Money Mom Podcast
Welcome to The Money Mom Podcast—the ultimate guide for moms who want to take control of their finances, crush debt, and create a life of financial freedom and abundance. Hosted by Rachel Coons, a budgeting expert and mom of three, this podcast is your go-to resource for practical tips, mindset shifts, and empowering strategies to help you manage your money with confidence.
Whether you’re navigating grocery budgets, tackling debt, or dreaming of building wealth for your family, each episode offers bite-sized, actionable advice to make money management simple, stress-free, and even enjoyable. With relatable stories, expert insights, and a dose of mom-to-mom encouragement, you'll learn how to transform your finances—one small step at a time.
Tune in every week to discover how to save more, spend smarter, and feel empowered to create the financial life you deserve. Because when moms thrive financially, families flourish.
Money Mom Podcast
72: My Personal Journey With A GLP-1
In today’s episode of The Money Mom Podcast, I’m getting personal and answering one of the most common questions I’ve been getting lately: “Have you been on a GLP-1?”
The truth is, yes. For the first time, I’m sharing my full journey with GLP-1s: why I decided to try it, what it’s been like for me and Brad, the results we’ve experienced, and the honest pros and cons. From weight loss and energy shifts, to how we’ve prioritized lifting weights and protein intake to protect muscle, I’m pulling back the curtain on what life has looked like for us these past nine months.
I’ll also answer some of your top questions, including:
- Do I recommend GLP-1s to others?
- What side effects have I experienced?
- How have we approached dosage (and why we’ve kept it low)?
- What do I think about long-term use?
- And what role food, fitness, and mindset really play in the process.
This is not medical advice, just my story. My goal is to share openly, remove the shame, and hopefully give you clarity if you’ve been curious about GLP-1s yourself.
✨ If you’ve ever wondered about GLP-1s or just want an honest, balanced perspective, this episode is for you.
xoxo,
Rachel
Where to find me:
Instagram: @heyrachelcoons
Join me for my next LIVE training 'Save $600 On Groceries'!: REGISTER HERE
I realize that, as a public figure, people are looking at my life and they notice when things start to change a little bit. And recently I've gotten a lot of questions about my weight and noticing that I have had some weight loss. So today I am coming clean and I am sharing my full experience on taking a GLP-1. What the results have been, how it's affected me and what I recommend it to another person. So here is my full story. Stay tuned.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Money Mom Podcast, the show where we empower moms to take control of their finances, break free from money stress and build a life of freedom, confidence and abundance for their families. I'm your host, rachel Koons, mom money mentor and your personal cheerleader on this journey. Whether you're here to save money, pay off debt or dream bigger for your family's future, you're in the right place here. We believe that being a mom is already a full-time job, but your role in shaping your family's financial success is just as important. And the best part, you don't need to sacrifice everything to start winning with money. Let's get started. This is the Money Mom Podcast.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Money Mom Podcast. I'm Rachel Koons, I am your host for today's episode and maybe I just like need to take a deep breath before we jump in. This is an episode that I know people have been waiting for and really asked me all sorts of questions when I posted recently about taking a GLP-1 and my experience with it, and so, in order for me to feel authentic and honest about my life even though this has nothing to do with my topic that I normally talk about on the podcast, I do think it's one that it's so pervasive in our society today. So many people are talking about this, so many people are on a GLP-1 or thinking about it, or have lots of opinions about it, whether or not they believe you should do it or shouldn't do it, and so I'm just laying it all out on the table for my own personal experience. Now, I do feel like this episode needs to have a little bit of a caveat, because I am not a doctor, I am not trained in this realm at all, and so I just want to say that whatever I share is my own opinion, my own experience, and you get to do you, you get to experience life however you want to experience. I am not here to give medical advice. I am not here to tell you what you should or shouldn't do Purely opinion-based, not fact-based. I will share some research that I've heard and looked into, but that doesn't mean that there's one right and only way to go about handling a GLP-1 or weight loss in general. I think there's so many good resources out there so I'm just going to point you to that and also point you to your medical professional that you are working hand in hand with if you're interested in a GLP-1. I am not a medical professional.
