and before you feel bad about that, let me explain exactly what it is, what’s going on inside it, and why it’s genuinely one of my favorite things about being on this journey with you.

but first.

it’s $3 a month.

three dollars. one less coffee order. one less random Amazon impulse buy. three dollars and you’re in.

okay. let’s talk about the chat.

(if you are ready to join? click the link below) or keep reading for the deets.

Get 40% off forever

what even is the chat?

So Substack has a feature called Chat. Think of it like a private group text, but instead of your family sending memes you don’t understand, it’s a group of women and men who are ON this journey with you.

It lives inside the Substack app. You open it, and there’s a whole conversation happening.

It’s not a comment section. It’s not a Facebook group. It’s not a DM thread that dies after two replies.

It’s a community. And it’s ours.

here’s what actually happens inside

Every week I post threads in the chat. Right now we have four weekly threads running:

Sunday Weigh-In Thread Every Sunday we show up, drop our number, and talk about how our week actually went. The wins, the hard moments, the “why did I eat that” and the “I actually did really well this week.” It’s honest, it’s real, and there is something about reading other people’s check-ins on a Sunday morning that makes you feel like you are part of something. Because you are.

Monday Yapping Thread This is exactly what it sounds like. Questions, comments, anything on your mind. Starting a new dose? Drop it here. Had a rough week? Drop it here. Not sure if what you’re feeling is normal? Drop it here. This is the no-judgment zone where you can literally say whatever.

Wednesday Mid-Week Check-In Thread We’re halfway through the week. How’s it actually going? Not the highlight reel version. The real one. This thread is where people share the wins AND the hard moments. It’s where you realize other people are struggling with the exact same things you thought were just you.

Friday “Share Your Wins” Thread Big wins. Tiny wins. “I didn’t quit” wins. All of it counts. This thread is genuinely one of the most feel-good things I’ve built. Watching people celebrate each other every single Friday? Unmatched.

but wait, it’s not just threads

Here’s the part people don’t realize.

You can REPLY to those threads. You can talk to other members. You can ask a question in the Monday thread and get answers from five different people who have been exactly where you are.

It’s not me talking AT you. It’s all of us talking together.

who’s in there?

Honestly? People just like you. People who are doing this for real, figuring it out week by week, dose by dose, meal by meal.

People in the early phase navigating side effects.

People deep in the invisible phase wondering why the scale stopped moving.

People who have been on this journey for over a year and still have hard weeks.

Nobody in here is making this look effortless. We are all just showing up and being honest about it. That’s the whole thing.

what else do you get with paid?

The chat is the main thing. But it’s not the only thing.

When you upgrade you also get:

• Friday Deep Dive posts - these are the longer, more personal, more detailed posts that I only share with paid subscribers. Think of it as what I’d tell you if we were sitting across from each other.

• Full archive access - every paid post I’ve ever written is yours to go back and read.

• The vault - resources like The Middle Phase Playbook, my protein guide, weight loss tracker, journal, and more.

• Priority access to cohorts - like the Back to Day One reset that just launched. Paid subscribers get access first, always.

But honestly? Most people upgrade for the chat. And they stay for everything else.

let me be real with you for a second

I built this community because I needed it and it didn’t exist.

When I started this journey I was searching for someone who was being honest. Not selling a program. Not before-and-aftering their way through content. Just... being real.

That’s what this space is. And the chat is where it lives the most.

It’s where I see people encourage each other at 9pm on a Tuesday. Where someone posts that they’re struggling and people respond within the hour. Where we celebrate a half-pound loss the same way we’d celebrate ten pounds because we KNOW what it took to get there.

You can read my posts for free forever. That’s real. I’m always going to put free content out.

But if you’ve ever wanted to actually BE in the room?

The chat is the room.

okay so how do you join

It’s $3 a month.

That’s it.

You click the button below, you upgrade, you download the Substack app if you don’t have it already, and you tap into the chat. The weekly threads are already running. You can jump in right now.

