At just eight years old, Karen Holman’s life changed drastically. Her oldest sister, whom she idolized, died in a car accident at the age of 18. Back then, conversations about trauma were almost non-existent—people were just expected to move on.
“I really believed everyone I loved was going to die,” Karen shared. Growing up in Perth and Geraldton, Western Australia, she was the youngest of five sisters. Active outdoors, she appeared fine, but internally, she battled anxiety and grief.
“I was a really sad kid,” she admits. “But nobody knew.” Food slowly became her source of comfort, not in any dramatic sense, but it just sort of happened as she moved into adulthood.
“I didn’t think I was worth good food,” says Karen, now 53 and residing in Melbourne. She made it a priority to provide quality meals for her daughter but felt she didn’t deserve the same treatment.
At her heaviest, Karen weighed 88kg (194 lbs), avoiding mirrors and shying away from photos with her granddaughter. “That breaks my heart now,” she reflects, lamenting the lack of memories captured during those years.
Throughout her life, she dealt with several traumatic experiences—Crohn’s disease in her twenties, a marriage collapse when her daughter was five, and, more recently, the deaths of a sister and her best friend during the pandemic. By her early fifties, she felt the weight of grief visibly aging her.
“I just stopped caring what I ate,” she revealed, feeling exhausted and battling PTSD. As her weight increased, so did the strain on her chronic back injury from a childhood accident.
The pain escalated to the point where some days left her flat on the floor. A wake-up call came in 2018 when a diagnosis of fatty liver disease prompted her to take action. “I was scared,” she recalls.
For a while, she struggled with various diets—Keto, juicing, cutting out sugar and dairy—but fell off the wagon repeatedly. By 2023, after losing another sister, she confronted a stark realization: “I didn’t want to be the next sister to die.”
This led her to medically-assisted weight loss in September 2023, starting with Ozempic and later transitioning to Mounjaro under supervision. She was intentional about losing weight gradually and made sustainable lifestyle changes alongside her medication.
Within months, she shed 12kg, and subsequent blood tests indicated her liver markers had normalized. “I couldn’t believe it,” she said, noting the significant shift in her health.
Now, Karen oscillates between 58kg-60kg (128-132 lbs), nearly a 30kg loss overall. Though her back pain hasn’t completely disappeared, the difference is substantial. “It hasn’t gone, but it’s so much better,” she notes, sharing her newfound energy to run with her granddaughter.
GLP-1 medications like Ozempic have been described as helping reduce constant cravings, providing an essential shift for Karen. “It gave me space,” she shared, allowing her to think before reaching for food.
Dr. Kieran Dang, a Chief Medical Officer at Mosh, explains that these medications work biologically to reduce hunger signals and improve blood sugar regulation. This helps patients to fight against biological impulses that make weight loss challenging.
For Karen, overcoming emotional eating—a coping mechanism shaped by years of trauma—has been part of her journey. Dr. Dang emphasizes that breaking the cycle of emotional eating is tough because it intertwines biology with behavior.
Karen’s progress was not solely dependent on medication. A recent study highlighted that those using weight-loss medications in combination with structured support lost significantly more weight than those relying only on the drugs. Underpinning this success is the emphasis on establishing lasting habits.
For Karen, the support provided has been essential in her gradual tapering off medication while keeping the weight off. “They help you adjust mentally, which is really important,” she points out.
Ongoing discussions about GLP-1 medications sometimes cast them in a negative light, but Dr. Dang rebuts this by stating that obesity is not merely a matter of willpower. It’s a medical condition that needs proper treatment, just like high blood pressure.
Research shows that losing even a small percentage of body weight can lead to improved health markers, and for Karen, the changes have been both physical and emotional. “I feel like I’m finally the person I always wanted to be,” she says, now comfortable being photographed and feeling proud of her reflection.
Having lifted the burden of grief from her body, she feels lighter, embodying a sense of transformation that feels genuinely different this time.
