would make me miserable, and I put myself in impossible situations I then had to maneuver my way through.

People pleasing as a Christian: is it a sin?

Is it? Yes, powerful question that makes us uncomfortable. If it's a sin, we can repent and try harder. If it isn't, we can stop feeling bad about it.

Here's my honest answer. Kindness isn't a sin. Saying yes isn't a sin. But the Bible names the fear underneath a lot of our yeses, and it doesn't call it a virtue:

"The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the LORD shall be safe." (Proverbs 29:25, KJV)

A snare is a trap. It doesn't announce itself. It closes a little at a time. Every fearful yes pulls it tighter, because now one more person expects it, and you have one more reason you can't let them down.

Look at what the verse sets on the other side of the snare: trust in the LORD, and being safe. Being liked was never what kept you safe. So the better question isn't "Am I sinning when I say yes?" Ask this one instead: "Who am I trusting to keep me safe when I say it?"

Why the yes comes out before you can stop it

If you've wondered why you can't just say no, it's usually because the yes was never really a decision. It's a reflex, learned early and rewarded often.

It took a good friend and life coach, Rich Halcombe, Leader Increase, LLC to help me see what was underneath mine. My need to please people was an identity issue. I wasn't secure in myself, and more importantly, I wasn't secure in my identity in Christ. It never pushed me to do anything wrong or unethical. It was everyday favors, one after another, that took me past my limit.

Maybe you grew up where keeping everyone happy kept the peace. Maybe you learned that the helpful girl got the praise and the tired girl got the sigh. Somewhere along the way, being needed started to feel like being safe.

When women answered my anonymous survey this fall about their hardest seasons, about a third named some version of the same thing: doing it all, the obligations, keeping everyone happy. None of them used the word fear. But nobody wears herself out keeping everyone happy unless something in her believes it's dangerous not to.

Here's the cost nobody writes on the sign-up sheet. Fearful yeses turn into quiet resentment. Psychologist Loren Soeiro put the difference plainly this spring: "Being generous with other people, without resentment or conflict, is qualitatively different from people-pleasing due to worry."

You already know that difference in your body. One kind of yes leaves you warm. The other has you clenching your jaw the whole drive over.

What we hear at church, and what it leaves out

Most of us learned early that a good Christian woman says yes. Serve one another. Deny yourself. Be the hands and feet. Every bit of that is in Scripture, and I would never tell you to stop serving.

But we rarely hear the other half. Mark's Gospel tells about a morning when the disciples found Jesus praying alone and told Him everyone was looking for Him. He didn't hurry back to meet the crowd. He said it was time to go on to the next towns. Luke says that while great crowds were gathering to hear Him, He withdrew into the wilderness and prayed. Jesus let people be disappointed in Him, and He was never once afraid of them.

When all we hear is "serve more," a frightened woman hears that her fear has a job. She gets praised for the very thing that's wearing her down, so she does more of it. Serving out of fear and serving out of love can look exactly alike from the pew. God can tell them apart, and so can your heart, if you're honest with it.

Bringing the real yes to God

So don't start by practicing no. Start by telling God the truth about your yes.

The next time someone asks, wait before you answer. Not forever, just until tomorrow morning if you can. "Let me check and get back to you" is an honest sentence, and it's enough.

Then pray the plain version before you reply: "Lord, I'm afraid she'll think less of me if I say no. I'm afraid of being left out. I'd rather trust You with that than keep managing her opinion of me."

Then ask yourself one question: If I weren't afraid, what would I say?

Sometimes the answer will still be yes, and that yes will be a real gift. Sometimes it'll be no, and you'll say it without three sentences of apology trailing behind it. Either way, you'll be answering from trust instead of from inside the snare. If you'd like a quiet daily place to practice that kind of honest prayer, the free Make Room for Joy guide takes about ten minutes a day for seven days.

I'd like to tell you that at 56 I'm over all of this. The truth is I struggle with it daily. But I am learning to set boundaries, and each week I make myself review how I treated myself the week before.

It won't feel natural the first few times. Your stomach will still tighten. The fear may keep showing up for a while. You're learning to stop letting it answer for you.

Part of our free Make Room for You evening on Thursday, November 12, in Louisa, is laying down one thing you were never meant to carry. If a fearful yes is yours, bring it with you.