Do injections work if you don’t crave food?

[Bloozie]

I didn’t know how to word it. But basically I’m obese but don’t particularly eat that much.

i’m never hungry in the morning, I often skip lunch and I have Hello Fresh for dinner - anywhere between 500 and 1000 calories. On the days I do have lunch I might have 3 rounds of toast with marmite on and a bag of crisps. So it’s not good food, but it’s not taking me over 1800 calories a day either. I eat more at the weekend but again, I wouldn’t say loads.

I don’t know how much I weigh because I’m scared to weigh myself but it’ll be well over 18 stone. Dress size 24. I’m 5’7”.

I understand that the injections work by suppressing your appetite but I wouldn’t say I have a massive appetite. I just hold onto calories extraordinarily well. I can and have lost weight in the past on things like exante but even then I have to break their rules and go down to about 600 calories a day.

I definitely need to take action but for life reasons I just don’t have the mental energy to do exante again. The calorie reduction is fine. It’s the not eating normal food for months I can’t face - because I do enjoy eating. I like my hello fresh. I like going out for a meal at the weekend. So I guess I was hoping that the injections would mean I could mindlessly just eat one meal a day, and make sure it’s nutritionally balanced and protein heavy.

My body responds very well to fasting. I don’t think I was designed to eat much. I think I’m descended from a line that only got to eat once every three days or something. I hold onto calories.

I just don’t know whether appetite suppressant is necessarily what I need. I don’t think about food all the time. I am very fat. It’s frustrating.

What would your thoughts be?

No, that’s what they do, surpress your appetite so you eat less. You don’t think about food so you don’t have a biscuit with your tea and you eat smaller portions.

However, it could be that you are eating more than you realise. I’m overweight but I couldn’t eat three rounds of toast.

Good point re portion size. I was only thinking of calories across the day - accepting that not all calories are created equal.

You will be consuming more calories than you use, regardless of how that happens, if you have been consistently gaining weight to be around 18 st. Mounjaro has several effects which will reduce what you eat and change how your body responds to eating, and how your body uses its fat stores. So it is likely to work to help you lose weight, as it works for the large majority of people.

Are you particularly sedentary?

I’m reassured that it’s likely to work.

I don’t think I’m particularly sedentary, but nor am I particularly active. I walk the dogs for an hour once a day - husbans or son does second walk. If I was lighter, I’d run - I used to run - but my boobs are absolutely massive and even with a sports bra, running hurts. That’s a big part of the reason I want to lose weight. I don’t like being fat, but I don’t mind it either. It doesn’t get me down. I can be reasonably body confident. However I hate being unfit and having known what good cardio health feels like, this ain’t it.

My goal therefore is to lose enough weight to do some higher impact cardio exercise without really hurting my chest.

Why not track your calories for a week? I say this gently but if you were only eating around 1000-1500 calories a day, you’d definitely be losing weight. It’s very easy to not realise how much we’re actually eating.

I used to eat similarly to you and focused most of my eating around one meal a day. One time I totted up my meal (including the extra like butter on my bread or the bits of cheese and the bites of chocolate etc) and was amazed to see it came to 2200 calories. I genuinely thought it’d be half of that.

Anyway, hope your MJ journey gets off to a great start.

I eat around 1500 calories a day (track them) and am around 19stone. I walk my dog albeit I just walk him half an hour as he’s hold. So it can happen especially if OP isn’t burning them off.

Old

What do you drink? For me, I truly never ate much. In the afternoon, I'd have a small bag of crisps (bad, I know) then a small, sensible dinner low in carbs with lots of green veg. No other snacking.

But, I would sustain in the day with a couple of coffees with cream, and in the evenings drink a lot more alcohol than I should, including a Baileys nightcap.

I only became overweight in my mid-30s after 3 children, years of steroids and immune suppressants due to an autoimmune disease. I don't suffer from food noise, as described by others.

MJ has been amazing for me. I've quit the creamy coffee, massively reduced the alcohol, stopped the bag of crisps, and still eat a small sensible meal.

I've lost 97lb since July bringing me down to a size 10 from 18.

Good luck, I think it might help you.

Agree. Lots of people underestimate what they’re eating. I have just watched secret eaters on amazon and every single person reported not eating much and couldn’t understand how they were so overweight When watched 24/7, it was obvious. They were eating far more than they thought.

Hi thete

Why not have a read of Mosley Jr’s book

https://amzn.eu/d/e8f6cQL

it explains how MJ works (the appetite suppression and also how it changes the way your body processes insulin which aided weight loss too. It’s an easy read.

I also second what others have said about keeping a food diary for a week, see what you actually eat. I used WW because it focuses on the type of calories (quality) of food rather than just the number.

Where it might help is with the invisible reasons why your body is holding on to calories so ferociously.
It's helped me massively with food noise, as I was a snacker. Other people it's helped with reducing the meal sizes due to suppression, but that was never a big deal for me - my meals were ok, just supplemented with a shit load of chocolate.
Mounjaro isn't just about appetite suppression and food noise though. It also helps with insulin resistance, which with hindsight I now think is why I gained after having my gallbladder removed. It also slows gastric emptying.
If it feels like it could help I'd give it a try.

Thank you all for your thoughtful replies. Keeping a food diary is an excellent idea as I'm definitely going to need to eat more mindfully if I go on the mounjaro journey. I probably do eat more than I think, and I definitely don't always eat well for my lunch especially. But I also don't snack, crave or fancy one biscuit then eat the whole packet, and that was why I asked the question, because so much of the commentary around it is how it stops you thinking about food all the time, and I don't do that. It's good to hear it can help with other aspects of your metabolism as this is what I think I need.

