Jennifer Miller

The most dangerous breakfast on the shot

Here are the most dangerous breakfasts for a woman on a weekly weight-loss shot. The worst one is the breakfast exactly half of the 1,206 women in my group reported last Wednesday. For 22 years I asked every woman on my scan table the same question. In my last few years, the ones losing weight fast gave me the same answer. If the first thing you swallowed today came out of a coffee pot, pay attention. My name is Jennifer Miller. I'm 59, and I live in Ohio. For 22 years I was a radiology technologist at a hospital outpatient center. Most of those years I ran the bone density scanner, the DEXA. More than 30,000 women lay down on my table. The prep sheet told women to leave their calcium pills at home for 24 hours before the scan. So every morning, while I slid the foam block under a woman's knees, I asked her the same question. "Did you take anything this morning?" In my last few years on that table, a new answer started coming back. It came from women who had lost a lot of weight, fast, on a weekly weight-loss shot. "Honey, I didn't have anything this morning. Just coffee." They said it like a good report card. Her doctor started her on the shot. They decided together, the way it should go. Within a few weeks the morning hunger went quiet. That's what the shot does, and it's a gift. So breakfast got smaller. Toast went first. Then the eggs. Then the cream in the coffee, because cream is calories. By the third month, breakfast was a mug of black coffee. Sometimes a second one at 10. Down 20. Down 30. Down 40. Compliments at church. A doctor pleased with her numbers. And there she was on my table, asking for the step stool, with bruises on her shins she couldn't explain. She did everything she was told. She ate less, and she was proud of it. Nobody told her what was missing from the mug. I couldn't tell her either. A tech isn't allowed to read you your scan. My sentence at the table was "Your doctor will go over the results with you." At the door, if she asked what to do, I said, "Calcium. And walk more." I retired in the fall of 2024. I'm telling you now because 14 months ago I started a weekly weight-loss shot myself, and by December I was drinking the same breakfast. --- My doctor and I decided on it together, I'm down 46 pounds, and nothing I'm about to say is against the shot. Most mornings my breakfast was two mugs of black coffee. On a Tuesday in late February I spent 70 minutes on my bathroom floor, and that morning's breakfast was the same two mugs. So I'll tell you exactly what was wrong with that mug. Then I'll tell you what more than 1,200 women in my group ate first last Wednesday, and which of those breakfasts I worry about most. --- Start with the scale. The scale tells you one thing. How much of you left. It doesn't tell you what left. When a woman loses weight, especially fast, the weight she loses can include lean tissue as well as fat. Lean tissue is muscle and the other parts of you that aren't fat. The scale gives you one number for all of it, and you celebrate it. You should. You earned every pound. The mug works the same way. Zero calories tells you one thing. Nothing in it is going to show up on the scale. It doesn't tell you what else isn't in it. Now the bone underneath. Bone is living tissue. One set of cells takes old bone away and another lays new bone down, every day you're alive. Most of your adult skeleton is replaced about every 10 years. In April of this year my old friend Bev Tran ran my own scan after hours. Bev worked that room beside me for 19 years. She's 60 and she still runs it. My hip came up grey. Osteopenia. That evening, in the empty scan room, she tore a strip off the paper roll on the table and drew bone for me. Crossed lines first. "That's the collagen frame." Then dots of ink all along the lines. "That's the mineral." Collagen is about 90% of bone's organic framework. Calcium helps build and maintain strong bones. Magnesium is part of the mineral too. About 60% of the magnesium in your whole body sits in your bones. Then the helpers. Your body needs vitamin C to form collagen. It needs copper to cross-link the collagen fibers so they hold together. It needs vitamin D3, because without enough D you absorb only a small fraction of the calcium you eat. It needs vitamin K2, which activates a protein called osteocalcin that helps bind calcium into bone. Bone is living tissue that depends on daily nutrition. On the shot, the plate gets small. Half a yogurt. Four bites of chicken. A few crackers. That quiet is the point. But when you eat that little, there's less room for everything food used to bring in. Less protein. Less calcium. Less of every helper on Bev's strip. For me, morning is when there's still a little room. By noon nothing else goes down. If anything with protein is going to go in, morning is my window. And I was filling it with a mug of black coffee. --- Last Wednesday I asked one question in my group. It's a private Facebook group for women on the weekly shot, about 3,100 of us. Weigh-In Wednesday is called Keep-It Wednesday now. The question was, "What was the first thing you swallowed this morning? Not lunch. The first thing." 1,206 women answered by Thursday night. I read every one, line by line, and sorted them into piles on a legal pad at my kitchen table. 