Learning to Love Food Again: Motherhood, GLP-1s, and My Mexican Roots

I grew up in a small rural town in Durango, Mexico, where food was never something you questioned.

You didn’t count calories.

You didn’t measure portions.

You definitely didn’t sit at the table thinking, “How many grams of protein are in this?”

You were thankful there was food on the plate.

Food meant family. It meant mamá cooking. It meant tortillas, beans, rice, carne, pan dulce, celebrations, birthdays, and gathering around the table with the people you loved.

And if you were lucky enough to have enough food, you ate it.

That was how I learned to see food.

Fast forward to becoming a mom in the United States, and suddenly I was surrounded by a completely different conversation about food.

Calories.

Macros.

Diets.

Good food.

Bad foods.

Guilty foods.

Cheat meals.

Before-and-after pictures.

And somewhere along the way, I started believing that my body was the problem.

Then I became a mother.

Motherhood changed everything.

My relationship with my body changed. My relationship with food changed. My priorities changed.

I was trying to take care of a little human while also trying to figure out how to take care of myself.

And honestly?

I was exhausted.

I had spent years going back and forth with food. Dieting, restricting, overeating, starting over, feeling guilty, promising myself that Monday would be different.

Monday always seemed to be the magical day when I was going to become a completely different person.

But Monday would come… and I was still me.

Eventually, I decided to try a GLP-1 program.

I want to be very clear: this is my personal experience, not medical advice. Medication isn’t a magic fix, and everyone’s experience is different.

But for me, something unexpected started happening.

Yes, I started noticing changes in my body.

But the biggest change wasn’t happening on the scale.

It was happening in my head.

For the first time in a long time, I started feeling like I could actually listen to my body.

I wasn’t thinking about food every second.

I could eat something without feeling like I had ruined my entire day.

I could stop eating when I was full.

And slowly, I started realizing something:

Maybe food was never supposed to be my enemy.

Growing up, food represented love and survival.

Here in the United States, I learned to associate food with numbers and guilt.

Now I’m trying to find the middle ground.

I can still love tortillas.

I can still make Mexican food.

I can still enjoy a meal with my family.

I can still eat something because it tastes good.

But I can also learn to nourish my body.

I don’t have to choose between my culture and my health.

I don’t have to stop being the Mexican girl from Durango just because I’m trying to lose weight.

And I definitely don’t want my son growing up thinking that food is something he needs to fear.

I want him to see his mamá enjoying food.

I want him to know that vegetables are good, but so are birthday cakes.

I want him to experience Mexican food as something beautiful, not something that needs to be eliminated because it’s “too many carbs.”

Most importantly, I want him to grow up seeing me take care of myself.

Not because I hate my body.

But because I love myself enough to take care of it.

Being a mom in the United States has taught me so many things.

I’ve learned how to raise a child far away from the place where I grew up.

I’ve learned how to carry my Mexican culture with me.

I’ve learned that motherhood can make you lose pieces of yourself while also introducing you to a completely new version of who you are.

And now, through this GLP-1 journey, I’m learning something else:

I can change my relationship with food without changing who I am.

I’m still the girl from Durango who believes you should be grateful when there’s food on the table.

I’m just learning that I can be grateful for the food and take care of the person eating it.

And maybe that’s what healing my relationship with food looks like for me.

Not counting every bite.

Not being afraid of tortillas.

Not starting over every Monday.

Just learning to listen to my body, enjoy my culture, nourish myself, and give my son a healthier example of what it means to love yourself.

Because this journey was never just about becoming smaller.

It’s about becoming healthier.

Becoming happier.

And becoming a version of myself that my son can look at someday and say,

My mom taught me how to love myself.