How has your diet changed since starting weight loss injections?

[Sunnyskiesa]

How has your diet changed since taking the injections?
What are your favourite meals and are you being successful? Have you just reduced the amounts of calories or are you instead eating something that you think could be responsible for your success (I understand that eating too little will not be helpful as first of all is unsustainable and also our metabolism switches off and than it stops burning fat and destroys muscles).
Any suggestion would be good x
Ps: I want to avoid buying powder proteins as I believe they are the scam of modern life…

No, it’s still a 2.

Rapeseed oil
Under the NOVA system, most standard cooking oils are considered processed culinary ingredients, not ultra-processed foods.
That includes:

• cold-pressed rapeseed oil,
• standard refined rapeseed oil,
• olive oil,
• sunflower oil,
• butter.

The confusion comes from two things:

1. Industrial refining
2. Rapeseed oil is often:

• extracted,
• refined,
• deodorised,
• bleached.

Some people feel that makes it “ultra-processed,” but NOVA still usually categorises plain oil separately from UPFs.

Your classification (or google) may be different. I’ve picked Nova as the classification system for upf foods as it’s the most widely used.

we extract from Google what works for us

apparently unless actually specified as cold pressed rapeseed oil (in which case a non UPF), it is a UPF.

but as I say…. We draw on our own sources and that’s fine. Enjoy!

So interesting to read the responses. Unlike most on this thread, I eat 3 meals a day (which I never did before, I used to skip meals and then binge eat).
Breakfast is usually Weetabix and a banana, Greek yoghurt with berries and seeds or overnight oats. At the weekend I'll have eggs.
Lunch is always a salad, with plenty of protein, usually sardines, tuna or chicken
Dinner is often fish, I like salmon cooked in the airfryer and I have it with lots of veg, sometimes add rice.
I don't have any snacks at all, which is the biggest change for me. I still drink tea and coffee, but way less than previously, and I hardly touch alcohol any more, just the occasional glass of wine or G&T.
I am on 5mg Mounjaro and started 10 weeks ago, have lost 11.5kg so far.
Edited to add, I drink loads of water too. Always used to think I drank plenty, but have upped it massively.

where did you read on this thread that most do not have 3 meals a day?

@Spicysirracha I noted that several posters said they didn't eat breakfast, but you're right, I shouldn't have said "most", apologies!

Much smaller portions and prioritising protein with every meal. I’ve cut out virtually all pasta rice bread and potatoes and fill my plate with fish or chicken and loads of veg.

I’m just coming up to a year, and 4stones 10 down. I have cut out most processed foods and refined sugars. I’m veggie, I eat tons of fruit and vegetables- in salads, or with pasta or as curries. I get my protein from beans, lentils, seeds, green yoghurt and cheese. I don’t particularly count calories (I do a nutracheck check every now and then). I don’t do low fat. My portions of pasta and rice are smaller than previously, and I’ve changed to brown or wholewheat. If I have bread (rare) I have seeded.
I don’t do protein shakes or collagen powders, I’m trying to eat as naturally as possible. I agree with whoever said that they’re a bit of a scam. I’m late 50s and so far haven’t got any loose skin or scrawny looking skin. I’ve not done the gym or weights, I was always fairly active, but I’ve increased my walking and added lots of hills as I’ve hit a plateau for my last stone.

I've lost 94kgs so far

OMG that's incredible - you must feel like a different person!

Yes, though I'm very disappointed that my legs haven't started working normally so I still can't get in or out of a chair without slowly and painfully lowering/raising myself using my arms.

I thought I'd be floating off into the clouds like a helium balloon after losing the first 20kg, the equivalent of a sack of compost. Or bounding across the Welsh hills like a gazelle.

I've been trying to get my right leg to work properly again since I spent 10 months in 2021 doing a Quasimodo impersonation after each AstraZenica vaccination triggered the worst rheumatoid arthritis flare I've ever experienced. Every step was a symphony of agonising pains, every joint feeling as if it had been filled with sand, and the tendons and muscles inflamed. The least painful way to drag myself from bed to chair to toilet was with two sticks or a zimmer frame, dragging my right leg behind me. When the flare faded around Christmas that year the right leg was twisted and a different length compared to the left leg.

