Mounjaro/Wegovy with > 5st/30kg to lose: Thread 7

[MooBaggage]

Thread SEVEN of this lovely community. Anyone using weight-loss injections to lose more than 5 stone or 30kg is very welcome to join us, no matter what stage of the process you are on. Share your losses, your non-scale victories (NSV), your frustrations and your love of Longley Farm cottage cheese and kiwi fruit here!

Nothing is off limits to discuss - from protein sources to B bellies; Hammocks to smart scales; feeling chilly to easier bum wiping 😃

Please don’t post discount codes on this thread as your post will be deleted. These need to go in the dedicated thread on this board

Congratulations on your first stone frosty what are you going to grow in your greenhouse?

That's not a little thing moo!! Being able to get the smaller (& nicer) towels around me now with ease gives me a moment of smugness every shower 🤣

I love a towel wrap too!!!

Aw thank you. I've been trying to grow some veg this year. It has kept me occupied since I started MJ. I planted the seeds on the same day as my first jab, and its given me something to do with my hands! My seedlings now have a home instead of covering every windowsill in the house. I have 22 plants so far. Tomatoes, cucumber, courgette, and luffa. I'm a total novice but very proud of my little plants. Its lovely having a little happy place of my own in the garden.

@MooBaggage towel wrap is a huge NSV! Well done! It's these little things that mean the most.

Enjoy your greenhouse @akaFrosty . I treated myself to one too as I am feeling so much better on mj. Mine is a (very) cheap replacement for the conservatory I would really like, but it just big enough for 2 comfy chairs and tomato plants. My sitooterie for when it rains and I can read in it with a cup of tea, listening to the rain on the roof!

Loving the MJ treats - so we've got hammocks and greenhouses now 😊 and posh scales that sometimes feel like a punishment 😁

I bought myself an embroidery kit on a day out recently - imagining myself like someone from Bridgerton (I have the boobs) - but I can't actually embroider... 🙄. I knit, but wanted to do something a bit different - so now have to watch a million YouTube videos to learn how to do the different stiches!

@AnneinEdinburgh sitooterie is a most fantastic word! London based here, but must check my dear Glaswegian friend down the road knows it, as that's exactly what she has outside her front door, with a lovely turquoise bench!

Please can someone re-post the link to the Eufy scales? My Withings ones thought I was STBXH this morning (he still has a profile on there which I'm not sure how to remove) and gave me a body fat % reading that was 20% different to the usual, so I've rather lost faith in them!

Here you go @VelociraptorsVelociRapping

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0D2XRMJBV?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1

Thank you @RobinEllacotStrike! Are the C20s the ones that you all have rather than the more expensive models? They seem very cheap (I am not complaining!).

Week 44 weigh in.

SW: 139kg (21st 12 lbs)
CW: 87.9kg (13st 11lbs), was 88.8kg (13st 13lbs) last week.
GW: 81kg (12st 11 lbs) fifth interim goal

Current pen: 7.5mg, 34 weeks on this dose.

Back to downwards progress after last week's small gain, thankfully. Also managing to keep up with the Couch to 5k programme, which I am really pleased about.

Some thoughts buzzing around my head I need to put down. A Robin ramble ...

I've been BMI very overweight, obese and morbidly obese for around 40 years.

A couple of days ago I did a practice session for someone I know training in a therapy. I mentioned, among other things, that I had lost 30 kilos. She talked about how I was "revealing myself to myself" and this resonated so much.
Many people say "I'm a new me" or "I've found myself" during a WL/exercise journey but I never felt like this. But this idea that I am finally starting to see and feel and be honest with the me that was always there, makes so much sense.

Did you know in Japan they say people "have fat"? Like they have a suitcase, or they have an appointment.
Whereas we say "I am fat" - like its an identity.
"I have fat" & "I am fat" are both statements of truth - facts. But "I am fat" can also be an identity - it certainly was for me.

From a very young age I thought "I am fat" - and I really wasn't. I'm Gen X so there was so many problematic messsages around womens bodies, all women in media/magazines/films were very thin. I also wanted to "protect" myself from unwanted male attention - & this reinforced fat as an identity "I am fat therefore men will leave me alone". I absorbed all these messages, it shattered any self esteem I might have had, and I grew fatter and fatter. I am fat. The prophecy fulfilled. I now have to deal with fat me, and so hello weight watchers and feeling more and more miserable, boosting the food noise to high heavens, lowering self esteem even more. This is not a unique story - so many women have gone through something similar.

And then comes adult life with all that brings, and having kids, and juggling work/kids/commute/life/everything - just as well I buried myself under all this fat as I've no time for myself anyway. And always the message, from myself & the world I am fat. I am fat. I am fat. That was me - fat. When your identity gets tied up in being fat, and you are constantly told fat is ugly/disgusting/immoral/unattractive, how do we not take that on as WE are ugly/disgusting/immoral/unattractive. It really hurts us body, mind & soul. (The body postive movement addressed this but also reinforces fat as an identity - it was a relief to stop the dieting cycle, but ultimately I got fatter and it wasn't postiive for me in anyway - hello debiltating ankle & knee pain and elevated health risks.)

I wonder how different things might have been with the Japanese approach - "I have fat". I have some excess fat on my body. It's not a moral failing, or a judgement - I have excess fat and I need to lose it. I've been on holiday - I have fat. Lets lose it. When you HAVE fat, and you lose it, you don't fear you are in danger of losing yourself.

I'm starting to feel like this now. Daily yoga has made me so strong. While I have lost 30 kilos I am still obese (BMI 31.2) but I am getting more muscular and now I can see the remaining fat, how it sits under my skin and on top of my strong long muscles.