Speaker 1:So once we got over that, let's talk about my experience and how this kind of came about. So truthfully, I have a background in health and wellness. I was a personal trainer for many years before I had kids. I have taught fitness classes for almost 15 years and have always been a big proponent of eating healthy and exercising. I had some eating disorder habits in high school and early college and I wouldn't say I had a full-blown eating disorder, because that's not the case and I don't want to downplay somebody else's experience, but I for sure was hypervigilant about my eating excessive, dieting, that kind of thing and it wasn't until I found intuitive eating, the whole world of intuitive eating back in 2011, 2012,. That food really changed for me and I finally had a lot of peace around food. Now, that doesn't mean that everything was rainbows and butterflies, but I really have felt at peace with my own body and the shape of my body. I don't want to downplay anyone's experience with being overweight obesity, because I know that we live in a world that isn't friendly to that experience and it's so nuanced and it has so many layers, and I am not here to body shame anyone or make people feel like I understand that, because I don't, because I've never truthfully struggled with my weight severely.
Speaker 1:I got into heavy weightlifting around COVID so 2020, where I was doing a ton of cardio. Before that running marathons, I had to do like 60 minutes of cardio a day, so excessive cardio exercise to, in fact, keep my weight in check, and it wasn't until the pandemic, when I was home more, I really started kind of believing in this idea that I needed to be lifting heavy weights, and so I've been doing that ever since. I actually have severely decreased the amount of cardio that I do and have put on a bunch of muscle in the past five years, which I'm so grateful for because, truthfully, I think that is one of the things that a lot of people don't pay attention to when it comes to GLP-1 is muscle loss, and you know, as women we need to have muscle, especially going into perimenopause and menopause. I'm still pretty young, I'm not in perimenopause yet, and so it's been a huge goal of mine to just put on as much muscle as I possibly can.
Speaker 1:I went to lunch with a friend back in September of last year and again, never have felt like I am overweight or really struggle with weight, but and I have been a little bit heavier in the past year Nothing really has changed with my diet and exercise. It just was I was putting on a little bit more weight. And so when I went to lunch with a friend in September, she mentioned that she had started a GLP-1 and she had had a fantastic experience with it. She wasn't losing a ton of weight like really fast, but just progressive weight loss, and she talked more about less about the weight loss and more about the experience of not having the food noise and not feeling like food dictated her whole life, and she was able to like stop eating when she started. She wasn't enticed by you know as many desserts and sweets and all those things, and I was just so. I was so intrigued by this. I'd never had somebody close to me actually come out and say that they were on a GLP-1 and share their experience with a GLP-1. And so we sat and talked for like two hours and I went home and was like I this sounds so fascinating. I really would like to try this and see what happens.
Speaker 1:My husband, brad, has struggled with his weight his whole life, honestly, and again, he's very into diet and exercise as well. He goes to CrossFit like three or four times a week and we've always tried again to eat healthy and keep lots of whole foods. We very little process foods in our house, but we also live our life and we're not we're not dictated by, you know always eating as healthy as possible. I think I feel like we're really, really balanced, and so I actually brought up the idea to him. I was like Brad, would you ever be interested in going on a GLP-1 with me? And like we could do it together, and his, his response was like a hard no. He was like no, we're not doing that. Um, he, you know, I don't know how healthy, it is long-term, all those things. And so when he felt really strongly about it, I was like, okay, like fine, off the table, no big deal. I again like I don't have a ton of weight to lose, so I don't feel really strongly about doing it.
Speaker 1:But a couple of months later he went in and was on a health journey himself to really get healthy. Um, he has heart disease in his family and so we've really tried to figure out, you know, does he have the markers for heart disease and what can we do to help, you know, combat that? And so he went in to get his blood work done in November and his blood work came back and it was not good High blood glucose levels, he had markers for heart disease and other things, cholesterol, like high cholesterol and I think that kind of perked his ears up to like, okay, maybe this is something that I do need to pay attention to and do something about. And so, you know, months later he finally was like, okay, let's try this, let's try GLP-1s and see how it goes. We can start on a really low dose and see how it goes.
