Plodders Club 🐌

[PlodAlongPolly]

Hi,

Anyone on WLI and in the slow lane v. welcome here for a bit of plodding supportive chat!

Plodders, bobbers, plateau-ers, stallers and stuck ducks come on in! Would be great to chat with others who are in the same boat, ie travelling at the speed of snails on their WL journey.

I have a mountain to move (nearly 5 st), am not ready to give up on Mounjaro yet and would love a bit of company here on this long haul to reach a healthy BMI. 🦥 🐌 🏔️

Come join me if you have a long way to go (either due to slow losses or amount to lose) and would like some peer support to keep going when the scales are being stubborn. It’s hard being on WLI when it’s not working as well for you and progress is slow or stalled. This is a safe space to share anything, the good, the bad and the side effecty. Anything positive (scale or non scale related) as well as freedom to vent and grumble as much as you want

If you taking WLI and trucking along nicely or nearly at your goal weight that is fantastic but please post on a different thread.

Fantastic the Vit D spray has had such a positive impact for you @Mysticmaiden. Yeah there could be a genetic link there with your family history and hope they are managing to manage/ build it up with supplements too. I’ve also noticed I’ve caught less bugs since being on the high strength vit D it and sleep has improved a bit too. Some days I forget to take it when it’s busy so need to get better with this! Yeah I think you must be right about deficiencies and metabolism, must have an impact on how effectively the body functions. At least the sun has made an appearance now, so should help top us all up after the long winter!

H @PinkSour well done on the 25lbs! 🌟 That’s a great milestone and must be a good boost to keep going! Yeah 24 months is a good achievable timeframe and not that long in the future at all. Is hard trying to lose weight with little ones, I’ve tried and failed so many times with various diets/ plans. Am often tired looking after my toddler and older DC and trying to keep on top of the chaos that is our house(!)

I totally understand your worry about how you might be perceived at the school gates in later years. Try not to worry though, there are so many different shapes and sizes of parents and I’m sure you are lovely and will be appreciated for who you are 🌸 I am one of the big mums at the gates, and I did feel self conscious at first. I think I’m seen as a quite a friendly mum so it hasn’t been a negative thing. If anything my worry is that when (when, hopefully not if!) I reach a healthy weight that people will see me differently as I’ve always been ‘big’ to them, although I was slimmer in years before having children. But I know really this shouldn’t matter and in any case is a way off for now.

Ah this is good to know as I was also going to ask you what you were doing differently to get a few pounds off this week @DarlingCoffee ! Very well done 👏 and is an encouragement to keep the water intake up. I can’t manage running but that is food for thought in getting in more activity. Yes I know what you mean about it coming off and might go back on! I am finding it helpful to focus on the overall trend downwards.

@PlodAlongPolly thank you for the encouragement. The extra water is definitely helping. I think anything you can do to get your heart rate up is also worth trying. I walk a lot (we have a dog) but annoyingly that hasn’t made the slightest difference!!!

Hi @Doggymummar I can relate, am also stuck! Haven’t weighed though but not eaten well this week and not expecting any kind of loss (if anything a small gain). Will keep on plodding. I think my frustration got a bit burnt out a month ago so am kind of in a ‘ahh, never mind’, kind of place at the moment and thinking the losses will return, hopefully with stepping up doses. I don’t want to expend more mental energy feeling disappointed, so am just focusing on our family day to day for now.

Yeah I do think the better weather will help! ☀️ Would like to get out more too, I think my DC are keen to dust off their bikes

Hi and welcome @TuxedoTammy ! 👋 Yes my experience was exactly the same as you and wanted to see if there were other slow-pace plodders out there who might like to plod along together on the snail trail to better health! 😁 🐌 ❤️

Yes I agree @TuxedoTammy and also encourage people to get their thyroid tested. Unfortunately thyroid issues are notoriously poorly managed in the UK with not being properly recognised or diagnosed by GP’s. The threshold is set quite high for the TSH normal range, which is quite out of date, as it is lower overseas and appears to be an area of ongoing medical debate. Unfortunately people can be very ill and symptomatic but not viewed as being out of range or unwell, or offered full testing or treatment. It wasn’t until my symptoms became so horrendous and cognition so badly impaired I had slurred speech, had to give up driving and couldn’t walk that one locum Dr suggested it could be thyroid (although no test was offered at this point). I had to go back to my GP multiple times before a test was suggested. I requested a full spectrum blood test (not just TSH) which thankfully they did agree although other surgeries do refuse and revealed it was my thyroid. Thyroid anti bodies were through the roof and an ultrasound revealed severe and extensive damage. It took a long long time to get a diagnosis and treatment.