We’re in there. Come find us. (the button will say $5 but I’m running a current promotion that makes it $3 per month for life, it will never go up on you, you’ll see the discount at the check out page)

Get 40% off forever

already a paid subscriber and can’t find the chat?

Download the Substack app, tap the chat icon at the bottom, and look for GLP1 Bestiies. If you’re having trouble finding it, reply to this post and I’ll help you get in.

xo, Nyk

Questions, let me know below!

I know. I know.

We were just here celebrating 182. And now I’m standing in my new bathroom in my new apartment looking at 187.4 on a Saturday morning and doing the thing where you step off and step back on like the scale is going to change its mind.

It didn’t change its mind. But I also know exactly what happened this week. And I think you need to hear it because if your scale did this to you this week, you probably don’t.

Watch the Vlog Here:

Quick note before we get into it: Facebook took down my original page and I am starting over from scratch over there. I’d really appreciate a follow, my new page is linked « here ». I would love to see you there.

What the scale actually measured this week

It measured leg day. It measured two personal training sessions in a new gym in a new body that is still figuring out what hard work costs it in water retention and inflammation. It measured creatine that I started and then stopped because I forgot I always forget what creatine does to the number. It measured a week where I didn’t drink enough water because Teacher Appreciation Week had parents bringing me drinks and I got spoiled and let my water intake slide.

It measured cortisol from moving boxes and unpacking a life and sleeping in a new place and hearing the neighbors upstairs at 4:30 in the morning and having a mini panic attack on Wednesday night because my nervous system is also adjusting to a new space.

It measured all of that. It did not measure my body fat. It did not measure my progress. It did not measure who I am on this journey or whether any of this is working.

182 is still my lowest number in over a year. That number did not disappear because 187 showed up four days later.

The part I keep coming back to

On Friday I went to Skateland with my sixth graders for our end of year field trip.

I skated the whole time. I was on my feet for hours. I helped kids who had never skated before. I kept going when my legs were already sore from three workouts earlier in the week. And at the end of the day I went straight to a birthday party and kept going there too.

Three years ago I would have dreaded that field trip. Not because I don’t love my kids, but because my body would have made it something to survive rather than something to enjoy. I would have sat on the side. I would have had a hundred quiet reasons not to get out there.

I got out there.

The scale said 187 the next morning and I had to remind myself that those two things happened in the same week. The same body that is driving me crazy on a Saturday morning skated with my sixth graders on a Friday afternoon without thinking twice about it.

That’s the thing the number can’t show you.

What I actually ate

I want to be honest about this because I think it matters.

I did not overeat this week. Not in any real way. Tacos on Monday. Taco Bell on Thursday where I ate half of what I ordered. Pizza at Skateland. A handful of French fries made in the air fryer. Some candy here and there during Teacher Appreciation Week because parents were generous and I am human.

There was no binge. There was no moment where I went off the rails. There was a busy week, a body under stress, and a scale doing what scales do when cortisol and sodium and inflammation are all in the room at the same time.

If you had a week like this and you’re sitting with the number right now, I want you to actually look at what you ate. Not through guilt, just honestly. Because I think most of the time when the scale spikes like this it is not the food. It is everything around the food.

Back to Day One

We are nine days in and I could not be more grateful for everyone who showed up for this.

If you have been on the fence, you are not late. You join on whatever day we are on, you catch up at your own pace, and you do it alongside people who are in the exact same place you are. No shame about where you are starting from. That is the whole point.

The link is below.

The full week of daily weigh-ins is on YouTube if you want to watch the whole thing play out in real time.

xo

Nyk

Before you started this medication someone probably warned you about nausea.

Maybe they mentioned constipation. Maybe fatigue. Maybe you read the pamphlet or googled it and felt p…

Read more

At some point in the last nine days you stepped on the scale.

Maybe every day. Maybe once. Maybe you told yourself you weren’t going to and then did it anyway at 6am in the dark b…

Read more

You’ve been on this journey for eight days now.

And at some point this week, maybe more than once, you saw someone else’s results.

A before and after on Instagram. A comment in a F…

Read more

I lost 75 pounds on a GLP-1 without a single consistent workout plan.