Speaker 1:We're able to find a website that would deliver the terzepatide to us, which is what we chose to go on after doing a lot of research. Honestly, before you go talk to your doctor or if you just want to know more about the drug, chatgpt is a really great resource that I would send somebody to. Obviously, I'm happy to share my own experience, but I think for yourself and your current situation we had lots of conversations with ChatGPT of, like you know, I weigh this much. How much dosage should I take? Kind of just that back and forth, figuring out the dosage. So we found a website that we could order from. Again, I'm not going to be sharing where I get my GOP ones from, because I think this is something that you need to figure out for yourself. Go to your doctor, you know, figure that out. So we ended up ordering it ourselves and started on a really, really low dose.
Speaker 1:We are on and I said this before, we are on terzepatide. There are two different types of GLP-1s. You can take a semaglutide or semaglutide you probably have heard it called that or terzepatide. There is a third one that's recently come out, but I would say, between the two and the experience that I've had with friends and family that I know have taken it, if you have the option to take terzepatide over semaglutide. 100% go with terzepatide. Way less side effects. I think it works better. I think you'll see better results with terzepatide. It can be a little bit more expensive but I 100% think it's worth it. I've heard really negative things about nausea, constipation, those types of things on semaglutide.
Speaker 1:So we'd ended up doing terzepatide and I started with like a super low dose. Actually, we both started with a super low dose. My goal was to keep my dose as low as possible. Brad's goal was like weight loss, right. So he we took really low doses for the first couple of weeks and then he started to ramp up his doses as he felt like his body could handle it and everything was going fine. You want to start really slow and low, so if you do have bad side effects, you can combat them and figure that out. I found that the lowest dose, which is 2.5 milligrams that's kind of the starting dose that most people start on was enough for me to just kind of take the edge off.
Speaker 1:Now, the biggest thing that we felt strongly about and the research that we had done you know, listening to lots of podcasts and hearing examples is the importance of muscle loss, or keeping muscle loss away and your nutrition, in conjunction with the trisepatite. So, going into it, we had known how important it was for us to continue weightlifting heavy weightlifting, as you know four or five, six times a week and consuming enough protein Because, like I said, I had worked five years on putting a ton of muscle on my body and I didn't want that all to go to crap by losing a bunch of weight really fast and losing all my muscle and so slow dose was just enough for me to take the edge off of the food noise and, truthfully, I felt like, without having that food noise around all the time, I was able to make better food choices Because I wasn't craving a dessert or craving a bunch of food. When I did choose to eat, I could make really, really smart decisions about what I was eating. So I think I am eating better now than I ever have before. I am consuming more protein. I'm consuming more fruits and vegetables because there's no cravings there. It's actually so insane and we talk about it all the time of like and it's a miracle drug for that. So my goal is to hit like 120, 130 grams of protein a day. Brad is up to like closer to 200 grams of protein a day and that's what we focus on and eating enough protein, your results will be futile, because as you decrease the amount of muscle you have on your body, you're also decreasing your metabolic rate, and this we could go into the science of this. But it's so important to keep muscle on your body so that when you're not on a GLP-1, your metabolism still works Like you. You can totally screw up your metabolism being on these, these drugs if you don't do it correctly. So protein, weightlifting those were our two big things that we were, like you know, told each other this is what we're going to do. This is how we're going to handle this.
Speaker 1:Brad, you know, instantly started losing a bunch of weight. I started losing weight, but it wasn't like super fast, it was more, like you know, one to two pounds a week. Weight started shedding off and it it honestly zero side effects. Like nothing has changed in a bad way for us. Again, my own personal story.
