My GLP-1 Journey: 102 Pounds Down After a Heart Attack

I had a heart attack when I was 454 pounds. Here is my GLP-1 journey, over 100 pounds down, what’s changed, and how I eat to keep on losing.

I’ve spent most of my adult life losing the same weight over and over. I knew the nutrition. I could recite the calorie math. None of that stopped the regain, and by my late forties the cycle had gotten faster and meaner. What I did not understand then was metabolic resistance, and how much of the fight was happening below the level of willpower.

This is the whole story. The months I felt wrong and the tests that said I was fine. The heart attack I had in the emergency room at 454 pounds. The years I refused a GLP-1, and the GLP-1 diet I built once I stopped refusing. I am 102 pounds down and still working.

Decades of Dieting Before Any of This

My grandparents were vegetarian. Plant-based eating was normal in my family long before it was a trend. When I went vegetarian as a young adult, the weight came off. Going fully vegan a few years later worked even better, and it held for several years.

Consistency is where it fell apart. Social pressure, family meals, business dinners, stress, convenience food. I would drift, regain, go back to a structured plan, lose enough to feel human again, and start the loop over.

Each pass got harder. My appetite came back louder every time. Cravings lasted longer. The plans that used to work stopped producing the same results on the same effort. That pattern has a name, and I wrote about it in why can’t I stop eating carbs.

The Vegan Years and What They Missed

My weight eventually went past what the scale at the ER could read. My response was to double down on the diet I trusted. I went harder at vegan eating.

The flaw took me years to see. Most of what I was eating came out of a package. Vegan burgers, vegan cheese, protein bars, meat analogs. Technically plant-based. Loaded with seed oils, refined carbohydrates, and additives.

I was eating a label, not a diet. Nothing in that food was supporting my metabolic health. I went deeper into that in the avocado oil problem and in hidden sugar in foods. The food giants are very good at making a health claim survive a processing line.

Months of Feeling Wrong and Tests That Said I Was Fine

Something was off for months before anything happened. Tightness in my chest. Short of breath from almost nothing. A squeezed feeling that did not let up.

I got the standard tests. Every one of them came back fine.

If you are in that position right now, keep pushing. Normal results are not the same as an explanation.

The Heart Attack Happened in the ER

I stayed home that day. It got worse through the afternoon. Eventually it got bad enough that I decided to take myself in. I showered, got myself together, and drove to the hospital.

The heart attack itself happened in the emergency room.

The first EKG did not show it. The doctor read the results and did not think I was having a cardiac event. A tech finally noticed that one of the leads was not connected. They ran it again. The picture changed, and I went straight to surgery. I came out with two stents.

I was 48 years old and I weighed 454 pounds. That was December of 2024.

My cardiologist raised GLP-1 medication before I left. Not only for the weight, though I needed that. He told me the studies coming back were showing heart protective benefits on top of the weight loss.

Why I Said No to GLP-1 Medication for Years

I thought that I was able to make better choices and for the weight to come off as easily as it had for me in the past. I didn’t understand that metabolic resistance was working against me. There were hidden sugars and inflammation causing ingredients in the vegan processed foods that I was relying on. I kept trying despite the weight becoming impossible to lose.

The other half was fear. Nobody could tell me what these drugs would do over twenty years. I decided the unknown was worse than my current situation.

The heart attack ended that calculation. My need was too high to keep waiting, and the benefits were starting to be understood. I stopped weighing an unknown risk against a known one and picked the one that was actually going to kill me.

Starting at 454 Pounds

I started the medication in May of 2025.

I am at 352 now. That is 102 pounds off my highest, and I am still going.

The weight was not the part that surprised me. The drive to eat dropped away. For the first time in decades I could follow a plan without arguing with my own biology every afternoon. I talk through that stretch on camera in my 100 pound weight loss on Wegovy.

The medication did not do the eating for me. It made the eating possible.

The Two Months I Stopped

It was not clean the whole way. I was vomiting about once a week for a stretch, enough that I came off the medication for almost two months while they ran testing to rule other things out.

Nothing else turned up. What those two months taught me was what the medication had been doing.

The hunger came back in force. Not a little of it. All of it, at the volume I remembered from before. It would not be recommend that you try finding that out on purpose.

I restarted and worked my way back up. I am at 1.7 mg weekly now.

What Changed Besides the Scale

Fatty liver disease is in remission.

My A1C went from pre-diabetic to normal. Not borderline. Normal.

The one that matters most to me is not on a lab report. At 454 pounds I was severely limited and close to bedridden. I am active now. That is the change I would not trade back.

What I Actually Eat Now

With appetite regulated, I rebuilt the plate around four things. Protein first, real fiber, whole food, and nothing with a seed oil or a hidden sugar in it.

Protein at breakfast. Thirty grams before anything else sets the whole day. That is the protein anchor.

Carbs on purpose. Not zero, not unlimited. My accounting is in what you need to know about carbs.

Stock in the fridge every week. Slow cooker chicken stock turns into soup, sauce, and braise without a single bouillon cube.

A vegetable that earns its place. Garlic butter green beans get eaten. Steamed and sad does not.

Something to take to work. High protein pasta salad holds up for days.

No plan survives a smaller appetite if the food is boring. That constraint drives every recipe I publish.

Why I Started Lizard Bites

A GLP-1 gives you a smaller appetite. It does not tell you what to put in it. Most of the recipes aimed at people like me are either diet-industry sad food or the same processed products I already proved do not work.

I started this recipe collection to fill that gap with food I actually cook. Real ingredients, protein forward, no seed oils, no flavor packets, nothing engineered to make you eat past full.

If You Are Deciding Right Now

I am not a doctor and this is my history, not medical advice. The decision belongs to you and the person who writes your prescriptions, and they are the best resource you have for whether any of this fits your situation.

What I will say is that I lost years to the belief that needing help was a character problem. It took a heart attack in an emergency room to get me to reconsider. The medication addressed a biological driver I could not out-discipline. The food work was still mine to do, and I do it every week.

Final Thoughts

The diet industry sold me discipline for thirty years and took the money either way. The food industry sold me the vegan version of the same processed junk and called it health. Neither one was ever going to fix the biology underneath.

What worked was a medication that quieted the noise and a kitchen that stopped fighting me. That is the whole job of this site. Real ingredients, cooked by someone who has to eat this way, for people who are done starting over.

Benjamin

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