74 of them ate eggs, cottage cheese, meat, or something else with real protein first. The rest landed in five piles. Here they are, from the one that worries me least to the one that worries me most. Every one of them looks like doing it right. 5. The calcium chew with the coffee. (96 answers) "Coffee and my calcium chew. I'm covered!" That was one of the answers. It's almost word for word what my mother used to say. She took a calcium tablet every morning for about 30 years out of a dish by the coffee maker. At 81 she stepped off the church van onto a curb and her hip broke. She never went home. A chew is calcium. Calcium helps build and maintain strong bones, and you need it. But go back to Bev's strip. A calcium chew is the dots. There's no frame in it. No protein. The chews I bought had no K2 and no magnesium on the label either. What it leaves out: the frame, and the protein. Half the job. I know because I took them. Two caramel chews a day, starting in December, because someone in my own group said calcium. 4. The shake you finish a third of. (141 answers) These women are trying. Somebody told them protein matters on the shot, and somebody was right. But read the answers. "A few sips of a shake." "Half a shake, I'll finish it later." "Opened one." I could finish about a third of one. The half-finished bottles lined up in my fridge door until my husband Rick started calling it the graveyard. A third of a shake is a third of the protein on the label. What it leaves out: the other two-thirds, still sitting in the fridge door. 3. The beauty scoop in the coffee. (88 answers) "Collagen in my coffee, for my hair." My hair was coming out in the shower drain. So in January I bought a pink tub with a woman's glowing face on the lid. Two heaping scoops. It clumped in my mug like wet flour. The back of that tub said skin, hair, nails. Not one line about bone. No calcium. No D3, no K2, no magnesium. That's the frame with no dots. What it leaves out: the mineral and its helpers, and real protein. And even the best collagen scoop in the world isn't breakfast. Collagen isn't a complete protein. It doesn't replace protein-rich meals. 2. A few bites. (204 answers) "Half a yogurt around 10." "Three crackers." "A bite of toast and I was done." This was my breakfast on my good days. But half a cup of light yogurt is a few grams of protein. Three crackers are nothing. On a plate that small, the first bites are the only bites, and they're carrying the whole morning. One woman wrote that her few bites at 10 were the only food before supper. What it leaves out: most of the protein, and most of Bev's strip. 1. Black coffee. Nothing else. (603 answers) Out of 1,206 women, 603 had nothing but coffee. Exactly half. A lot of them wrote "Not hungry!" like a trophy. This is the most dangerous breakfast on the shot. Black coffee isn't poison. I still drink it every morning. The danger is that the mug is the whole meal. What it leaves out: everything. No protein. No calcium. No vitamin C for the collagen. No copper. No D, no K2, no magnesium. Nothing on Bev's strip, at the one hour of the day there was room for it. And it looks perfect. Zero calories, no sugar. People compliment it. That was my breakfast the day I spent 70 minutes on my bathroom floor. It was the breakfast in the photo one woman in my group posted that Wednesday, under the thread. A mug of black coffee on a placemat, an empty white plate in front of it, and at the edge of the picture, her own forearm in a wrist splint. She's 64, down 33 pounds. Two weeks before, her slipper caught the kitchen rug and she hurt her wrist catching herself on the corner of the counter. Her caption said, "Same breakfast every day since March. Down 33." --- So here is what I'd put first instead. Four better firsts, all of them small enough to get down on the shot. 1. Two eggs, before you touch the coffee. About 12 grams of protein. 2. Cottage cheese or plain Greek yogurt. The whole container if you can, eaten standing at the fridge if that's what it takes. 3. Three bites of last night's chicken or pot roast, cold, straight from the container. 4. A slice of cheese or a glass of milk next to the mug, on days the eggs won't go down. Protein first. Then the coffee. It's worth doing tomorrow morning. But here's where it runs out. On the shot, even four better firsts fill a very small plate. Two eggs don't give you much for the frame on Bev's strip. A slice of cheese or a glass of milk covers a little of Bev's strip, not all of it. You'd have to eat a breakfast I couldn't get down on the shot. --- I'd tried to solve that with bottles. By the end of January I had 4 of them on my kitchen windowsill. The caramel chews. A D. A magnesium. And a "joint" pill with collagen on the front, about 1,000mg of collagen in a two-capsule serving. Studies on collagen peptides commonly use 2.5 to 15 grams a day. A two-capsule joint pill is 1 gram. By Thursday every week, I'd forgotten all 4. After my scan in April I doubled the chews to 4 a day and added a separate K2 and a vitamin C. Six bottles. Forgotten by Thursday. --- On a Saturday in May, Bev came to my house for lunch. She saw the bottles lined up on the windowsill. She picked up the pink tub and held it up like a dead mouse. "Jen. What is this." I started to say something about my hair. She set her own bag on my counter. It was called DensiaPlus. She's taken it every morning for a year and a half. She stirred one scoop into my coffee and slid the mug back across the counter to me. "Stop arguing with me." I turned the bag over and read the back like a requisition. I checked it against three things. The three things my windowsill had failed. The frame. 