Piling the weight back on when stopping MJ

[Richtea67]

Hi all....I'm so disappointed. I lost 3 and a half stone, have been off injections for a month and regained nearly 7lbs 😩. I was a slow loser (1-2lb per week) and focused on changing habits and reducing portion size rather than diets/calorie counting (this has led to binging previously). I have kept up with a lot of the habits (smoothie for breakfast, cutting out alcohol and healthy high protein snacks). But portion sizes have definitely gone up as I'm hungrier! And I've been more tempted by the biscuits at work and the kids treats! Any advice?? I'm considering re starting if I put too much weight on, but financially this would be a struggle, which is part of the reason I came off them. My starting weight was 14.5 stones, weight when stopping injections 11 stones and at present nearly half a stone back on!! Help!

Why do you post in these threads? Does it make you feel morally superior? Is it because God forbid those fatties you look down on might be able to change their lives. If I could have "learnt" to stick to healthy portion size and food then at the age of 54 with 2 medical degrees you might think I would have done so right?? Why haven't I ? Why did my BMI get to 46? Do you truly believe i am just too stupid/lazy/ignorant etc to just not bother??

WLIs influence brain receptors while you're taking them, they don't alter them. What you're talking about is creating new neural pathways that forge new healthier habits. The problem is, that's really, really hard to do when you're on the drugs because the very thing they do is stop you thinking about food and eating. So, if you're not thinking and embrace switching off from the food noise, you're not going to create new neural pathways.

That poster is simply incorrect in what they're saying too.

People who are 'labradors', so to speak, live to eat. And now we have established that, then what? Oh just change your genes?

Watching with interest.

Yes I’ve been reading Dr Stacey Sims new menopause book and a lot of the fasting studies have been done on men. She especially does not recommend women fast before exercise.

It's interesting how many people without any specialist knowledge, either by personal experience or by profession, come on threads about these particular treatments, when I am sure they wouldn't be offering their pearls of wisdom on support and discussion forums related to any other conditions and their treatments.

Thank you yes I may consider this...maybe then increase to 5mg and taper down from.there very gradually. I'm away next week so will have a weigh in after that and re assess. I'm definitely eating much more mindfully now....it was just so freeing on MJ with all that food noise gone. I'd forgotten what it was like to live with.

There was an article in the papers (cant remember where) but it did indeed say that labradors are predisposed genetically to weight gain versus other dogs and that this same gene had been discovered in humans.
I remember joking to my dh that I was indeed a labrador.

https://psychiatry.duke.edu/blog/starvation-experiment

I'd never come across that before, thanks @SuperTrooper14 - fascinating stuff, and very worrying in the context of WLI restricting people's food intake to such an extent.

Apologies, I see somebody already mentioned this, and managed to link to the article.

Isn’t that the problem though? Because these injections are being embraced as a new diet plan:aid it’s easy for people to forget that they’re actually a medication first and foremost. That’s glossed over in discussions.

@AmythestBangle sadly certainly didn’t work like that for me - felt like I wanted to smoke more due to eating less -

People trying to lose weight with massive calorie deficits isn't new or specific to Mounjaro/Ozempic. Calorie trackers often default to 1200 calories regardless of your height and weight, and then people feel encouraged to go lower for a bigger deficit. 1200 calories isn't sufficient for very overweight and obese people.

Might be an indication of how NHS support would be helpful to monitor the levels of appetite suppression as if someone is consistently unable to eat enough to subsist then they may be on the wrong dose.

And why do you think that dog eats too much while whippets don’t? HUNGER! People with ‘bad’ genetics (that would have conferred a survival advantage in a world of food scarcity) are hungry. Not greedy, stupid or weak-willed - just more lab than whippet. On the same number of calories as a smug thin person, they may wake up in the night because they are ravenous & never really feel satisfied. Few people can voluntarily live like that. In the past people would have their jaw wired shut to try to lose weight or eat tissues to fill their bellies. People used to chain smoke to squash hunger and stay slim. GLP-1s are a far, far better alternative!

Exactly. I said in another thread that I am more worried about the long term impact and implications of a medication, tested but not known about how the body may be affected. I've had long term effects from a medication (antipsychotic) which i know is totally different, but i still think it's good to be a bit cautious sometimes.

I would really recommend this YouTube / podcast by The Doctors Kitchen with Johan Hari who has written a book about WLI. They discuss the pros and cons in detail.

YouTube link

Spotify link
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1FWRQvbC8meONveAT9EMTE?si=6D--bNkKRHSq2kXJ7eQVsg

I have a BMI of 30 and am a size 14 so fall into the ‘obese’ category. My main concerns are the health implications of being obese. I have been debating WLI and found this really informative.

I only became overweight in the last 5 years (3 pregnancies, menopause, desk job). In my childhood and 20s I never really thought about my weight or what I ate and stayed a healthy size (8-10). So what has changed?

After listening to this I realise that I really need to look at the reasons why I overeat. For me it’s a sweet tooth and snacking.

@SuperTrooper14the market is too huge and complex to pick out a couple of items and sat that's the worst, but the principles are fairly commonsense really. Humans are true omnivores and can live pretty well on a wide variety of diets, but the further away a food product is from its natural state the more likely its been manipulated in ways that are...experimental at best, proven harmful at worst. Artificially removing the fat from natural foods and replacing it with sugars and flavourings has generally been a failed experiment. A lot of UPF is also artificially low in fiber. Consider the difference between porridge made from whole oats and whole milk and a bowl of something like Krave. Some people would be driven to overeat either, and they are likely to be the people who really do have "hungry" genes, but most people would overeat the latter. Its designed to make you overeat it. The portion size is unrealistically low so they can fudge the nutrition stats, but they know what they're doing.

@liann34 yes in the podcast I linked to they discuss UPFs and in experiments on rats if they were fed on a natural food diet they didn’t overeat but if they were fed on a typical American diet of UPFs, fried chicken, cheesecake etc they over ate and became obese and developed health problems.
Certain processed foods have been designed to overcome our natural feelings of satiety.

So really WLIs are fixing a problem that was created by the food industry in the first place….

@Sundews well I don't know about caused - but certainly exacerbated and profiteered from. And so much of the neurological and biological groundwork is laid in childhood. Of course as kids in the 90s we thought it the gravest injustice that our friends got Findus crispy pancakes and chips and we got curry rice and greens, but my God, for whatever else my parents got wrong, how right they were on that.

How much does that cost you per month?

@AgathaMystery And are you happy to stay on WLI forever? Do they not have any side effects for you?

speaking from my own experiences a year in, the side effects lessen over time, so whilst i got bad side effects as i moved up doses, they were temporary and eased off, now i have no side effects at all. Like with a lot of medications, it just takes your body time to adjust some times and sticking with it

I think I’ll be on some sort of GLP-1 forever, yes. I doubt it will be injections. I don’t have any side effects except Bruxism for 24-48 hrs after I titrate up a dose. I’m not titrating now so haven’t really struggled. I did have headaches about a year ago - that wasn’t nice.