There are two stages. I hit my goal weight and then the real work began. Welcome back to Dinner Party on a GLP-1, a limited series. I’m Suzy Chase, and I’m not a doctor. Today, I want to talk about something I never hear about in the GLP-1 conversation, and that is what happens after. After the weight comes off, after you hit your goal, after the scale stops being the whole story. Because here’s what I’ve learned after almost three years on a 2.5 milligram Mounjaro and then Zepbound. Being on a GLP-1 isn’t one experience. It’s two completely different stages. And if nobody tells you that, you’ll spend the second stage using the wrong playbook, so let’s get into it. Part One: Stage one, weight loss. Now, this is where most of the GLP-1 conversation lives. The dose discussions, the side effects, the scale victories. How much are you losing? How fast? What are you eating? And I get it. That stage is significant, completely life-changing. For me, stage one was one year, 2.5 milligrams the whole time. Starting weight, 194, ending weight, 144, 50 pounds of pandemic weight gone. And I want to be honest about what that year felt like. It felt like I was finally working with my body instead of against it. The appetite suppression changed everything. I wasn’t white-knuckling through hunger anymore. I was making decisions from a place of calm instead of desperation. But here’s the whole thing about stage one. The goal is clear. You’re losing weight, you track the scale, you see it go down, you know it’s working. Now, stage two is a completely different game. Part Two: Stage two, optimization. I’ve been in maintenance for nearly two years now, taking a 2.5 milligram Zepbound dose every 15 days. And when I hit my goal weight, something shifted in how I thought about everything. The scale stopped being the point because I was already where I wanted to be, so the question changed. It stopped being how much can I lose and became what can I build? That’s stage two, and that’s the stage nobody prepares you for. In stage two, you’re not chasing a number on the scale. You’re optimizing your body. You’re thinking about strength, about cardiovascular fitness, about longevity, and what you want your body to be capable of not just next year, but 10, 20, 30 years from now. I have a phrase I come back to constantly. I’m training for 80. Let me say that again. I am training for 80 years old. Not for a wedding, not for a vacation, not for an after photo, for the version of me that is 80 years old and still moving still strong and still showing up. That reframe changed everything about how I train and how I look at my data. Part Three: What training for 80 looks like. So what does that actually look like day to day? Six days a week, I’m moving my body intentionally. And I want to tell you about the two things I do because I think they say something about what optimization actually means. Three days a week, I take The Ness classes in New York City. The Ness is trampoline cardio. And before you picture kids jumping around on a trampoline, let me tell you these classes are intense. Every single class gets my heart rate into the upper 150s, low 160s, and that’s cardiovascular work. That’s heart health right there. That’s the kind of training that compounds over decades. And I’ll tell you something else about those classes. I am always the oldest person in the room. I don’t say that for sympathy. I say that because it matters, because showing up is the oldest person in a hard cardio class and keeping up that stage two. That’s what optimization looks like in practice. The other three days, I lift weights at a studio here in New York City called Liftonic, Heavyweights. And again, oldest person in the room almost every single time. At Liftonic, I push myself to lift heavy every single session. Not comfortable, heavy, challenging heavy. The kind of heavy where the last two reps are genuinely hard. Because here’s what I know about being on a GLP-1 and lifting heavy. The medication suppresses appetite, which means if you’re not intentional, you can easily undereat protein. And if you undereat protein and you don’t lift heavy, you lose muscle and losing muscle on a GLP-1 is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. And it’s not just classes. I live in New York City. I walk all the time. I live in a darling fifth floor walkup apartment in the West Village. I’m walking up and down those stairs all day long, and I love every step of it. I don’t know how we got here in a society so focused on one level homes and recliners. As I look towards my 59th birthday this summer, I keep coming back to the same thought, stay moving. Because when you stop, that’s when things break down. It’s lifespan versus health span. How long you live combined with how long you stay strong, capable, and independent. That’s the whole philosophy behind training for 80. Not one big dramatic fitness moment. Just consistent movement every single day built into the life you already have. Heavy lifting tells your body, keep this muscle, we need it. Heavy cardio tells your body, keep this heart going. We need good cardiovascular health. Part Four: Where AI fits into stage two. So how does the GLP-1 AI method fit into all of this? In stage one, AI helps you understand the scale. Is this fluctuation real? Is this water? Is this worth reacting to in stage two? AI helps you optimize. Are my fitness numbers trending in the right direction? Am I recovering well enough to keep training this hard? Am I pushing enough? Or am I playing it safe? The prompts shift. The questions get deeper because the goal is different. In stage two, I’m not asking AI. Did I lose weight this week? I’m asking, are my HRV numbers supporting the training load I’m putting on my body? Are my resting heart rate trends showing cardiovascular improvement? Am I recovering between The Ness and Liftonic classes well enough to keep pushing? Those are stage two questions and they require stage two thinking. So the fitness check prompt in the method asks one simple question. Are my Fitbit numbers trending in the right direction? In stage two, that question is everything because the scale isn’t the measure anymore. Your fitness is. Part Five: The mindset shift. I want to leave you with this. Most people think a GLP-1 is a weight loss tool, and it is. Stage one is real and significant and life-changing, but if you stop there, you’re leaving the best part on the table. Stage two is where you find out what your body is capable of. It’s where you stop shrinking and start building. It’s where training for 80 stops being a concept and starts being a lifestyle. As I said, I’m the oldest person in my fitness classes. I lift heavy three days a week. I get my heart rate into the 160s in a trampoline cardio class three days a week. It’s not easy. Some days I don’t even want to go, but it’s one foot in front of the other and I’m always so happy once I show up to the studio. I’m nearly two years into maintenance on 2.5 milligrams of Zepbound, dosing every 15 days. And I’m here to tell you I’ve never felt stronger or more capable in my life. That’s stage two. And I want that for every single person listening to this. GLP-1 isn’t the strategy. It’s a variable inside a system. And the system, the full system, includes what you build after the weight is gone. If you want the one-page version of how I do this, the GLP-1 AI method, you can find it over on SuzyChase.substack.com. This is the new Dinner Party on a GLP-1, and I’m Suzy Chase. Everything I talked about today lives inside a one-page system I created and have been using for the past year — The GLP-1 AI Method. Your weight, your workouts, your recovery — all of it in context instead of chaos. Download it below, pay what you wish. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit suzychase.substack.com