So please do request testing if you suspect thyroid symptoms/ problems, but just be aware you may have to be persistent and fight your own corner.

Ask for all 4 of the thyroid tests, all via blood test (one or two vials). It is an easy test for a GP to order and all 4 are needed to give a picture of thyroid health, not just TSH alone (which is the standard blood test) and a result from this alone can be misleading or get you dismissed by the GP’s. So it is TSH, T3, T4 and the thyroid antibody test.

That experience sounds shocking @PlodAlongPolly . I had wondered why I had put on a stone in a year for no particular reason. So I had a private thyroid blood test and it was too low. So now my GP is going to test me again next week. I suspect you’re probably right - they don’t take the issue seriously.

I’ve lost 11 lbs in about 15 weeks. Including two mini plateaus where nothing moved for a few weeks. I seemed to also have a mini whoosh yesterday where I lost a couple of pounds at once - I had eaten less than usual the previous two days - but whether or not that is sustained we shall have to see. Sometimes the scale goes up again 🫤.

As with a previous poster I think my calorie intake is pretty low. Around 1200- 1400, certainly no more. To lose weight I have to go strictly to a 1000 or less. However there is my age 63 and my low activity level (chronic illness) and thyroid issues which perhaps are a partial explanation. Without Mourjana I think it would be impossible for me to lose weight without starving myself and being hungry all the time, quite literally. I think there is a view out there that if you are 2 - 3 stone overweight you are stuffing yourself with cakes or biscuits. Definitely not true, speaking for myself.

It’s gonna take me longer than I hoped I guess. I’m just moving up from 7.5 to 10 mg. All we can do is just keep going. (And maybe bear in mind there are some advantages to losing weight slowly as well; losing weight fast can cause problems).

Nice to see a thread for the 🐌. Good luck OP and others. It will be interesting to see how things pan out over the next few months.

Thank you @TuxedoTammy it was a hard time to be so ill and just be dismissed as a ‘tired mum’. I felt quite gaslighted. Had to really push to get anywhere and be insistent that things weren’t right, which was hard to do in that state and genuinely didn’t know what was causing it. By the time I got an ultrasound it showed the disease was very progressed, thyroid almost completely eaten away. The damage could have been much less if I’d been treated sooner which is a shame. Had to change GP surgeries in the end and is a lot better where I’m registered now. Had to go up to a higher dose of thyroxine on Mounjaro as it reduced the effectiveness, and it has also helped being on the high strength vit D.

Well done on your 11 lbs though, that’s great and slow and steady will win this cross country race! 😊 totally agree that if very low cals are needed to lose it would be so hard to do this without MJ. I did manage it with a keto diet in the past which conversely curbs your hunger when you go into mild ketosis, even though the cals are v low but it wasn’t sustainable. Before that I was a serial slimming club plodder but just got tired of the endless slog, making the effort to get to group and log my food etc and putting it back on when I wasn’t able to stay on the plan.

All the best with moving up to 10mg and let us know how you get on!

Hi, hope I can join you all please? I've been on MJ since last September and have gone from 101kg to 85kg, but mainly in the first couple of months and since Christmas it has levelled off and have not lost anything at all!

I don't think Christmas itself helped, but also finding less suppression, I'm on 10mg now and wondering whether to keep moving up to 15mg.

I am also on some meds which have food cravings and weight gain as a side effect so I am wondering if that in the mix might be responsible. I do feel I am having more cravings as well as times my tummy is rumbling.

I just had a tunnocks caramel wafer with my coffee and felt guilty as this is when I used to run into problems wanting snacks pre-MJ.

I'm a bit upset because to start with I found MJ really seemed to work and now it seems to be wearing off- and due to some stockpiling I have another 3 pens in the fridge!

I guess I need to use my willpower now. Also, I know it had a good impact on my blood tests (lower cholesterol and BP) and it is not all about weight- plus I have lost enough to bring me from BMI 40 to 32 which is fab - and I'm not regaining (yet!) just feeling a bit fed up.

Here's hoping things will pick up. I'm in it for the long run anyway as I am on the meds long term.

Just to add @PlodAlongPolly I am entirely reliant on thyroxine (as I had thyroid cancer). It’s usually tested yearly and they don’t change the dosage much usually, but last year they took it down from 100 mg to 75 mg. Now it seems that 75 mg is too low 🤷‍♀️ so I’m going to be tested again. My GP wanted to test me again because he wasn’t sure of the private results and the efficacy of the private company. Anyway, I hope they bloody sort it soon!

