Weight Loss Diary - The One Year Anniversary!

ALT Hello and welcome to this long overdue weight loss diary update! I wanted to wait until one year had passed before making this update. First things first: I hit my target weight just under 3 months ago! Initially, I was aiming for around 80 kg, but when I started going below 90, people started telling me to stop losing weight. That I looked “amazing” and “really well,” the typical British euphemisms for “you were fat and now you’re not” which always tickle me. I think part of the issue around obesity is that people skirt around it, rather than talk about it for what it really is, in direct, plain language. Side note: I visited some old colleagues last month, some who hadn’t seen me for 5 or so years, and all of them came up with “you look wells!” and “wow you’ve changed!” These are people who I know very well and who can just say it for what it is, but they were too British to just say “you’ve lost weight!!” Anyway. I digress. Back to my target, which I made at 85 kg. According to the BMI, I’m still overweight (HAH!) but we all know that BMI is too crude a tool to use, so I’m ignoring it. Since then, I’ve been reducing my dose (I reached the maximum of 15mg for one pen only), and I’m aiming to maintain at 5mg. ALT The journey has been amazing! I’m not talking about the physical transformation (though that really helps as you can see below), but the mental one. The stopping of all food noise, the eating only when you’re hungry and only enough, the almost non-existent emotional eating, the removal of the constant feeling of guilt and shame, all of that just goes almost the very next day. ALT Before, no matter how hard I was trying (and I really was, as anybody obese reading this will relate to), I just could not lose weight effectively and sustainably, and couldn’t stop eating (and thinking about) food. And I always blamed myself for my lack of control and weakness. Until Mounjaro came along. And switched all this off. And made me realise that obesity really is a chronic disease that is complex, and some of us just have brains (and bodies) that are wired to make us fat, and keep us that way. A reminder of this came in February when I had just increased my dose to 15 mg. We were going away for the week so I skipped a jab, to avoid any unwanted side effects while away. I normally jab on a Saturday. By Thursday that week, I went into a super market and bought everything I could carry (crisps! nuts! spice mix! chocolates! drinks!). It was like a compulsion to just buy this and eat that! I remember thinking to myself that I don’t need any of this stuff but I just had to buy them! Which also made me realise just how effective the drug was at controlling these impulses, but also that there was no way I could just come off it. I knew from the beginning that I was in this for the long run, as in life-long, and that week in February confirmed just that. If you look carefully you’ll see the weight shoot up in the 15mg part of the graph at the very top. The future for obesity looks very bright. Tablet formulations of the drug are nearing trials completion, and this will make the treatment a lot more accessible (and cheaper) for many more. Patches are being researched also, which can only help more and more people. I really believe that there is a near future where even things like airplane tickets will be cheaper because as a society we will weigh less, needing less fuel to be flown around. I think food will become cheaper also as demand reduces. I know of restaurants and retailers introducing specific products for those of us on weight loss treatment, and again that’s a good thing for all. Not to mention the reduction in all the medical complications obesity causes, the diabetes and heart disease, as well as cancer (obesity increases the risk of thirteen types of cancer). I hope that more and more of us talk openly about using these drugs, and that society will gradually understand that obesity is not a moral problem, but a pathological one. Before I leave you with the mandatory before and after photo, I wanted to thank you for reading this far, and if you’re thinking of starting your medicated weight loss journey I cannot encourage you enough, and I hope that you will be able to talk about it freely with those around you. The more of us that do, the better it is for all. Finally, if you wanted to read any of the previous blog posts about my weight loss journey, just click here. It’ll search the blog and list them for you in descending date order. Thanks again for reading and good luck on whatever journey you’re taking! ALT