Speaker 1:I know other people have different experiences, but for us it has been only positive experiences. Some of those positive experiences are I feel like I am sleeping better. I feel like I have more energy during the day. I feel like with not worrying about food all the time or having the thought of like you know what am I going to consume next, what am I craving, or whatever. I have more focus on other things in my life. All in all, it has been the most positive experience for us. Brad has lost over 50 pounds on the GOP one, I have lost 20 pounds and I'm in maintenance. I stopped losing weight around April or May once I got down to the weight that I was happy with and I probably am a little bit more lean than I actually want to be and my goal is to kind of gain a little bit of weight and go into more of a bulk to be able to put more muscle on. But it has been the best tool to hit our health and fitness goals and feel really good Like I have never felt this good before. My clothes fit really well. I have, like I said, I have more energy. I feel like I'm sleeping better. My body is functioning better. Because of that, I have really never upped my dose from that baseline low dose In fact. Now I'm on an even lower dose. I actually only do like two milligrams a week.
Speaker 1:The crazy thing is Brad went in and did his blood work again, like a follow-up blood work, in February or March, after being on a GLP-1 for three months. His blood work came back so much better. In fact, the lady that he was talking to on the phone to like go through the blood work was like what are you? What have you done? Like, you know, your blood glucose levels are down, your cholesterol is down, your all your markers are down. And Brad was, like, well, I started taking terzapatide. And the lady was like, oh, okay, that makes sense. Like yeah, that's why this is happening. Truthfully, I feel like again. I feel like we're healthier than we've ever been.
Speaker 1:And one of the questions that I got because I posted this on Instagram, that I was thinking about recording a podcast and people flooded me in with questions make sure you hit this, make sure you answer this. One of the questions was do you feel like you have had hair loss and or muscle loss? Now, the truth is, whenever you lose weight, you're gonna lose some muscle with it. Yeah, I probably have less muscle, but I still feel like, because we've done it correctly, because we eat our protein and continue lifting heavy, the muscle loss has been much less than the fat loss. I have not experienced any type of hair loss and I truthfully think that anybody who does experience hair loss, it's because they are not eating correctly, it's because they're either on too high of a dose and they cannot eat or they aren't eating the nutrients that they need.
Speaker 1:I forgot to mention this earlier, but when I first started, I did kind of up my dose a little bit after like a month and it got to the point where, like I like, had to force myself to eat and I did not like that. I did not want to feel like I was starving myself into weight loss. I wanted to feel like I could make really healthy decisions and fuel my body correctly, but also not feel like I had the food noise. And so I think when people, just, you know, rank up or crank up their dosage amounts, they're in like starvation mode, and in starvation mode we know that people will lose hair and they'll lose muscle. So you have to do it smart and that's why you should do it in conjunction with a medical professional. So you know, you know, know what's happening and what is impacting your body.
Speaker 1:I call what I'm doing microdosing, and microdosing is not research supported. There is not a ton of research out there. I'm sure there will be in the future, but most doctors actually don't want to do microdosing, which I don't really understand. But it's basically like it's not a clinical dose. If you stay under two and a half milligrams, I feel like microdosing has been the perfect answer for me to get the results that I want to get the effects of the GLP-1 with also being able to eat correctly. So sometimes your MD and I've had lots of friends that go into their MD and say I'm interested in trying a GLP-1 and they won't prescribe the medicine because you're not overweight enough. That's fine. You can either switch doctors or try a different doctor or there's a lot of homeopathic doctors that aren't necessarily tied to the medical research. Again, this is not medical advice. I'm just saying there's lots of options out there. So if your doctor says no, there are other options and you maybe want to try and research those. There's a lot of websites online that you can go onto and work with someone and they can help make that you. They will help you microdose. A lot of medical professionals that I've heard of will not. They do not accept microdosing as an option. That's not your only option. Is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:One of the other questions I got is how much? How do I feel? What's my appetite like? And, like I said before, I have an appetite. It's not that my appetite is completely gone, like I still want to eat, but I feel like it. Like I said, it just takes that edge off. It's like I want to eat, but I want to eat healthy food and because I'm trying to get 120 grams of protein in a day, it's like I'm not going to go for the Snickers bar. I'm going to go for the protein shake and you know the eggs and the cottage cheese and the things that I know will pack enough protein in for me so that I can hit my goals for the day. It really is just something I've never experienced before where I don't feel pulled to the Snickers bar.