I spent 18 months doing strength building leg exercises from YouTube physiotherapists while waiting to be seen by the NHS, before finally being told that our local trust no longer offers one to one outpatient physiotherapy. Then I waited another 6 months for it to be my turn to start one of the leisure centre groups they provide for outpatients. Only to then be told by the physiotherapist none of the three group sessions (cardio rehab, weight loss or strength) on offer were suitable for someone who can't stand without two sticks, can't get on and off the floor, or even manage to climb on and off the machines, so they couldn't help me after all.

I ended up paying for private physiotherapy. At the first session I was told to stop all the exercises because they were preventing the leg from healing. After five sessions of massage, deep heat and EMS the leg was still inflamed and the physio asked if I'd spoken to the rheumatologist about the lupus myositis and tendonitis in my right leg. That was the first time anyone mentioned that lupus might be causing the problem, the rheumatologist certainly didn't mention it when I asked for the referral to NHS physiotherapy!

I had to wait until February this year to see the rheumatologist again. She rolled her eyes and sneered "who told you that?" when I asked if lupus could be preventing my leg from healing. When I said it was the private physiotherapist who raised it as a possibility. She grunted and started printing out blood test forms without explaining why, I got the impression she was going to use the results of the blood tests to dismiss my concerns, but I haven't heard anything since and the tests were all done at the end of March.

My next plan, if I ever manage to muster the energy, is to rock up to a GP appointment, lower myself into the patient chair and demand a DIAGNOSIS of what is making my leg so painful, feeble and untrustworthy, and refuse to budge from the chair until I get a TREATMENT PLAN.

The left leg currently does all the work, but the left knee sometimes gives out without any prior warning, and would send me crashing to the ground if I wasn't always clinging to a stick or walking frame. Then it often refuses to click back into place so that it hurts like hell to stand on it. Which means that every single step is accompanied by a litany of swearing and cursing. I try to keep this under my breath, but got a filthy look off someone when dragging myself down a long hospital corridor, so I think my hearing is also deteriorating. I now try to remember to only swear in Swedish when out in public.

It's nice to be able to buy clothes from non-specialist shops, and to sit on a bus without worrying that I'm taking up 2 thirds of the adjacent seat. But I really want to be able to walk without being stabbed several times in the groin for every step, needing a noose round my foot to lift my right leg in and out of a car, and to be able to bend down without having to stretch my right leg out behind me (like someone lifting their little finger while sipping tea) because the bastard refuses to flex.

I was looking forward to no longer being fobbed off at every medical appointment with everything being blamed on my obesity. However it turns out that I left it too late, and now they just say "you have to expect it at your age" because I'm 68.

One of my neighbours just had his hip replaced. He was told that our local NHS trust no longer offers physiotherapy to the over 65s, and he should just get on with it himself.

Ah, I am sorry to hear that losing the weight hasn't solved this additional problems 🙁 That must be very frustrating.

However you want to classify it as UPF or not-quite UPF, I try and avoid rapeseed oil altogether (along with other seed oils) but it's in just about everything, which is infuriating. You can get a brand of crisps which are cooked only in olive oil though, which I very occasionally eat. I think the brand is Torres and they're quite widely available. I think M&S do an own-brand version too.

I average 1200-1300 a day, I currently can't do exercise as I am recovering from a fracture.

My diet has changed dramatically. A lot less carbs, hardly any alcohol and more meat.

A typical day is greek yoghurt with honey, oats and some fruit for breakfast. Dinner is meat, veg and either rice or potatoes, pasta is there but a lot less.

Lunch is still my weakness as I unfortuately have quite a lot of workcalls at that time and that means something fast. So I often have homebaked bread with grilled chicken or ham. At weekends I try to cook something or have a salad with some protein.

I do eat the odd piece of cake, some chocolate but I try to stick these to the weekend or when we are away, not as something I have at home all the time.