Jennifer Miller

You're not clumsy: 5 moments women on the weekly shot laugh off

You're not clumsy. The jar you handed to your husband. The curb you caught your toe on. The bruise on your elbow from the side of the tub. The car seat you hauled yourself out of with both hands on the door frame. The couch you rock off two or three times before your feet take you. If you're losing weight on the weekly shot, don't write those off as bad luck yet. They're five moments I watch for now, and they show up in your kitchen and your bathroom, where no scale is looking. 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. A tech isn't allowed to read you your scan. When a woman asked what the grey on the screen meant, I said the same sentence every time. "Your doctor will go over the results with you." At the door, if she asked what she should do, I said, "Calcium. And walk more." I retired two years ago, in the fall of 2024. Fourteen months ago I started a weekly weight-loss shot myself. My doctor and I decided on it together. He runs my prescription. I take it Wednesday mornings, I'm down 46 pounds, and I'm grateful for it every week. Nothing in this post is against the shot, or your doctor, or anybody's medicine. I also run a private Facebook group for women on the weekly shot. About 3,100 of us. Every Wednesday the numbers come in, and I cheer for every one. --- There's a word I heard at my scan table thousands of times. Clumsy. A woman would come out of the changing booth with her gown tied and a bruise on her arm, and before I could look at it she'd say it. "Don't mind that. I'm so clumsy." A retired schoolteacher once held out a forearm the color of a plum before she'd even sat down. "I'm so clumsy," she said. "I walked into my own dishwasher door." I nodded at every one of them. A tech doesn't ask. In March I'd searched the group for broken bones. At the start of this month I searched for the word they used before anything broke. Clumsy. 238 posts since we started in November 2025. Most of them went up in our first winter, before spring, back when I let a post like that through with a heart and nothing else. I'd approved nearly every one of those myself. This time I read them all again, over two nights at my kitchen table. The same five moments came up again and again. The jar. The curb. The tub. The car. The couch. And nearly every post ended the same way. LOL. A laughing face. "Guess I'm clumsy now." You're not clumsy. It isn't the new shoes, or the wet floor, or getting older. Women called it every one of those things. I'd watched the same moments on my table for 22 years. They're some of the most overlooked signs I know of in a woman losing weight fast, and they happen at home, where nobody is measuring anything. And it's almost never just one. On my table I saw women with three or four of them at once. A bruised forearm, a husband carrying her purse, a story about the tub. And every one of them had been told the same thing about her weight. "You're doing great." Here's what "doing great" actually measures. --- The scale measures one thing. How much of you left this week. It can't tell you what those pounds were made of. 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, you celebrate it, and you should. You earned every pound. But lean tissue is what does the work of your day. It's in your forearms and your hands when you twist a lid. It's in your hips and thighs in the half second after you catch your toe, when your body jerks you back over your feet before you even know you tripped. It's in your thighs when you stand up out of a low seat. The hip and spine scans I ran measured the mineral in the bone. They weren't looking at muscle, or at whether your legs could catch you before your bones had to. The clumsy moments are where that shows. Now the bone under that muscle. Bone is living tissue. Old bone is taken away and new bone laid down every day of your life. Most of your adult skeleton gets replaced about every 10 years. The hip you'll be walking on at 70 is being built right now, out of what you send it this week. My friend Bev Tran ran the scan room beside me for 19 years. She's 60, and she still runs it. In April she tore a strip off the paper roll on the scan 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. It's the woven protein the minerals settle onto. The minerals are the hard part. Calcium. Magnesium too. About 60% of the magnesium in your whole body sits in your bones. To build the frame, your body needs vitamin C, because it can't form collagen without it. It needs copper, which cross-links the collagen fibers so they hold together. To lay mineral onto the frame, it needs calcium, which helps build and maintain strong bones. It needs vitamin D3, because without enough D your body absorbs only a small fraction of the calcium you take in. It needs vitamin K2, which activates a protein called osteocalcin that helps bind calcium into bone. Nearly all of it comes from what you eat. Now think about your plate on the shot. Half a yogurt. A few bites of chicken. Crackers. Coffee. The shot takes the hunger away, and that's a gift. But when you eat that little, there's less room for the nutrients food used to supply. Less protein for the muscle that does the catching. Less calcium, less magnesium, less vitamin C for the bone underneath it. So when I look at those five moments now, I see three jobs your body does all day without asking you. Grip. Catch. Lift. Five moments. Three jobs. One plate. None of these five proves anything about your bones. Only a scan and your doctor can tell you that. Plenty of those 238 posts were probably plain bad luck. I stopped believing all of them were. --- 1. The jar. In January, 40 pounds down, I stood at my own counter with a jar of dill pickles and couldn't break the