MJ weight loss plateau at 5mg, missing period and feeling cold

[Panda1512]

Hi guys I'm currently on MJ and fear that my weightloss has completely stalled. I am 5'5 11st 8 and have been stuck for 4 weeks, my period has also disappeared and generally feel cold ALL the time, I recently went up to 5mg after using 2.5 for ages... goal weight is 9st 7 so still abit of a way to go! My nutracheck app recommends me eating 1200 calories which I am doing... not sure what else I can do? I work from home so not mega active but do try to aim for 10000 steps every day.

Sounds like you've been eating too few calories and have disrupted your metabolism quite severely. You need to slowly add calories back in, 100 or 200 per day extra and increasing each week. You might see a little increase in weight at first but you need to get your metabolism working harder again. Once you get back up to your expected calorie burn without losing weight (not sure what that would be for you, but example would be 2000 cals), then you can look at decreasing again, but not as high of a deficit as before. Don't increase your MJ dose. I would recommend talking to your provider and/or GP.

Plateaus are perfectly normal and it won’t last forever if you’re still tracking and eating in calorie deficit. Have you already lost over 20% of your body weight? I think weight loss naturally slows down on MJ after you’ve lost a certain amount of your starting body weight.

Sometimes, it’s useful to change things around and eat more calories for a week or two then go back to a deficit. So try increasing cals to say 1500?

This may be a silly question, but is there any chance you could be pregnant? I guess you would have mentioned if that was a possibility.

Your TDEE is around 1700 cals given your height, weight and assuming your activity levels are sedentary, which WFH and 10,000 steps a day but no exercise seems about right. So, 1200 calories would be a deficit of 500 cals a day which should lead to a 1 pound a week or so weight loss. I don't think you need to increase your calories to 2000 a day, or that you have severely disrupted your metabolism. To me, this seems like a pretty normal plateau and you will eventually get through it.

If you wanted to try increasing calories to 1500 a day, then you would be looking at around a half a pound a week weight loss, which might be more sustainable for you in the longer term.

Just to say are you pregnant? Mj can interfere with the pill I think, I'm way past all that but I'm sure I read it somewhere.
If not plateus are fairly normal, mix things up a bit, add in some calories and maybe try some different foods, feeling cold is a side effect unfortunately, I was freezing cold in the depths of summer and have continued to be.

The missed period needs investigating. If there's any possibility that you could be pregnant you need to take a test. Rapid or dramatic weight loss can cause amenorrhea, rather than the MJ itself.

It certainly can - and this applies to any oral medication. The delayed gastric emptying caused by MJ affects how drugs are absorbed by the body when taken orally and there is a particularly strong impact on the contraceptive pill and on HRT.

Hey guys, no chance of pregnancy I'm afraid, DH currently in a boot from a leg op so not feeling the most erm, athletic shall we say 😅 I've actually been diagnosed with pcos in the past and periods were semi regular, every 30-38 days but that seems to of changed, not on the pill as I'm actually trying to loose weight before going ahead with ivf!

Being cold is a well known side effect, I’ve been freezing now for 18 months 🥶

You do realise that the ‘normal’ way to use this medication for weight loss is to increase by 2.5mg every 4 or 5 weeks ? I know there are some people in these boards who seem to have great success on 2.5mg for weeks on end - when that dose is essentially just a therapeutic dose to get the body accustomed to the drug.

it will all depend on how insulin resistant you are . Yoyo dieting is one of the biggest factors for insulin resistance - so if this was you @Panda1512 then the drug is just doing exactly as it should .. it should be wearing out after 4/5 weeks and that’s telling you that you need to go up a dose. I had to go all the way to 15mg to get from BMI 38 to 22. (9 stone) I am now back down to 5mg for maintenance which has made my weight stable for a year.

Increases by 2.5mg as per the instructions and you will be off and losing again