Weight loss drugs helped me lose 85 pounds — and quieted my alcohol cravings

In her late 20s, Johnna Byrd was stuck. She was living in Las Vegas, but didn’t have much desire to do anything other than lie in bed and scroll on her phone. Her life was mostly virtual, and when she did get out of the house, it was usually to pick up the cheapest, most convenient drive-through meal she could.

Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) and excess weight had always been problems for Byrd. She had gastric sleeve surgery in 2019, but her PCOS symptoms worsened again, and her weight eventually crept back up to more than 350 pounds.

In August 2021, she gave birth to her son, who was born prematurely. Something broke inside her.

“It was a lot, and that’s when I fell into alcoholism,” Byrd tells Yahoo. Drinking became a constant, “every day, all day,” she says. “And then, one day, I just kind of woke up and said, ‘I need to be a better person and I need to be a better mom for him.’ He became the motivation for the entire process.”

Byrd got right to work. She needed to regain control over her body and habits, and with a renewed commitment to diet and exercise, lost more than 150 pounds in the span of a year. But by January of 2023, her progress had stalled. That’s when she got on TikTok and saw doctors and patients talking about Ozempic and GLP-1 medications. Byrd decided to try one of the medications.

When she started taking tirzepatide, she didn’t realize that it might help with her drinking as well as her weight. On the medication, what she calls “alcohol noise” disappeared. “It was just complete silence,” she says. “I went from drinking literally every day all day to being able to say, 'Hey, I don’t want to drink.'” It was the beginning of a major shift in Byrd’s life, she says. “From there, my life has done a crazy turn.”

Here’s what that looks like, in Byrd’s own words, for the latest installment of Yahoo’s On My Weigh series.

The weigh-in

• Name: Johnna Byrd

• Age: 30

• The method: Zepbound, 2.5 milligrams. This is a maintenance dose; I was previously up to 7.5 milligrams and briefly also tried compounded tirzepatide.

• The goal: I wanted to have energy and be a better person and mom for my son. My goal was to lose 60 pounds so I would be in the healthy BMI range.

• Progress report card: I wound up losing 85 pounds. And being a mom is just easier. I can run around and play with my son and take him to do things I wouldn’t have been able to do before. My weight loss journey has just completely changed who I am as a person. I don’t know, I just have more energy and I don’t care about what anyone thinks of me anymore.

• Food noise volume: I didn’t really have food noise, I had alcohol noise. It went from like a 10 to a 2, and I almost never drink.

Day in the life

Rise and shine

Before starting Zepbound, I didn’t have a sleep schedule. I had no sleep routine. I just went to sleep whenever I went to sleep, and woke up whenever I woke up. And then I’d still lie in bed for hours.

My sleep is so much better now. I’m in bed by 9 p.m. every night, if not earlier. I don’t know if it’s because I lost the weight, or because I’ve now had surgery to get rid of my loose skin, but my sleep quality is just better than it ever was.

Even on Zepbound, I don’t necessarily wake up completely ready to start the day, but it’s way easier than it was before. I get up at 5:30 or 6 a.m. It’s nice to be up when the sun is up. I feel way better rested, and the difference in my energy levels is like night and day.

First bites

I’m not really a breakfast person; I just don’t really love breakfast foods. But this morning I had scrambled eggs and oatmeal, and I cooked them myself.

When I was in my active weight loss phase, I drank protein shakes in the mornings. I always got Alani Nu Fit Shakes, which I would mix with two shots from my espresso machine.

Before starting Zepbound, I would just go to McDonald’s or something whenever I woke up and get an Egg McMuffin or something similar. I actually haven’t had McDonald’s in so long!

Get ready with me

I’m an esthetician, so I take my skin care very seriously and always start my day with that. Plus, I love doing a face mask every once in a while. I went to esthetician school when I started my weight loss journey. I was just tired of my skin looking bad, so I decided to fix it. Now I love my skin. It’s so much clearer and softer and I have a brighter complexion.