9 grams of collagen peptides in one scoop. Nine times the joint pill, and inside the range those studies use. Collagen peptides supply glycine, proline and hydroxyproline. The mineral, with its helpers. Calcium. Magnesium. Vitamin D3, for absorbing the calcium. Vitamin K2 as MK-7, for the osteocalcin. Vitamin C, which the body needs to form collagen. Copper, for cross-linking the fibers. Zinc. Boron. Bev's crossed lines and her dots, on one label. And the mug. One unflavored scoop, into the coffee I was already pouring every single morning. The one thing I never forgot. It tasted like coffee. That third thing mattered most to me, and it's a fact about me. I'll never know what anything does inside my bones from the outside. What I do know is which habits I keep. Four bottles on a windowsill, I forgot by Thursday. A mug I pick up every morning of my life, I don't forget. I ordered that afternoon. My bag came the following Wednesday, the same morning as my shot. I want to be plain about what I did and didn't change, because women in my group ask. I didn't change my shot. My doctor runs that, and he kept it right where it was. I didn't swap breakfast for the scoop. The scoop went into the mug I was already drinking, and the eggs went on the plate in front of it. Both. Every morning. I still drink my coffee. The eggs go down first. --- Here's my breakfast now, every day, on the shot. Two eggs first. Rick cooks them, I eat them, even when the shot says I'm not hungry. Then the coffee. One scoop of DensiaPlus in the first mug. Every morning since that Wednesday in May. Five months. I haven't missed one. Two soup cans out of the pantry, lifted over my head while the second cup brews. And every night before bed, a folded quilt on the living room rug. I sit down on it and get back up while Rick counts. In August I got up with one hand while my daughter Kayla counted out loud. That came from practice, every night for months. I credit the quilt for it. The windowsill is empty. Kayla threw the pink tub in the trash herself in my second week. The chews and the joint pills went after it. The collagen in my coffee doesn't count as my protein. Collagen isn't a complete protein, so the eggs come first, every day. What I don't know is what's going on inside my bones. Nobody can tell from the outside. Bev will run my rescan herself next spring, and I don't know what it will say. What I know is my breakfast. I can tell you every bite of it. Bev never asks me whether I take the scoop. Since October she asks me two things when she calls on Sunday. First, "What went in first?" I tell her. Two eggs. She says, "Good. Again tomorrow." Then she asks how many times I got down on the quilt that week, and I tell her that number too. I messaged the woman with the splint. I didn't tell her what to take. I told her what I eat first and asked her to try one of the four. Yesterday she posted a new picture. Same placemat. Same mug. Two fried eggs on the white plate, half eaten. The splint at the edge of the frame. No caption. I counted the bites she'd eaten from the picture, the way I used to count marks on the sticky note in my locker. Half of two eggs. It's a start. It's more than I ate in February. --- Now you. Tomorrow morning, before you pour the coffee. Write down the first thing you swallow. Not lunch. The first thing. Then ask yourself which pile it goes in. The chew. The third of a shake. The beauty scoop. A few bites. Or the mug and nothing else. Take that piece of paper to your next appointment. Show your doctor what you eat first, along with what you weigh. Your doctor makes every call about your prescription. Let your doctor see the whole picture. If you're on the weekly shot and you haven't been hungry in the morning in months. If the first food you swallow comes at 11, and it's half a yogurt. If there's a pink tub in your cupboard and a calcium chew by the coffee maker, and you call that covered. If you have a fridge door full of shakes you never finished. If you've caught yourself on the counter, the rail, or the car door this year and laughed it off. You're in the 603. I was too. Nobody told us what was missing from the mug. I'm telling you. Your doctor runs your shot, the same way mine runs mine. Celebrate every pound. Then put something on the plate before you pour the coffee. I wrote the whole thing up on one page. It's the link under this post. DensiaPlus is 9 grams of collagen peptides with calcium, magnesium, vitamin D3, vitamin K2 (MK-7), vitamin C, zinc, copper and boron. One scoop a day, stirred into coffee, tea or water. It's the Fall Sale. Right now it's up to 70% off: buy 2 bags, get 1 free, or buy 3, get 2 free. Every bag comes with a 90-day money-back guarantee, empty or full. Count what you keep. Jennifer Miller, 59, retired radiology technologist, Ohio P.S. If you take a blood thinner like warfarin, talk to your doctor before starting anything with vitamin K, this included. Calcium can affect how some medications are absorbed, so ask your doctor or pharmacist about timing. Keep taking everything you've been prescribed. P.P.S. 1,206 women answered my question last Wednesday. 603 of them had nothing but black coffee. Next Wednesday I'm asking it again, and I'll be counting the eggs. P.P.P.S. Up to 70% off: buy 2, get 1 free, or buy 3, get 2 free. 90-day money-back guarantee, empty or full.