I maybe went to the gym a handful of times in those first two years. And somehow the weight still came off.

I say that because I need you to know that I am not someone who has always loved the gym. I am not someone who figured out movement early and credit it for her results. I avoided it. For a long time.

It wasn’t until I hit the 180s, until I finally felt good in my body, until I actually wanted to move, that any of this started. November of 2025 I joined a gym. Went all of November, some of December, then stopped completely in January.

End of February I started again. And since then I have not missed a week.

Two and a half months of consistency. Three days a week, sometimes more. And then in March I accidentally signed up with a personal trainer named Lia and everything shifted.

If you read part one of this series, you know the story. I went in for a free consultation, I’m a people pleaser, I said yes before I fully understood what was happening, and I drove home kind of regretting it.

Eight sessions later? One of the best things I’ve done for myself.

The video above covers the full story. But this post is where we go deeper. The mindset stuff. The moments that actually changed something. And the exact workouts from weeks five through eight.

That part lives below the paywall.

THIS POST IS FOR PAID SUBSCRIBERS

Read more

You made it one week.

I don’t want you to scroll past that. I want you to actually sit with it for a second.

Seven days ago you showed up. Maybe nervous. Maybe skeptical. Maybe hop…

Read more

When you reach for food, what are you actually hungry for?

Not a trick question. Not a therapy prompt. Just an honest one.

Because one of the most quietly profound things that happ…

Read more

We moved this week.

And at the end of the day, sitting on the floor of our new bedroom completely out of gas, something hit me that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.

Watch here:

What I didn’t know I had lost

When you gain a significant amount of weight, it doesn’t happen all at once. It creeps in slowly. And so does the loss of what your body used to be able to do.

You stop volunteering to help people move. You start sitting out of the family photos. You say no to the beach trip, the pool day, the vacation that sounds amazing on paper but requires a bathing suit and you’re just not there yet. You sit in the car at the grocery store waiting for someone to pull out of the spot closest to the door because you need it to be that one specifically and you will wait as long as it takes.

And at some point you stop noticing that you’re doing any of that. It just becomes your life. Your normal. The version of the world that was built around what your body could and couldn’t handle, and you stopped questioning it so long ago that you forgot you were even doing it.

I didn’t realize how much I had quietly given up until this weekend when I got some of it back.

The day

Moving day was a lot. We had a U-Haul, a t-ball game, a volleyball championship I had to coach, two trips back to the old house after I thought we were done, and fast food for every single meal because there was genuinely nothing else. My husband and my sister in law packed most of the U-Haul while I was at t-ball and I spent the entire game feeling guilty about it, which is very on brand for me.

By 9pm the bed was made, the couch was set up, the kids were settled, and I sat down on the floor of our new bedroom and just stopped.

And that’s when it hit me.

I did all of that. My body did all of that. A full day of physical labor, two kids activities, multiple trips back and forth, hours on my feet, and I was tired at the end of it but I was not destroyed. I functioned. I kept going. I showed up for all of it.

Two years ago, at 250 pounds, that day would have taken me out completely.

What 250 pounds actually felt like

I want to be careful here because I don’t think bodies at any size are less capable or less worthy. But I know my body at 250 pounds. I lived in it. I know what it felt like from the inside.

A day like Saturday would have wrecked me for three days minimum. The joint pain alone from that much time on my feet would have had me limping by noon. The mental load of pushing through that kind of exhaustion would have meant I wasn’t actually present for any of it. Not the t-ball game. Not the volleyball match. Not the kids at the end of the night when they just needed me to be there.

I would have survived moving day. But I would not have shown up for it.

That’s the difference nobody really talks about. Not the number on the scale. Not the before and after photos. It’s the random Saturday where you realize your life has gotten bigger because your body can do more in it. Because you stopped quietly saying no to things without even realizing you were doing it.

If you’re reading this and you recognize yourself in any of that, I want you to know that I see you. And I want you to know that it changes. Not all at once. Not on any timeline you can predict. But it changes.

The food

McDonald’s for breakfast. Burger King for lunch. Papa John’s for dinner.