Make a move

I go to the gym first thing in the morning, because otherwise I won’t do it. It also just sets the tone for the day, and I get to just vibe out. I love getting ready to go to the gym in the morning. When I first decided to start going to the gym, I told my niece, who lives with me, “If I’m going to go to the gym, I need to get cute outfits.” And she told me to go on Gymshark and get outfits from there. I’ve bought so many cute gym outfits, and that’s like my favorite thing. Is the gym a fashion show? No, but I make it one! I’m a content creator; I have to look the part.

Before, I didn’t go to the gym. I didn’t have a morning routine. I didn’t do anything, just got on my phone and did nothing. It was just pure laziness. Or, maybe not even laziness — I just didn’t want to do anything, I had no motivation.

Dose time

I do my shots Wednesday mornings when I first wake up. I don’t have a particular routine around it, I just make sure that I eat enough the day before I take my shot, and the day I take it. In the 18 months I’ve been taking weight loss medication, I’ve never had side effects or anything like that.

Let’s do lunch

Lunch is still usually something my niece and I eat out for. I used to get chicken nuggets, chicken strips, Wingstop or McDonald’s or something similar for lunch every day. Anything that had a drive-through and was going to cost me less than $10, I was going. It was all about convenience back then. But now I’ll go to a salad or acai bowl spot. Or get sushi. My niece and I love sushi.

Happy hour

Before starting my weight loss journey, I would drink wherever, whenever, alone or with friends. I drank all day, every day. But I wasn’t really social. I was just always on my phone and did everything virtually.

I can still drink wine here or there. But if I go out, I’ll have like one or two drinks. I went from getting belligerently drunk to, now, just a nice buzz.

Dinner bell

I used to eat straight junk food. I ate anything I could put in the air fryer, anything that was convenient and a lot of processed foods.

Dinner is now always at home. My niece and I are the type of people who go to the grocery store that day and decide what we’re going to cook, but we eat really, really healthy. Honestly, I love all types of seafood and chicken. I like to go on TikTok to look up healthy recipes. I have my classic ones, like protein bowls. But I’m always trying something new, and I think that’s one of the most fun things about weight loss: experimenting with different foods that you may have never tried before. Like, last night, we made a Greek salad with feta cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes and red onion.

My son, on the other hand, is really picky, but we’re working on it. He’s a 3-year-old boy, though — what can I expect?

Let’s get the bill

When I first started taking a GLP-1, I got compounded tirzepatide through Amble. Now, I get my prescription from Dr. Spencer Nadolsky, who suggested I switch to getting Zepbound through LillyDirect. I pay $349 a month now, which is only a $20 difference from compounded tirzepatide, so I figure I might as well get name-brand.

The price has always been pretty affordable within my budget. I’ve never had to put myself into debt. But regardless, it’s worth it. It’s a small price to pay for my health. Plus, all the money I’m saving on buying food is about the same as the monthly cost of the medication.

My biggest expense, though, has been excess skin removal surgery. Unfortunately, loose skin is inevitable after losing a lot of weight. Your skin is like a balloon: Once you blow it up and deflate it, it’s never going to go back to the same size. And it’s OK to have loose skin, because that shows how much weight you’ve lost and how much willpower you have. There are so many different options for surgery. I looked into it for a year before I decided to do it. So start saving your money as soon as you start losing weight.

I had about 15 pounds of loose skin. I wasn’t really self-conscious about it, and I didn’t have any health problems because of it. But it was just something I wanted to do for myself. I wanted to see the body I worked for and my actual shape. I had my first surgery (a tummy tuck and 360 lower body lift) in August 2024. I thought it was the only one I would ever have, but a few months later, I started to get self-conscious about my upper body. So I went back for an extended arm lift and upper bra line lift. Now, I don’t have any loose skin, and it’s the best thing ever. It cost me $33,000, financed with Care Credit, but it was so worth it. If I couldn’t have afforded it, I would have been OK, but I don’t regret it. I would do it 100 times over.

And it’s a crazy feeling to see myself now. It’s been almost a year since I had my first surgery, and it still hasn’t totally sunk in. And of course, sometimes body dysmorphia still sneaks in. But I look in the mirror and I’m like, “Dang, I got a cute belly button!” That’s the one thing I told my surgeon: “Don’t wake me up unless my belly button’s cute, or you’re going to put me right back to sleep to fix it.”