0:06
GLP-1 Series #11: Q&A with Dr. Alexandra Sowa...
In my last post, “I think I am doing my GLP-1 wrong,” I talked about how it was time to bring in some additional resources so I am not wasting time, dosage tolerance, and frankly money outsmarting my medication. Transparently, when Dr. Sowa’s name first came across my desk, I was turned off by the “GLP-1 expert” of it all, assuming she was someone who would be messaging things I did not agree with. I couldn’t have been more wrong. When we spoke in person, I was so grateful to hear a medical professional who shared my strong feelings on the mishandling of the marketing of this drug and the shame that goes along with being on it. We talked about the lack of resources for people using this drug and how so many people struggle with everything from the mental health aspect of being on a GLP-1 to how to navigate dosages. When I asked if Dr. Sowa would do a Q&A for Lobby Coffee, I was so happy to hear she was game for it. I knew it was something our community needed because I have never gotten that many submitted questions for anything I have ever posted about… ever. So we are doing this in two parts! Below you will find part one. As usual, I encourage you to connect in the comments because it is private, and that is one of the ways we feel less alone.
Dr. Alexandra Sowa
But first, let’s meet Dr. Alexandra Sowa! She is a dual board-certified physician in Internal Medicine and Obesity Medicine, founder of SoWell, and author of The Ozempic Revolution. You can also follow her on Substack! She specializes in helping patients use GLP-1 medications safely and effectively while building sustainable habits that support long-term health. Now, lets go:
GLP-1s: The Questions Everyone Is Asking
Q1: There are a lot of GLP-1s out there. What are the actual differences between them, and how does someone figure out which one is right for them?
I always tell my patients: It’s not about picking the “best” drug. It’s about finding the right tool for your life.
Right now, I think about GLP-1 medications in two buckets: injectable and oral.
The injectables are the ones most people know. Wegovy and Ozempic contain one hormone, GLP-1. Then came the next generation: Zepbound and Mounjaro, which combine GLP-1 with a second hormone called GIP.
Now we’re entering the era of oral medications, including oral semaglutide ( oral WeGovy) and orforglipron ( Foundayo). For some people, a daily pill feels much more approachable than a weekly injection. Generally speaking, the injectable medications have the longest track record and tend to produce the greatest weight loss, but the “best” medication is the one that fits your health goals, medical history, lifestyle, and insurance coverage.
Q2: What about compounded GLP-1s? Are they the same as the brand-name versions, and how do you find a pharmacy you can actually trust?
Read more
2:02
#63 The jambu incident
I walked past a bustling fruit stall on a scorching afternoon, the kind of heat that makes anything cold feel like a promise. The display was a rainbow of fresh produce—pear, mango, watermelon—until my eyes landed on a pile of bright green guavas dusted with tangy asam powder. The sight alone made my mouth water, and I greeted the vendor, asking for a single jambu.
He answered in a way that turned a simple snack into something far more memorable. Instead of just handing me the fruit, he shared a quick story about how those guavas are harvested early in the morning, then chilled for hours to keep their crisp bite. He mentioned a local tradition of sprinkling the asam powder right before eating, which balances the sweet and tart flavors perfectly.
That brief exchange opened a little window into the everyday rituals that give ordinary foods their special place in people’s lives. It reminded me that even a tiny moment at a market can carry a whole culture’s flavor, and now I can’t look at jambu the same way again.
2:45
Monday Family Defense Briefing
Happy Monday! Before the emails pile up, and before the errands, appointments, laundry, and endless notifications begin, can I remind you of something?
Your greatest work this week probably won’t happen at your job. It will happen around your dinner table.
We spend so much time worrying about what’s happening “out there” that we sometimes forget God has entrusted us with something far more important than fixing the culture. He’s entrusted us with our own homes.
Culture is simply the overflow of millions of families making daily decisions. Strong families build strong churches. Strong churches strengthen communities. And healthy communities shape nations. It always starts at home.
So every Monday, I’d like to spend a few minutes helping you filter the noise and focus on what actually matters. Let’s jump in.
Artificial intelligence is finding its way into nearly every corner of our children’s lives—homework, friendships, entertainment, search engines, and writing assignments. Many students are now asking AI questions before they ask their parents.
Artificial intelligence is arriving faster than most parents realize.
Children are using it to finish homework, write essays, answer questions, settle arguments with friends, create images, and even process emotions. In many homes, AI is quietly becoming the first place kids go for advice.
That should make every parent pause.
The greatest danger isn’t that AI will give our children a wrong answer. It’s that it may slowly replace the habits that build wisdom in the first place.
Children become wise by wrestling with difficult questions, making mistakes, reading deeply, talking with trusted adults, and learning to wait for understanding. AI removes much of that struggle. It delivers instant answers, but wisdom has never been instant.