183.5 showed up this morning anyway.

I’m not saying that to be glib about nutrition, because what you eat matters and I believe that. I’m saying it because three years ago I would have used a day like Saturday as evidence that I was failing. Now I know it for what it actually was. A hard day. A full day. A day where I did the best I could with what I had. And then I woke up the next morning and kept going.

That’s what this journey actually looks like from the inside.

Back to Day One has officially started…

55 people joined the first cohort and I am still not over it.

If you missed the start, you are not late. You join on whatever day we’re on, catch up at your own pace, and get back to the basics alongside people who actually get it. No shame spiral. No starting from scratch. Just one day at a time with people in it with you.

We’re running this quarterly. Spring cohort is now. Summer starts July 1st. Fall starts October 1st. Winter starts January 1st.

The link is below if you’re ready.

The full vlog is on YouTube if you want to see the whole chaotic day play out, including the apartment tour.

xo

Nyk

If this is the kind of writing you want more of, you can support it for $3 a month. That’s all it costs to be a paid subscriber and it means the world to me.

upgrade to paid

It showed up, didn’t it.

Maybe it was a number on the scale that didn’t move. Maybe someone said something that got under your skin. Maybe you just woke up tired and unmotivated a…

Read more

If you’ve never heard the term food noise before, you’re about to have a moment of recognition that might make you want to cry a little.

Food noise is the constant mental chatter …

Read more

Day three is a funny one.

For some of you the medication is starting to whisper. A meal that didn’t finish itself. A craving that didn’t show up when it was supposed to. A moment …

Read more

You woke up on day two.

That might sound small. It’s not.

Day two is the day the excitement of starting meets the reality of continuing. The announcement energy is gone. Nobody is …

Read more

You’re here. And that means something.

Maybe you just took your first dose. Maybe you’ve been on this medication for a year and you needed a reason to start over. Maybe you’re not even sure why you clicked the link, you just knew something needed to change.

It doesn’t matter how you got here. You’re here. That’s the whole point of today.

Day one isn’t about doing everything right. It’s not about having the perfect plan or the cleanest eating or the most motivated mindset you’ve ever had. It’s about showing up. And you already did that.

A lot of women come to day one carrying something heavy. The weight of previous attempts. The voice that says “you’ve tried this before.” The quiet fear that this time won’t be different either.

I want you to set that down for today. Just today. You don’t have to promise anything. You don’t have to be sure. You just have to be here.

And you are.

Read more

I’m not going to lie, I’m a little nervous. Not because I don’t believe in what we built. Because I do. I’m nervous in that way you get when something actually matters to y…

Read more

She asked: have you set any goals for your Substack? Both monetary and not.

I loved this question. We talk about what we are building but not why. And the why is honestly the most important part.

So here is the honest answer.

the money goal

I want to make $10,000 a month. Recurring and expected.

I want to be specific about that phrase. There is a real difference between making $10k once and making $10k every single month in a way you can actually count on and plan around. One is a good month. The other is freedom.

That $10k is going to come from two places: Substack and YouTube Adsense. Not from constantly pushing products. Not from taking every brand deal that lands in my inbox. Not from saying things in a way that does not sound like me because a company paid me to.

I will do some brand deals. I already have one I genuinely love. But I want to be in a position where I can say no. Where a partnership is something I choose, not something I need. That only happens when the income I own is strong enough to carry me on its own.

Substack is a huge part of how I get there. And so is YouTube. Those two things together, built consistently over time, are the plan.

why this compounds over time

Here is something I did not fully understand until I started building this.

Most of my subscribers are choosing the annual plan. Which means they pay once upfront for the full year. At first that felt like a one-time sale, not recurring revenue.

But here is what actually happens. In year one I am collecting from new people joining. In year two I have new people joining AND people from year one renewing. In year three I have new people, year two renewals, and year one people who are still here. The income stacks on top of itself.

That is what I mean by recurring and expected. Not that every month looks the same, but that over time the floor keeps rising. You keep adding while also holding onto what you built.

I think of it like a slow compounding investment. Month one does not feel like much. Year three feels like everything.

