"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.