Speaker 1:One of the questions that somebody asked was will I ever go off of the drug? My answer is I'm not sure. Honestly, again, I feel like I'm taking such a low dose that I don't feel like I need to go off it. Um, there is like, as they've done more research on the drug, they're not finding like real long-term side effects as long as you're not continuing to lose weight and in the micro dosing category. Now that's not to say that you're you are putting a foreign substance into your body, and so what I'm what I'll say, what I'm thinking right now but I have every right and chance to change my mind along this journey is I plan to continue microdosing for at least the next couple months and then just slowly taper off?
Speaker 1:Right now I feel like I don't even know how much the drug is really affecting me. I think it is. I think I have less appetite than I did before or less food noise than I did before, but it's not Like I can't handle not being. I could handle not being on it as well, and I think I maybe would gain a little bit of weight back, but I don't think it would be like instantly the scale would go up. So for right now, I am happy with where I'm at. I've only been on it for nine months and really some people are on it for years. Right now I'm just like happy where I am. We're going to just slowly, slowly, very slowly start to taper the drug and just see how I feel and at any point maybe I'll feel good about not taking it anymore or maybe it'll be like no, this. This really helps my energy levels. It really helps me eat the way I want to eat, like. I would rather do that than get off it and start eating unhealthy again. My husband is now in. He just recently reached maintenance phase, so he was losing weight. Like I said, he's lost 50 pounds and now his goal is to put on a little bit more muscle and really optimize his body for where he is right now.
Speaker 1:I want to mention something that I think I want to be really sensitive to this topic because I know that we live in a world where, like people are expected to be a certain weight and you know, you get a lot of likes and comments and attention when your body looks a certain way. And it's actually really sad that I've noticed for myself, as I have lost weight, like I've always had a lot of muscle, but since I've lost 20 pounds, you can see it a lot more. And so anytime I post a video or content of me and you can see my muscles, like what did you do? You look so great? No, no, no. Like comments after comments after comments and if I'm going to be honest, it's like, yeah, I like those comments. Those make me feel good about myself, but at the on the same side of that, it's like why are we even like noticing body changes? And can we live in a world where, like, everyone gets the same amount of attention? Everyone, you know, it doesn't matter if you are 30 pounds overweight or a normal weight, like it doesn't, it shouldn't matter. It shouldn't matter, but unfortunately it does, and I think that was the conclusion that I came to is like, I just want to be healthy and I want to feel good and these drugs are a really great way to be able to do that.
Speaker 1:But there is a negative. You know, there's opposition in all things. There's really good about this drug and there's also really bad things about this drug. I think one of the negative side effects is that we are creating a culture where people are trying to get skinnier and skinnier and skinnier, and it doesn't change your worth. It doesn't change your inherent worth of who you are as a person and unfortunately, I think that's kind of been blurred a little bit more with these drugs. So, with that being said, know that even though I am a proponent of the GOP ones, I do think they're an amazing tool and I think that they are doing so much good for people that have struggled with obesity and their health their whole lives, like what a beautiful thing that we have this tool. A virtue can also become a vice, and I am very aware of how I present myself and how it affects other people. So for the people that are like this, these are the worst things. They are not doing good things for society, like I get that. I see that as well and I really want to be a voice of like just balance in everything that we do and acknowledging that there are good things and bad things about this drug.
Speaker 1:Hopefully I answered as many questions that you may have. With my own experience, there was a long time that I didn't want to share that. I was doing it because of the shame and the judgment that comes from it. I'm at the point now where I'm like screw it. This has been such a wonderful thing that has changed our lives and really helped us become healthier. So I'm happy to share our experience, knowing that there will be backlash, but I'm very confident in my own decision and what we've done and the benefits that it has brought to us. So that's why at this point, nine months in, I'm willing to finally start sharing more about my journey. If you have questions, shoot me a DM on Instagram. Happy to answer any questions that you have with my own personal advice. Hopefully that helps and I will see you next week in the next episode.
