My First Weeks on Tirzepatide: I Wasn't Convinced It Would Work

Written by Dan Cripe, RN, BSN

I wish I could tell you exactly what I felt the morning after my first tirzepatide shot.

I can't.

Marcia and I took our first 2.5 mg doses on May 10, 2024. We gave each other the injections, and I remember being nervous. Beyond that, the details of those first few days are fuzzy.

There wasn't some dramatic moment when I woke up and thought, This is working.

If anything, I was still waiting to find out if I'd wasted my time.

I Was Skeptical From the Beginning

Before starting tirzepatide, the whole idea sounded a little too good to be true to me. I had gained weight over years and had struggled to lose it consistently. The idea that I could give myself a shot once a week and suddenly change that sounded almost like a magic shot.

I knew there was more to it than that. I'm a nurse. I had done my own research, and Marcia and I had talked about these medications before we started. But knowing how a medication is supposed to work and believing it's actually going to work for you are two different things.

I also had my drinking in the back of my mind. I was drinking heavily when I started, and I remember wondering whether tirzepatide could even work if I continued drinking the way I had been.

So I didn't start on May 10 assuming this was going to change my life. I started hoping it might help me change it.

The First Changes Were Pretty Uneventful

My memories of those first few days aren't very clear. I sort of remember being less hungry. I also sort of remember staying full longer.

I think I was trying to be “all in” at the beginning too—quit drinking, eat better, and actually make changes instead of expecting the medication to do everything for me. But I don't want to rewrite the story now and pretend I remember every detail, because I don't.

What I do remember is that I didn't have much trouble with side effects at the beginning. The side effects I remember more clearly came later when I got to higher doses.

There was one stupid food-related thing I remember.

I ate a salad, and afterward I kept burping up the dressing. It seemed like I could taste that dressing for days. It was enough to turn me off from eating it for a while.

Not exactly the life-changing first-week story people are looking for, but that's what I remember.

Something Else Was Changing

There was one early change that eventually stood out much more than the salad or whether I was a little less hungry.

Alcohol.

Before tirzepatide, I had tried more than once to cut back on drinking and hadn't been able to stick with it. Drinking had become a major part of my life by the time I started treatment.

Then, somewhere around the first week or two after starting tirzepatide, I noticed that I didn't really want to drink.

That was different.

I don't remember waking up one morning and suddenly realizing, I don't want alcohol anymore. It wasn't that clean. It was more like noticing that the desire wasn't there the way I expected it to be.

I also remember that toward the end of the week, when it felt like the medication was wearing off, some of those cravings could come back.

At the time, I wasn't thinking about GLP-1 receptors, reward pathways, or why that might be happening. I was just noticing that something I had repeatedly struggled to control suddenly felt different.

Whether tirzepatide caused that change is a separate question from what I experienced. What I can say is that the change happened after I started taking it, and it was noticeable enough that I remember it more clearly than most of the other things that happened during those first weeks.

I Wasn't Watching the Scale Every Five Minutes

I don't remember one specific number on the scale that suddenly convinced me.

For me, it was more gradual.

I had been told that I might not see a huge difference right away and that clothes fitting differently could be an early sign. So I wasn't expecting to take the first shot and immediately start dropping pounds.

That probably helped, because my first weeks weren't dramatic.

I didn't have severe nausea. I didn't have some huge appetite revelation that I can clearly date to a particular day. I wasn't standing on the scale every morning watching the numbers fall.

I was mostly living my life and waiting to see what happened.

There Was No “Holy Crap” Moment

When I think back now, I don't remember a true “holy crap, this works” moment early on.

It took seeing the number on the scale actually start going down before I became convinced tirzepatide was working. The changes in my cravings for alcohol and food mattered too.

It was the combination that eventually got me.

The strange thing is that I had expected weight loss to be the evidence. That was what I thought I was signing up for.

Instead, some of the earliest signs that something was different had less to do with my weight and more to do with what I wanted.

I was less hungry. I stayed full longer. My desire to drink wasn't behaving the way it had before.

None of it felt dramatic in the moment.

I Didn't Know Yet Where This Was Going

Those first weeks didn't turn me into a GLP-1 success story overnight. I was still early in treatment. I was still figuring out how I responded to the medication, and I hadn't reached the higher doses where I remember more noticeable side effects.

I also didn't know what was going to happen with my weight, my drinking, or the rest of my life.

What I knew was that a few things were beginning to change.

The scale eventually started giving me proof I could see. My clothes began changing. Food and alcohol weren't pulling at me in exactly the same way.

That was enough to make me think maybe the magic shot wasn't quite as ridiculous as I'd thought.

I still wouldn't have called it magic.

But I was starting to believe it worked.

Sources

This article is a first-person Journey account based on Dan Cripe's recollection of his life and experiences before beginning tirzepatide on May 10, 2024. It does not make clinical claims about tirzepatide or establish that the medication caused subsequent changes.

Continue Dan's Journey

One of the earliest changes Dan noticed had almost nothing to do with the number on the scale.

Within the first week or two after starting tirzepatide, his desire for alcohol began to feel different. For someone who had tried to cut back before, that change became one of the most unexpected parts of his experience.

Next: What Happened to My Drinking After I Started Tirzepatide →