I want to do this full time one day

I am a teacher. I genuinely love it. But I have been carrying two full lives for a while now and I want to get to a place where creating this content is my actual job. Not something I squeeze in between lesson plans and grading at 10pm.

The goal is not to quit dramatically. It is to build this slowly and steadily until the income from creating is stable enough that teaching becomes a choice. Maybe I still sub occasionally. Maybe I still step into a classroom sometimes because I want to. But I want options. Right now I do not have many.

I want to build a real community

Not just a following. A community.

People on GLP-1 medications who are doing this together. Women and men navigating the parts of this journey that nobody really talks about honestly. The stalls. The self doubt. The weird relationship with food that does not magically fix itself just because the number on the scale is going down. The feeling that you are doing everything right and still somehow falling behind.

I want this to feel like a group chat with people who get it. Not a clinical resource. Not a highlight reel. Just a real honest space where you do not have to explain yourself.

the question I sit with

What happens to this community when I am not in the messy middle anymore?

If things go the way I hope, in a couple of years I might be at or near my goal weight. I will not be in the thick of the struggle the way I am right now. And I have genuinely wondered whether that changes what I can offer. Whether my voice still means something when I am no longer actively figuring it out alongside everyone else.

Here is what I keep coming back to. I will always be on this journey. That does not end at a number on a scale.

GLP-1 medications are long term for most of us. Maintenance is its own chapter with its own challenges. The emotional side of this, the identity piece, the way your relationship with your body keeps evolving, none of that disappears when the weight does. And honestly, someone who has been through the hardest part and come out the other side might be exactly who you need when you are still in the middle of it.

I think about the people who helped me most on this journey. It was not always someone struggling the same way I was. Sometimes it was someone a few steps ahead who turned around and said, here is what I wish someone had told me.

That is the version of this I am building toward. Not a space where I am always the one who is lost. A space where I am always the one who is honest. Those are very different things.

where I actually am right now

47 days in. 47 paid subscribers. 1,371 people who found me organically and chose to stay. About $1,400 collected from writing about something I care about deeply, while teaching full time.

The $10,000 goal feels far from here. But $1,400 in 47 days from people on the internet who chose to pay for my writing is proof that this is real. That people value it enough to stay. That the community I want to build is already starting to form.

I am going to keep sharing the honest version of this as it grows. The good months and the slow ones. Because I think that is the whole point.

Thanks for the first question, Shelbi. Keep them coming.

Read other posts in this series: ALL POSTS

There’s a specific kind of energy that lives right before something starts.

Not the big announcement energy. Not the excited Instagram story energy. Something quieter than that. The kind where you’ve been building something for weeks and you finally look at it and think okay. this is real. this is actually happening.

That’s where I am this week.

Watch Here:

the invisible phase

I’ve been talking a lot lately about something I’m calling the invisible phase.

It’s that stretch of the GLP-1 journey where nothing appears to be happening. The scale sits still. The motivation gets quiet. The beginning rush is long gone and the finish line isn’t visible yet and you’re just sort of. there. In it. Doing the thing without the reward of seeing it work.

I spent a long time thinking the invisible phase meant something was wrong. That the medication had stopped working, that I was doing something wrong, that maybe this was just where my body wanted to be and I needed to accept that.

None of that was true.

What was actually happening was everything. Just underground. Just invisible.

Your body is not on your timeline. It is not motivated by your frustration or your impatience or the number you decided you’d be at by now. It is doing what it does at the pace it does it and the scale is genuinely the last place you’ll see it show up.

I know that’s hard to hear when the scale is the only thing you’re watching. I’ve been there. I’m still there some weeks.

But this week I want to talk about why I think the invisible phase is actually the most important part of this journey. And why the women who make it through it are the ones who change their lives for good.

what’s actually happening when nothing is happening

If you have been stalling, plateauing, sitting in the same five pound range for weeks or months, here is what your body is likely doing underneath the number.