I’m not interested in raising children who can produce impressive work in thirty seconds. I want to raise children who know how to think, discern truth, solve problems, and hear the voice of God.
Technology will continue advancing whether we’re ready or not. Our job is not simply to teach our children how to use AI. Our job is to make sure AI never replaces the things that make them fully human.
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One of the saddest trends researchers continue to document is how disconnected people feel, even while they’re more digitally connected than ever. The collapse of a child’s “village” is not something to be taken lightly.
Not long ago, children were regularly influenced by grandparents, aunts and uncles, church members, coaches, neighbors, and family friends. Today, many children spend much of their day looking at a screen.
Ask yourself this question:
Can my child name five godly adults who know them well enough to notice if something is wrong?
Real adults who know their name, ask about their life, pray for them, and would show up if they needed help.
Those relationships become anchors during adolescence. Research consistently shows that children who have multiple trusted adults in their lives are more resilient, make better decisions, and navigate hardship more successfully than those who rely on only one or two relationships.
This week, make a list of your child’s five. If you can’t name them, don’t panic. Start building them.
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Parents often ask me, “What’s the one thing I should be doing?”
After raising ten children, I’ve become convinced that transformation rarely comes from one big parenting decision. It comes from a handful of small habits repeated over thousands of days.
If I could only choose five, they would be these:
• Eat dinner together as often as possible. Conversations around the table become the place where values are caught, not just taught.
• Read Scripture aloud. Even ten minutes a day steadily builds a biblical framework through which children learn to interpret the world.
• Let your children work alongside you. Chores aren’t just about getting work done. They teach responsibility, competence, perseverance, and that every member of a family contributes.
• Pray out loud about real problems. Let your children hear you ask God for wisdom, confess sin, and thank Him for His provision. They learn what dependence on God looks like by watching you.
• Laugh together. Shared joy is one of the strongest builders of family identity. Children who genuinely enjoy being with their family are far less likely to look elsewhere for their deepest sense of belonging.
None of these habits are complicated. None require expensive programs or perfect parenting. But practiced consistently over years, they become the invisible architecture of a strong family.
Don’t underestimate the power of ordinary faithfulness. It’s usually where God does His deepest work.
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This week, choose one evening to make your home just a little quieter.
Put every phone away. Turn off the television. Take a walk together. Sit outside if the weather allows.
6:00
Our Best Family Adventure Yet
LAST CHANCE. Big reminder that to celebrate the release of The Parisian Heist, I’m offering a live writing and publishing masterclass on June 30th at noon ET.
This one will be an hour long with plenty of time for Q&A and the only price of admission is that you buy the book. You will also get a free year of this substack. WHOOO HOOO! Get those orders in and join me. OR just get those orders in. If everyone reading right now orders and tells a friend we will give Parisian the launch she deserves.
Our fossil digging guide, Logan, said something excellent while we were hunting for Allosaurus bones in the hills of Thermopolis Wyoming.
“Every day is an adventure. Just maybe not the one you chose.”
I’m keeping that one in my back pocket.
I’m now obsessed with Thermopolis, Wyoming.
It began as a detour for my dinosaur-obsessed son on our way to a professional fossil dig at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center. More on that below.
We got stuck in Casper for a night after a massive semi truck crash shut down the highway for an entire day, but we woke before dawn to make it to Thermopolis. The drive from Casper through Wind River Canyon is otherworldly. That canyon could be its own vacation, and we would have stopped if we hadn’t had to be at the dig by 8 a.m.
We left the baby with my mom, who found a Pride festival at Hot Springs State Park, and headed out on our adventure. This was a dream excursion for my kids, but it was also a bit of a research trip since my first middle grade series, The Bone Crew, will be published by Viking.
I learned so damn much.
Logan drove us up to a section of the Morrison Formation, stopping first at a site they call Something Interesting because it’s one of the only known Allosaurus feeding grounds in the world. From there we hiked down the hill to our dig site in search of more Allosaurus.
The tools are basic: a small broom, dustpan, oyster knife, and knee pads. Seriously. All stuff you can find at the hardware store or in my kitchen. The work is repetitive but weirdly meditative. Sweep. Dump the rocks into a bucket. Sweep some more. Expose the rock, then gently pry off thin layers with the oyster knife. The goal, Logan told us, is to look for something “weird.”
I’m very into the science of that.
Fossilized, mineralized bone turns an almost blackish blue, but it’s still hard to distinguish from some of the surrounding rock. Every five minutes we were convinced we’d found a fossil. Especially Bea.
We had not.
Until we had.
We uncovered our own cluster of Allosaurus bone fragments!!!!
We marked the spot with White-Out because White Out is easy to wash off in the lab. Then we glued down some of the smaller pieces, mapped the location and filled out paperwork. The paper trail matters because it’s how paleontologists eventually piece together the puzzle. The goal is for someone to come in thirty years later and read the paperwork and know exactly where to pick up. I adore the analog-ness of it.