seal. I ran the lid under hot water. I banged it on the counter edge. I handed it to Rick and said they put the lids on tighter these days. Rick opened it with one twist. In the search, the jar posts ran into the dozens. Pickles. Spaghetti sauce. Peanut butter. Nearly all of them blamed the lid. Twisting a lid is grip. Forearms and hands. In my group it was usually the first job women noticed they'd handed off. 2. The curb. Hester Gorski is 63. She's down 38 pounds in 7 months. In September she came out of the pharmacy with a paper bag in one hand, stepped off what she thought was the last of the sidewalk, and caught her toe on the curb. She went down on both hands and one knee in the parking lot. Both palms scraped raw, and a bruise across her kneecap by supper. Her post: "Tripped over a curb like a newborn calf. Clumsy is my middle name now LOL." Everybody catches a toe now and then. In the half second after, your hips and thighs pull you back over your feet. That's the catch. When the catch is slow, a trip turns into a fall. The curb is the one I can't laugh at. My mother, Opal, stepped off the church van onto the curb in front of the fellowship hall after Wednesday supper. She was 81. Her hip broke. Surgery, rehab, then a nursing home. She never went home. She died at 82, about 11 months after the van. She'd taken a calcium tablet every morning for about 30 years. 3. The tub. This is the photo from earlier this month. Lydia Quinlan, 61, down 41 pounds in 9 months. She was stepping out of the bath on a Saturday night. Right leg over the rim, standing on her left on a wet bath mat. The left leg wobbled. She sat down hard on the edge of the tub, and her elbow came down on the rim. By morning it was purple from the point of her elbow halfway down her forearm. She took the photo herself, with the tub rim behind it. "Clumsy me! Down 41 and I still can't get out of a bathtub like a grown woman LOL." 96 women put a laughing face on it. Stepping out of a tub may be the hardest balance test in your house. You lift one leg about 15 inches over a rim while you stand on the other one, on a wet floor, with nothing to hold. Your standing leg holds all of you while your hips keep you from tipping over. That's catch again. If the catch is slow, the tub is where it shows. I know, because that's where it showed on me. On a Tuesday in late February, at about 4 in the afternoon, I stepped out of my own tub, put my left foot on the bath mat, and the mat went with it. My hip hit the tile first. I lay there for 70 minutes. I got as far as my hands and knees. I couldn't get a foot under me. Rick came home at 5:10. Somewhere in those 70 minutes, lying on that tile, I thought one word. Clumsy. I had a bruise from the top of my thigh to my waist. I was down 46 pounds. My daughter Kayla, 31, is an ER nurse. That Sunday she sat at my kitchen table in her scrubs and said, "Show me." She didn't say clumsy. 4. The car. I almost missed the car posts. Women wrote those up as jokes about getting old. "Took me three tries to get out of my own car at the grocery store." "I have to grab the door frame and swing both legs out like I'm 90." "Hit my head on the door frame climbing out. Clumsy!" There were 31 of them. A car seat sits low, often lower than the chairs in your house, and you have to stand up out of it sideways with one foot on the pavement. That's lift. Almost all thigh. When the thighs can't, the arms pull on the door frame. That's when the bumps start. Shins. Forearms. The top of the head. Years ago a table patient of mine, Glenna Sauer, came in with a plum-sized bruise below her elbow. She said it was the car door. 5. The couch. This one was mine every night that January. After supper I'd lie on the couch under the afghan. When I went to get up, I couldn't sit straight up. I held my breath and fell back. So I rolled onto my side, pushed up on my elbow, sat on the edge of the cushion and rocked. Once. Twice. Three times. Rick didn't notice. In the search, women wrote the same thing about loveseats and recliners, and nearly always as a joke. Rocking means your thighs can't stand you up, so your upper body throws you forward instead. On a couch, that's harmless. Do the same thing getting up off a wet bathroom floor, and you're the one who's lying there when your husband gets home. That's lift again. --- Now here's the part it took me a long time to say clearly. "Calcium. And walk more." I said it at that door for 22 years. Calcium on its own is the dots. It's one part of the mineral. It doesn't build the frame the dots settle onto, and it doesn't give your thighs any protein to lift you off the couch. Half a yogurt and a few crackers don't either. So there are two different jobs here, and they need two different things. The first job is the muscle that grips, catches and lifts. That's protein first at every meal, and practice. Getting down on the floor and back up. Lifting something. Your doctor can tell you what's safe for you. The second job is the bone underneath. That's the frame and the mineral, fed every single day, from a plate that just got a lot smaller. I did the second job wrong for five months. In December, someone in my group said calcium, so I bought the caramel calcium chews. Two a day. Then protein shakes. I finished about a third of each one. My hair was coming out in the shower drain, so in January I bought a pink tub of collagen with a woman's glowing face on the lid. Two heaping scoops. It clumped like wet flour. Skin, hair and nails, and not one word about bone. Then a "joint" pill with collagen on the front. About 1,000mg in a two-capsule serving. By the end of January I had 4 bottles on the kitchen windowsill. The chews, a D, a magnesium and the joint pills. By Thursday every week, I'd forgotten all 4. In March my doctor kept my prescription right where it was and ordered a bone scan. In April Bev ran it after hours. My hip came up grey. Osteopenia. That was the night she drew the lines and the dots. I folded the strip into my purse. Then I went home, doubled the chews to 4 a day, and added a separate K2 and a vitamin C. More dots. Forgotten by Thursday. --- On a Saturday in May, Bev came for lunch. She saw the bottles on my 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 to me. "Stop arguing with me." I turned the bag over and read the back the way I'd read requisitions for 22 years. Line by line. 9 grams of collagen peptides in one scoop. Nine times what was in the joint pill. Studies on collagen peptides commonly use 2.5 to 15 grams a day. 