@tryingtobesogood I didn't realise there was a Mosley Jr - I've read Sr's book, but that looks great. Thank you.

I never thought about food the whole time or had 'food noise' either, and didn't eat biscuits or cake or crisps or takeaways or any of the other fat person trope foods. I only ate very healthy, home-prepared, cooked from scratch meals. I also never ate breakfast and rarely ate/snacked on anything between my two meals a day.

However I simply ate too much at mealtimes. My portion sizes were too big. And over a surprisingly long period of time I slowly gained weight - so if anything, I would say I really didn't hold on to weight either.

I was really and truly shocked when I worked out how many calories I was actually consuming in a reasonably low fat, low carb, often salad, Mediterranean type of meal.

This is also what is meant by hidden calories. Not the forgetting/ignoring a chocolate bar or piece of cheese or ice cream or whatever, but simply never questioning the amount I put on my plate. We are all different and we all got fat in our own way...

And yeah, I know some people rely on taking sufficient Mounjaro to almost completely suppress their appetites and let them hardly eat at all and therefore don't need so much to rely on counting calories (until it stops working that way, which it will for most), but I have never done that, nor frankly wanted or needed to. I like food and I want to be able to eat properly and nourish my body.

I take Mounjaro because it allows me to eat and enjoy my absolutely delicious, prepared by me, calorie counted meal and to feel perfectly full and happy when I have finished it. This is how MJ is designed to work, by increasing satiety. I have lost 5 stone, a whopping 33% of my starting weight and have been maintaining at a size 8-10 for a couple of months now.

Something isn't adding up here. At your height and weight and I've assumed an age of 35 to 45, your BMR is 1700 to 1800 calories. Thats what your body roughly needs just to fulfill its daily requirements so based on your estimate of 1800 calories per day you'd have a more or less static weight.

Thats assuming a sedentary life style.

Do you drink a lot of full sugar drinks or alcohol? Have you been tested for any hormonal imbalances?

I'd say your post doesn't make much sense - you either skip lunch or have 'three rounds of toast and marmite' - that's an awful lot of quite rubbish carbs! Why do you go straight for that and not a salad or something?

Maybe try and just eat BETTER for a bit (healthy lunch and dinner each day) and see how it goes?

Hi OP. I don't crave food as such, but I love food and left to my own devices I eat far too much of it. I've found MJ very useful for helping me reduce portion sizes, as I just cannot physically eat as much as I used to. I'm losing weight nice and steadily. It hasn't completely turned off my wine switch, but I suspect it might as I go up the doses.

Op, I think there's only one way to find out why you're obese, and therefore, confirm MJ will help, and that's to spend a week calorie counting. I was a heavy drinker and before MJ, thought not drinking and saving 600 calories a day would inevitably lead to weight loss. After a miserable month, I'd lost not an ounce - because I was still eating more calories than I needed. I often ate only once a day and called it fasting but my one meal was a really big one, and again, I didn't lose weight. I never ate breakfast but might have sandwiches and crisps for lunch and an office cake mid afternoon before going home and eating the same sized portion of dinner as my OH. I never binged, never obsessed about food, I just ate too much for my body, often in short bursts, and on MJ l was able to eat within healthy parameters.

3 rounds of toast (with butter?) is likely more calories than you think. I had a housemate at Uni who could melt an impressive amount of butter onto toast (she was very overweight but also probably thought she didn’t eat that much).

There’s no way that you wouldn’t lose weight if you were actually in a calorie deficit, so tracking everything accurately for a week should show you where the weight is coming from.

For me, MJ has not only cut my cravings for bad foods, it has curbed my need for alcohol (which was a big part in me not being able to lose weight). I can enjoy food, enjoy a drink, etc, but it is easy to make good choices and feel satisfied.

like other people have said, chances are you do not count your calories accurately. Secret Eaters was mentioned above - all people there counted their calories, and couldn't understand why they are not losing weight on the 1000kcal they eat. Except that when monitored, it was more like 3000.

And like IrisPallida above, my portion sizes were too big. Healthy homemade food, mostly veggies, but I would take a decent serving and go back for seconds.

It's so easy to underestimate enery in food, most people do. A healthy green salad, but add some dressing, crutons, handful of seeds, avocado, some healthy carbs and you've easily eaten half your daily calories.

If you really eat less but still gaining weight then you are probably in my category. I have made food diary for my GP because I could not loose weight and I wasn’t eating a lot of calories. I have a bad insulin resistance problem and also suffer from dawn phenomenon coupled with inflammation.
I never craved food, ate healthy, am vegetarian, don’t eat sugar. I don’t exercise but I am active.
I started mounjaro 4 months back and have lost 10 kgs. The only change in my diet now than before is I eat more fruits and drink more water. I was a size 18 and now a 14.
If you have a sugar monitor then check your fasting sugar level for a few days. If you have elevated morning levels but normal levels throughout the day then mounjaro might work in your case even if you don’t eat a lot.

Have you tried using the apps that help track food? My Fitness Pal is free, Nutracheck is popular but has an annual fee.

If you haven't used them before I would weigh and log everything that passes your lips - food, spreads, oils, sauces for a while to see where you are going wrong. It will show you a target calorie deficit for weight loss, track your calories over the week and let you see your macros you should be aiming for - always more protein/less carbs and less UPF! You need to change your mindset around food - 3 rounds of toast and a bag of crisps for lunch is not "normal food".

They are also very good for supporting weight loss, especially the first time you use them. If you haven't used one before I would do that and hold the injections in reserve for later if you struggle to keep on track.