1. Body recomposition.

   If you have added any movement to your routine, especially strength training, your body is simultaneously losing fat and building muscle. Muscle is denser than fat. The scale won’t show you that trade happening. But your clothes will. Your energy will. Your body will.

2. Water retention.

   This one moves constantly and it moves based on things you cannot control. Your hormone cycle. Your sodium intake. How hard you worked out two days ago. Whether you’re in your luteal phase. The scale on any given morning is telling you the story of the last 48 hours of your body’s water balance. It is not telling you the story of your progress.

3. The whoosh effect.

   Fat cells that are being broken down for energy temporarily fill with water before they release it. This is why the scale can sit completely still for two weeks and then drop three pounds seemingly out of nowhere. The loss was happening the whole time. Your body was just holding onto the water first.

4. Undereating.

   This one is counterintuitive and I think it’s the most underdiagnosed reason for a plateau on GLP-1 medications. When your appetite is suppressed and you stop feeling hunger cues, it is incredibly easy to eat too little without realizing it. And when your body doesn’t have enough fuel it adapts. It slows down. It holds on. Eating more, specifically more protein, can actually restart a stall caused by undereating. I know that feels backwards but it’s real.

5. Cortisol.

   Your stress hormone is a weight loss saboteur. When cortisol is elevated your body holds onto fat as a protective response. I lose significantly more weight during summer than during the school year. I am a sixth grade teacher and a mom. My cortisol is high as a baseline. This matters. Stress is not just emotional. It is physiological. And it shows up on the scale.

6. Hormones.

   If you are cycling, the week before your period your body retains water, your appetite increases, your energy tanks. You will gain on the scale during your luteal phase. You will likely lose it back during your follicular phase. If you are not tracking your cycle alongside your weight you are missing context that is making your progress look worse than it is.

what to do when you’re in it

I am not going to give you a plan. That is not what the invisible phase needs.

What it needs is a recalibration. A coming back to the basics not because you failed but because the basics are what carry you when nothing else does.

• Weigh yourself for data. Stop giving the scale daily power over your mood.

• Take photos. Your body is changing in ways the scale will never show you.

• Track how your clothes fit. A pair of jeans tells you more during a stall than any number.

• Get your protein in. Every single meal. This is the one non-negotiable.

• Sleep like it’s medicine. Because during this phase it basically is.

• Move your body in a way that feels sustainable. Not punishing. Not earning. Just moving.

Find your people. The invisible phase is where you go quiet and lose the thread. Don’t go quiet.

why I built something for this

I’ve been in the invisible phase for a while.

75 pounds down. 40 more to go. Still here. Still showing up. Still some weeks wondering if it’s working even though I know it is.

And what I kept coming back to was this. The people who make it through the invisible phase are not the ones with the most discipline or the most motivation or the best meal plan.

They’re the ones who don’t do it alone.

So I built something. It’s called Back to Day One and it starts May 1st.

30 days. One post a day. Real talk, education, a myth busted, a permission slip, and a prompt you can answer in the comments where I will be every single day.

It’s 30 days of someone showing up for you while you find your footing again.

Whether you just started your GLP-1 or you’ve been at this for years and you’re deep in the invisible phase right now.

This was made for you.

Become a paid Substack member to join us. You can join for $3 a month -- or $30 for the entire year. no commitment, cancel whenever you want. If you’ve been waiting for a reason to join. Here it is.

Join Us Here!

The time is going to go by anyway.

You might as well do it with people who get it.

xo, Nyk

Not from my GLP-1 audience. From people who make content themselves. And they were all asking some version of the same thing.

Is Substack worth it? How are you getting paid subscribers so fast? How does any of this actually work?

Every time I answered someone individually I thought... this should just be a post.

So here we are.

what this is

I started my Substack on March 13th. It has been six weeks. I have figured out some things, gotten plenty of things wrong, changed my pricing three times, and learned way more about how this platform actually works than I expected to.

I am not an expert. I want to be really clear about that.

But I am someone who is doing it. Growing it. Figuring it out in real time while teaching full time and running a whole other brand. And I think watching someone work through something honestly is sometimes more useful than learning from someone who already has all the answers.