I have wondered if having thyroid issues to begin with makes it harder to lose weight, even when they get the “levels” right, because your thyroid is not functioning fully in a normal way if you see what I mean. Your experience really does sound awful. What a struggle you had 😞. But 🤞 your path will be a little easier now.

Having lost nearly a stone now, I should feel great, but I am only back where I was this time last year actually! I wondered why my jeans were so tight recently! Losing the next stone would make a pretty big difference I think, and I’m looking forward to that, even if it does take a while (and it probably will). Onwards and upwards even if 🐌 🙂

Had to go up to a higher dose of thyroxine on Mounjaro as it reduced the effectiveness

^ ahh, just seen what you said there @PlodAlongPolly, may explain some of my thyroid level changes ….

It is so reassuring to read this thread! I've been on MJ since Jan and have lost a measly 3kg. I just haven't had the appetite suppression I was hoping for. I'm on week 2 of 7.5mg, which has finally started to have some impact, but mainly that I feel sick in the evening so don't fancy eating so much.

I feel like I'm spending so much money and I'm not getting these amazing results like so many others are. But I'm going to increase my water intake and keep focussing on eating plenty of protein, and see what the scales say on Monday 🤞🏼

Interestingly, 10mg seems to be the dose for me so far, in 6 days I have lost 1.5lbs, this is way more than I have lost for many months in the short time. I'm lucky to lost 1lb a week, sometimes it's 1lb in 2 weeks. I have been eating much less due to the high suppression so 800-1000 some days but then had some higher calories days due to my monthly period making me hungrier so some days 1300 cals. I've been trying to drink more too and eating way less carbs and more salads. My bmi is now 28.1! Has drinking more helped for anyone else?

It's great to hear you are finding 10mg gives you more appetite suppression Mysticmaiden, you are doing great! I really hope I experience similar.

I'm due my next injection on Sunday and I'm feeling much hungrier today. Really trying to avoid the snacks! Water isn't cutting it 😂

Which dose are you on? Until 10mg I've not had great suppression, tomorrow is jab day but I'm not bad, usually I'm starving. I'm envious of those who stay on 2.5mg for months, I was hungry after week 2! I've had a few plateaus too, usually coincides with cold weather I've noticed! Ah I've just decided to have some chocolate, bought it over a month ago lol

Hi, sorry I’ve been off for a couple of days. Hello to newbie plodders!

How are people doing/ feeling?

Still plodding along, although in shock move I lost 2lbs last week. That's the same as I lost in the whole of last month.

Still bimbling along at an average of 1.2lbs per week though.

I lost some actual weight this week, I was surprised. It's so hard tho. I'm eating barely anything and still not losing. Bloody menopause. I've joined an at home walking club tho and did 3300 steps yesterday( usually under 500) so hopefully that will help

Thank you so much for your reply @TuxedoTammy and so sorry to hear you had cancer and had a rough road with your thyroid too. Unfortunately weight gain and difficulties losing seem to go hand in hand don’t they. Was just finding it impossible getting anywhere with other WL methods so am choosing to keep going on Mounjaro even if it’s slow and stalling. Is still better than no progress at all or to keep gaining over time. Yes same here I am keen to get things moving again even at 🐌 pace! Onwards and downwards 🙂

Keep going @SomethingAboutNothing I’m about to go up to 7.5 too, sounds like this is starting to have an effect for you and hope that can help you make some forward progress. Sorry about the evening sickness though and hope that settles down. I sometimes get a bit of nausea in the mornings. I’ve heard good hydration can help so am also trying to up my water intake. Ginger is meant to be good too ie ginger tea.

Ah well done for your whoosh loss @1clavdivs! 👍 It’s moving in the right direction, 1.2 per week is nice and consistent. If I were you I wouldn’t change a thing! (Until the next dose increase is needed)

Are you having a lot of protein? This is an area I need to work on, am just trying to look at how I can get back into (any kind) of loss again, alongside moving up doses.

Oh wow that’s great @Doggymummar! Sorry you are having to cut cals so strictly, I think our hormones play such a major factor in our weight, distribution and ability to lose.

An at home walking club sounds good! Well done on the 3300, it all helps! I am hoping to get more steps in now the weather is getting better

I'm down 20kg some of which was from the low carb boot camp last May. I've been stuck around 93-94 kg for a good month.

I swim & do weights three x week and my body shape has changed massively. I have a waist amongst the roles of fat.

My jeans are 2 sizes smaller but I'm 10kg off where I was when I met my current DH,
20kg off where I was when we got married,
30kg off the top end of my ideal weight and
40kg off being skinny!

I'd like to get under 90kg for the 13th May. That would be the 1st anniversary of this particular effort.

Crossing everything for you xxx