One of the paleontologists told us reconstructing a dinosaur is like putting together a million-piece jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing, some stolen along the way, and pieces from another puzzle mixed in.
From there we trekked to the lab to prep our fossils. That meant gently scrubbing them with a toothbrush and using compressed air to slowly chip away more of the surrounding rock. As Charlie removed more and more stone, he uncovered even more fossil underneath. They’ll keep us updated as they continue preparing it.
Nick and I also worked on cleaning a Diplodocus rib.
“It’s incredibly satisfying to see the black emerge,” Logan told us. “You’re the first person to see this in 150 million years.”
He was full of lines like that. Also, mind blown.
We ended the day at One Eyed Buffalo Brewing Company, where everyone was dusty, hungry, and happy. It turns out that after spending hours on your knees looking for dinosaur bones, a steak and a beer taste even better.
The next day we headed to the Tepee Pools, where the kids spent hours flying down the somewhat jenky waterslide while the adults alternated between the hot mineral pools.
Then we hiked the hot springs of Hot Springs State Park and peeped their pack of bison.
Fun fact, baby bison are called red dogs, which is now what I am calling my children.
8:52
Can I Say ‘Mazel Tov’ to My Pregnant Jewish Friend?
If you’ve ever wished a newly pregnant Jewish friend a “mazel tov” or hearty “congratulations!!” and were met with some awkwardness, you should know, it’s not personal.
While this isn’t true about every Jewish pregnant person, many Jews don’t believe in wishing someone “mazel tov” — the Hebrew for “congratulations” which literally means “good luck” or “good constellations” — when one gets pregnant. If you didn’t know, or in case you’ve ever wondered why, here are the reasons.
The saying “mazel tov” is a congratulations about something that has already happened, so when it comes to pregnancy, we traditionally say “mazel tov” when the baby comes, not before.
This isn’t about a specific Jewish law, but rather, Jewish superstition, and specifically, the belief in the evil eye. Pregnancy is a sensitive time, and we all know the many complications that can occur, especially in the first trimester, but really at any time. And so, as not to attract the evil eye — “ayin hara” — to one’s pregnancy, we don’t say congratulations around this delicate time or create too big of a fuss.
According to My Jewish Learning: “In the Mishnah, a person with ayin hara is someone who cannot be happy for another’s good fortune, and in fact is distressed and angry when good things happen to his or her friends. This person’s gaze is considered dangerous because he or she would prefer that others not enjoy good things and might somehow cause misfortune to others via a malicious gaze. As a result, many Jewish communities have developed a tradition of not calling attention to good things, so as not to provoke ayin hara.”
There are a lot of Jewish traditions around pregnancy that speak to this concept of trying to ward off the evil eye — many Jews, for example, don’t accept baby gifts, don’t throw baby showers and don’t purchase anything for baby before they arrive. Some Jews refrain from announcing their pregnancy for a very long time, some well into the second, or even sometimes third, trimester, when the pregnancy is more outwardly noticeable. Some Jews don’t share anything online about their pregnancy until after baby comes along, too.
If you’ve travelled in Jewish circles, or if you’ve seen pregnancy announcements of Jewish people online before, you may have noticed that people say “b’sha’ah tovah.” This literally means “in good time,” a cautious but loving wish in hopes that all will unfold as it should when the time comes. As Miriam Ezuigi shared on her TikTok, you can say mazel tov to the mom after they’ve delivered both their baby and their placenta, when most (though not all) dangers are out of the way. You can hear her pronounce the expression below:
@miriamezagui Replying to @barbarasuesanantonio What does the phrase B’sha Tova mean? #superstition #pregnancy #congratulations #mazaltov
That’s totally fine! As we said, there’s no real halachic — Jewish law-related — reason to not say mazel tov when it comes to a Jewish pregnancy. While many Jews find Jewish superstition comforting and love how it connects them to the generation of women that came before them and love the way superstition gives them a sense of control or the ability to be in the moment in their pregnancy, plenty are shirking Jewish superstition, too, finding that it makes them more anxious than is helpful, or simply finding it to be not practical for their families. More Jewish mothers seem to be throwing baby showers, holding gender reveals and filling their nurseries before their babies are born.
Still, when it comes to your pregnant Jewish friends, we suggest erring on the side of caution. Ask them if they are superstitious, or if it’s OK to say mazel tov, or just say b’sha’ah tovah instead. If you want to get them something for the baby before it’s born, make sure you have their explicit blessing.
If your Jewish pregnant friend is superstitious, there are still plenty of ways to make them feel good, from delivering meals, helping with household chores before the baby comes, treating them to a spa day or even holding a challah-baking party for the expectant parent.
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