That is what Substack Bestiies is going to be. The behind-the-scenes of the actual build. The decisions. The numbers. The things I wish someone had told me. The things I am still working out.

the honest version of my head start

I want to be upfront about something.

I did not start from zero. I have an existing audience on Instagram and YouTube, and I brought a lot of them over. So yes, I had a head start that someone building completely from scratch does not have.

But here is what I did not realize until I was already in it: having followers does not automatically mean having paying subscribers. Those are two completely different things.

I still had to figure out what to offer. How to price it. How to write in a way that made people want to stay. How to convert someone who has been watching my reels for free into someone willing to pay every month. None of that came with my Instagram following. I had to work that out the same way anyone else would.

where I actually stand six weeks in

Here are the real numbers as of today. And I am going to explain them properly because if you are new to Substack, some of these terms might not mean anything to you yet.

imported vs organic: what that actually means

When you start a Substack, you have the option to import an existing email list. This could be from a previous newsletter, a website, a lead magnet, anywhere you have collected emails before.

I imported about 2,064 people from an old list when I launched. These are called imported subscribers.

Organic subscribers are completely different. These are people who discovered me on their own, through Instagram, YouTube, Substack Notes, or Substack’s own discovery features, and chose to subscribe. They raised their hand. They opted in on purpose.

Here is why that distinction matters so much.

Imported subscribers are cold. They did not necessarily sign up because they wanted a Substack newsletter from me specifically. Some of them joined an old email list years ago and have basically forgotten who I am. So when my emails started landing in their inbox, a lot of them unsubscribed. That is not a bad thing. It is just reality.

Organic subscribers are warm. They found me, they liked what they saw, and they chose to stay. These are the people who open emails. Who reply. Who eventually become paying subscribers.

When I launched, my subscriber breakdown looked like this: 91% imported, 9% organic. That means almost my entire list was cold. People who had not actively chosen me in this chapter.

Six weeks later, that breakdown has completely shifted. Today I am sitting at roughly 57% imported and 43% organic.

That shift is everything. It means my list is becoming mine. Real people who want to be here. And the more that percentage tips toward organic, the easier it becomes to convert free readers into paid subscribers, because you are talking to people who are already interested.

the actual numbers

Total subscribers: 2,933. But now you know why that number alone does not tell the whole story.

Organic subscribers: 1,288. Built in six weeks. Growing at roughly 30 new people per day.

Paid subscribers: 35. Most chose the annual plan at my launch pricing. A handful are monthly. One person joined as an Inner Circle founding member (which I do not offer right now, and we can talk about that in a future article.)

Conversion rate on my organic audience: about 2.7%. Meaning roughly 3 out of every 100 people who organically subscribe eventually become paying subscribers. That is a healthy number for six weeks in.

Revenue collected so far: just under $900. From writing. In six weeks. While teaching full time.

I am sharing all of this because I would have wanted someone to show me real numbers instead of vague inspiration. So there they are.

what I want from you

I want this to be a conversation.

Drop your questions in the comments. What do you actually want to know? What feels confusing or overwhelming about Substack right now? Your questions are going to become the posts. And eventually the answers we build together become something we can hand to the next person standing exactly where you are, trying to figure out if any of this is worth it.

(Spoiler: it is. But let’s talk about why.)

Ask me anything.

xo, Nyk

Not just my journey. Yours too.

Because here’s the thing; I hear from so many of you who are in it. Really in it. Just starting out and terrified. Somewhere in the middle and hanging on. On the other side and still figuring out what that even means. And every single time I think... more people need to hear this.

So I’m starting something new here on Substack.

Every Monday, I’m going to feature a real person from this community and share their GLP-1 story. Day one. The invisible phase. Full circle. Whatever stage you’re in, it counts. It matters. Someone out there needs to hear exactly where you are right now.

No credentials required. No social media following required. No perfect story required. Just your real, honest experience on this journey.

Here’s how it works:

Fill out the short form below, just your name and the best way to reach you. That’s it for now. I’ll personally reach out to you from there and walk you through the rest.

Your story will be treated with care and you’ll get to review everything before anything goes live.