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. The lines and the dots, in one scoop. In the coffee I was already drinking every morning. It tasted like coffee. I ordered that afternoon. My own bag came the following Wednesday, the same morning as my shot. One thing I tell every woman who asks. Collagen isn't a complete protein, and it doesn't replace protein-rich meals. The scoop goes in my coffee on top of protein first, never instead of it. The first job is still eggs and practice. Here's what I do now, every day, on the shot. One scoop of DensiaPlus in my first cup of coffee. Every morning since that Wednesday in May. Five months now. I haven't missed one. Protein first. Rick cooks my eggs, two every morning, and I eat them even when the shot says I'm not hungry. Two cans of soup out of the pantry, lifted in the kitchen while the coffee brews. And I try every jar myself before I hand it to Rick. The floor. Every night before bed, I lay a folded quilt on the living room rug, sit down on it, and get back up. Rick counts. The first week I needed the couch arm and his knee every single time. In August Kayla came over and watched me get up with one hand while she counted out loud. That came from practice. Every night, on the quilt, for months. That's what I credit for it. And the tub. In March Rick screwed a grab bar into the wall beside it, and the old bath mat went in the trash. I sit down on the rim now and swing my legs over one at a time. The windowsill is empty. Kayla threw the pink tub out herself, in my second week. The chews and the joint pills went after it. What I don't know is what's going on inside my bones. Nobody can tell that from the outside. Bev will run my rescan herself next spring, and I don't know what it will say. I forgot 4 bottles on a windowsill by Thursday, every week. One scoop in a mug I already pick up every morning, I haven't forgotten once. That's the whole reason I keep it. --- On the first Saturday in October, Bev came for supper, and I handed her my phone with the search still open. She scrolled for a long time without saying anything. The jar. The curb. The tub. The car. The couch. She read one of the tub posts twice. "It's your table, Jen," she said. "Except nobody's lying down." Then she handed the phone back and asked me what she always asks. Not whether I take the scoop. How many times I got down on the quilt that week. Seven. "Good," she said. "Now go tell them." The next night, Lydia's photo came into my queue. I didn't approve it. I wrote to her first. "You're not clumsy," I wrote. "How many of the five?" I typed them out for her. The jar. The curb. The tub. The car. The couch. She counted. The tub, the car and the couch. Three. I asked her to write those three on a piece of paper and take it to her doctor, along with the photo of her elbow. I told her how I get out of my own tub now. Then I approved her post. That week she showed her doctor the paper. He runs her shot, and he's the one who decides what comes next. Last Wednesday she posted again. No photo this time. "Sat down on the tub rim tonight and swung my legs over one at a time. Not clumsy. Practicing." Practicing. --- Now your turn. Tonight, before bed. Get a piece of paper and write the five down the side. The jar. The curb. The tub. The car. The couch. Put a mark next to every one you've laughed off since you started the shot. Be honest. Nobody's going to see it but you and your doctor. My own paper had three marks on it before I'd finished writing the list. Take that paper to your next appointment and show your doctor. Your doctor runs your shot, the same way mine runs mine. Let him see the list as well as the scale. Then start on the first job. Protein first. The floor, with something sturdy to hold and somebody home. Every night. I wrote the five up on one page, with the paper check. It's the link under this post. --- If you're down 30, 40, 50 pounds on the weekly shot, and every Wednesday you post the number. If you hand your husband the jar and tell him they make the lids tighter now. If you've caught your toe on a curb and laughed before you got up. If you've got a bruise from the side of your tub. If you swing both legs out of the car and pull on the door frame to stand. If you rock two or three times to get off your own couch. If the only thing on your counter for your bones is a calcium chew. You're not clumsy. My own paper is still in the drawer by the stove, with three marks down the side. The jar, the tub, the couch. For 22 years I nodded at that word and said "Calcium. And walk more." I'm telling you something different now. Celebrate every pound. Then go try your own jar. 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. I went back to the group search last night. There are new posts with that word in it since I started. Two of them are Lydia's. I've started writing back to the old ones, the ones I approved with a heart before spring, oldest first. Same words every time. "You're not clumsy. Which of the five?" 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.