I can see the me I lost, revealing herself to me. I'm starting to feel a change from "I am fat" to "I have fat". Its a powerful internal revolution. As the fat reduces I can allow myself to see myself more.

I don't need excess fat to protect me from men now - I never did but this idea I embedded. But now I am 57 with no fucks to give, I really don't need it. So losing the fat, and gaining strength through exercise, as this stage of life feels like a great revealing, a meeting, a sigh and a hug - "oh there you are, I've been waiting for you".

MJ has given me the ability to reveal myself to myself at long last - to shed these layers of fat I've held onto as protection and a disguise, to reassure myself "you've got this", to acknowledge I'm here & I matter and I can look after myself really well.

I'm glad the WL has slowed down. I'm grateful for the plateaus. I see this as the granting of time to take a breath, feel myself, know I am safe, know this is OK, know I am not my fat. I have hidden myself from myself, using excess body fat. I'm not kidding about this any longer. I'm OK, I can be who I am, and express myself how I want, and everyone will survive, the world will keep turning, its OK, I'm OK.

I am fat vs I have fat.
I am overweight vs I have excess fat.

Both are statements of fact but only one is an identity.

We are not our fat.

🥝🥝

Yes mine is C20

Ugh so I'll be very surprised if I haven't gained weight in the last week or so as I've really struggled with overeating. I think it's anxiety tbh. I eat to feel safe in my body. MJ makes me anxious because it stops me from using my failsafe coping mechanism and so I'm definitely in a place at the moment where I feel I am confronting myself and it's hard!

Injected yesterday with 45 clicks of 5mg pen and this morning I feel pretty nauseous and not wanting food, but also very anxious and unsafe. I guess I need to keep working on all of this!

what else can you do do feel calm @taylorswift1989 ?

You are going to need new calming and soothing habits - so what can you do? Can you find something now and try and bring it into your day so when you get "the call" you can implement your prepared planned new response.

Sometimes a mantra can help move through a difficult feeling.

Or just sitting still and breathing and allowing yourself to feel the difficult emotions can be really helpful - I do this. Just sit with the feelings quietly & breathe - the feeling WILL pass.

I don't know if I will ever shake off the urge to overeat - though MJ is very helpful for now. Some people embrace "bulk eating" where they eat alot of food but its veggies. This could be the way forward for me on maintance - eating bigger meals but the bulk is vegetables not psata.

I do a practice called JournalSpeak which i got from Nicole Sachs. You basically write for 20 minutes about your most raw feelings and then meditate for 10 minutes. It does help, especially if you do it every day.

It's been a couple of years since I've been working on trying to feel more safe in my body and MJ is part of the journey for sure. But I don't know if I will ever feel safe in my body, at any size. I do think that I can keep working on the anxiety though.

To be honest, the best thing for me is sleep. But the last couple of weeks have been tough for that for various reasons. Hopefully this weekend should give me a chance to get back to better sleeping habits.

Thats a great practice with the journaling & meditation. You can build on this with the sitting with the feelings which you can do at almost any time, anywhere and no one needs to even know you are doing it.

Interesting about the sleep - its so important isn't it. Hopefully you can get a couple of good nights sleep & you will start to feel better.

I've always been a night owl that really struggled to wake up in the morings. In my 20's I used to have 3 alarms, 2 of them in pots on the other side of the room. Now I can prioritise sleep and I wake early. I feel much better for it though theteen inside is calling me names for it 😁

I met someone recently who teaches that tapping technique for anxiety self soothing and I'm hoping to do one of his workshops at some point this year.

MJ certainly opens up a space where all the eating and the food noise etc used to be. We need to find new healthy ways to fill this space - remember the rule "Nature abhors a vacuum" (Aristotle) so we need to be prepared with new habits, if not to replace the old, to fill the gap in our lives that the old filled up and that we didn't even know existed until we started on the MJ.

I think I secretly believe that without the fat, I would be so devastatingly beautiful that it would all get too much. Maybe we’ll see!( I’m 65)

We can handle your extraordinary beauty @Zebracat- go for it!

🦓🐈‍⬛

Bring it @Zebracat!

Finally been approved for 7.5mg! It’s been shipped, hoping it will arrive tomorrow. Jab day is Monday. I’m really hoping it’s the push my body needs to start losing again 🤞

Great news @alwaysscared

Love this!

Really interesting discussion from @RobinEllacotStrike . If I’m totally, totally honest with myself, I think I’ve always had a bit of self sabotage because I honestly don’t know who thin me would be. Being fat absolutely is in my identity, before I was old enough to buy my own clothes I was big enough for it to be a struggle. I honestly can’t imagine a version of me who walks in to any high street store to buy something. I’ve turned 40 recently, and I feel a lot more confident in myself, and I think that’s put me in a place where finally losing the weight feels possible.

Wow.... amazing posts and @RobinEllacotStrike I'm going to photograph your post re: fat. What a way to think about it - thank you for helping to re-frame it - it's massively helpful and I'm all sodding emotional again about it all!

I had a really weird NSV today - went to visit some friends and they took photos of us and I didn't hate myself . Honestly I don't know when this has ever happened before. I can see the start of a waist - I am curvy in and out rather than just out and more out. Still a long way to go, but maybe I need to think now that I have fat - not am fat - and the fat I have I'm going to not have over the next year. Amazing.

I have had periods of being normal-sized, but it never feels like it fitted me, if you know what I mean. I'm tall and broad anyway, so I'm never going to be much under a 12/14 and wouldn't feel comfortable with that. I'm very comfortable taking my time about the whole thing, and hopefully that will allow me to adjust my view of myself. I'm finding that I don't actually mind catching sight of myself in mirrors these days. I don't have to brace myself. It feels weird.

ETA: Yes, @RobinEllacotStrike thank you for a very very thought-provoking and interesting post!