[SUBMIT YOUR NAME HERE]

I am so freaking excited about this!

xo, Nyk

I don’t fully know how to explain this week.

I was in my luteal phase heading into my period, which for me is the week where everything just stops. The motivation, the posting, the cooking, the caring. It all goes quiet and I go into something that feels less like self-care and more like hibernation. I barely posted. I had fast food more than once. I went to the gym one time. I had sour cream on my taco meat instead of Greek yogurt because I don’t like Greek yogurt and I’m done pretending I might.

And then Saturday morning I stepped on the scale and it said 183.9.

I genuinely stood there for a second like it had personally offended me with good news.

Watch here:

the thing about your period and the scale

Here’s what I’ve been learning, slowly, about how my cycle actually moves through my body.

The week before my period is when I feel the worst. Hungrier. Puffier. More tired. Less motivated. The scale usually creeps up or just sits there making no promises. I used to think that meant I was doing something wrong. Now I know it’s just luteal phase doing what luteal phase does -- my body is holding water, my cravings are louder, my energy is lower, and none of that means anything is broken.

And then my period actually starts. And something releases.

This week I woke up one morning and the headache was gone. The congestion was gone. The heaviness I’d been carrying around all week just lifted. My brain came back online. And the scale, which had been sitting in the 185s and 186s, dropped to 183.9.

“It makes no sense until you understand that it makes complete sense. Your body was holding on to something. And then it let go.”

I’ve said this before and I’ll keep saying it: tracking your cycle alongside your GLP-1 journey is not optional information. It is the information. I wrote an entire deep dive on this -- The Deep Dive: How to Use Your Cycle to Maximize Your GLP-1 Results -- and it’s in the paid vault. You can get access for $3 a month.

consistency during the week you have nothing left

I took both of my injections this week. That’s it. That’s the one thing I did right.

I didn’t want to take the Wednesday one. I felt awful. Congested, headachy, tired in a way that felt like it started in my bones. But I took it anyway because the one thing I’ve learned after three years on this medication is that skipping when it’s hard is how you end up blaming the medication for things that were actually about consistency.

I’m not sharing that to be impressive. I’m sharing it because I think we talk a lot about showing up when you feel good and not enough about what it looks like to show up when you feel like garbage. It doesn’t look like a workout and a perfect meal. Sometimes it looks like doing your injection and then heading straight to the couch at 7:40pm before you go to sleep.

That counts. It all counts.

Jude

This week my son got his ADHD diagnosis confirmed.

I already knew. You kind of always know. But there’s something about hearing a doctor say it out loud that makes it real in a different way. We’re looking into behavioral play therapy. We bribed him with Kids Empire to get through the week. He ended Friday with nine out of eleven stars.

I don’t talk about this part of my life enough on here. Being a mom to a kid who needs more and being a teacher to 28 other kids every day and also trying to take care of your own body is a specific kind of a lot. I’m figuring it out the same way I’m figuring out everything else -- one week at a time, imperfectly, without a plan that accounts for all of it.

We also got the keys to the new apartment this week. Nothing is moved. But we have keys and that felt like something.

where I’m landing

183.9 is my lowest weight in a really long time. And it happened on a week where I ate fast food, skipped the gym four days out of five, and barely held it together.

I don’t think that’s an accident. I think it’s what three years of consistency looks like when it finally shows up on a random Friday morning. The work doesn’t disappear just because the scale isn’t reflecting it yet. It’s in there. It compounds. And then one day it just appears.

If you’re in the week where nothing is happening, I need you to know that something is happening.

REMINDER: Back to Day One starts May 1st. It’s a 30 day GLP-1 reset and you can join for $3 a month -- that’s the monthly rate, no commitment, cancel whenever you want. If you’ve been waiting for a reason to start over without shame, this is it.

The full vlog is on YouTube if you want to see the whole messy week play out.

xo

nyk

If this is the kind of writing you want more of, you can support it for $3 a month. That’s all it costs to be a paid subscriber and it means the world to me.

I want to be a GLP1 Bestiie