Only way I can lose on Mounjaro is to eat no more than 500 cal and exercise

[PositiveEnergyyy]

Hello everyone
I have been on MJ for 2 1/2 months. I have very good loss in the first five weeks I lost about 1 stone. I carried on the second month and lost 4kg. Then everything came to a halt. 4 weeks of losing nothing.
I upped my dose to 3 mg and still had great appetite suppression. I have always eaten about 900 cal a day forcing myself. I dropped my calories to 800 and then 700 still lost nothing. The only way the scale started to move a little bit is by dropping my calories to 500-600. I am still doing 10,000 steps a day.
I still have about 3 stones to lose to get to healthy weight and I can’t carry on eating so little. Even though I am not hungry, It is not healthy.
I take v low thyroid meds dose but my TSH is fine now and T4 which is low is within rage so no way the doctor will up my dose. I don’t think I have a whoosh effect coming either. I also took 2 days re feed and ate at 1100-1200 cal a day and that did nothing.
Everyone here says to up the dose when the appetite suppression goes but I have good appetite suppression. No sure what to do.
Grateful to anyone for suggestions that works or anyone with similar experience and what they did to get losing again.

Oh gosh. That’s so similar to me.i had to eat under 1200 calories to lose any weight and just couldn’t do it. But I was on Wegovy. And I’m thinking of starting MJ.

Why are you on such a small dose 2.5 months in?

I was on 7.5mg by then as per standard dosing schedule.

Your metabolic rate slows down; that's the issue. People don't realise that when you lose weight, you lose muscle as well- a scientific fact. There was a paper recently talking about essential amino acids for GLP1 users to help preserve muscle, let me see if i can find it

You need to up your dose. After 3 months I moved to 7.5mg. On higher does I found appetite suppression stronger.

Surely if the OP is ACTUALLY eating 500 calories a day it's nothing to do with how well the appetite suppression is working

You’re on a very low dose, what’s the point? If the scales aren’t moving down - up your dose.

Read this/Get AI to summarise it for you https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15502783.2023.2263409. They atlk about GLP1 too caloric deficit raising EAA requirements!!!.

You’re losing muscle at an alarming weight in those calories (unless the 500kcal you’re eating is all proteins - which I highly doubt)

You need to be eating around 100g minimum of protein a day particularly when eating in a deficit.

muscle loss is bad for you in more ways than just lowering your metabolism.

What is your weight and height?

Regardless, you need to see your GP as there is something not right here. Your body will be using far more calories than that even if you didn’t move so you should be losing easily.

Are you absolutely sure you aren’t miscalculating your calorie intake as that is the most obvious answer.

She’s only eating 500 calories - appetite suppression is not a goal she should be setting

Counter intuitive but I think you're eating too little, your body will be clinging to every calorie you consume

I lost 6 stone but could not eat more than 1200 calories a day to do that.
Luckily I never felt hungry.

Yes. Eat, fgs. I say this with someone with chronic orthorexia.

The EAA histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, valine and arginine are ALL found in new potatoes with skins on. They will lift your protein and muscle and metabolism.

Obviously there is something wrong with your metabolism if you are living a full and active life including daily exercise and yet cannot lose weight on just 500 calories a day. That is less than what people in concentration camps were given.

A stone in a month is quite fast, your body maybe needed time to catch up. Are you weighing and tracking everything?
500 calories a day long term is not enough for what your body needs, is mounjaro worth potentially losing muscle, hair and energy from eating so little?

Eating 500 calories a day is unhealthy and unsustainable. Plus you would be losing weight.

Walking 10,000 steps a day burns about 300 cals (depending on how heavy you are). Are you absolutely sure you’ve got your calories right?

At 500 cals a day you need medical advice.

It’s important to review this with your provider before thinking about reducing further or changing dose,

Does your provider do consultations/support?

Are you absolutely certain of your food intake? The majority of people underestimate their calorie intake, so you wouldn’t be alone in that.

No drink calories? Every food item measured/weighed?

I had some frozen veg as a side to my dinner and thought I’d load the plate up with it assuming it was around 50/100cals, when I actually weighed the portion it was telling me I had 250 calories of veg.

You need to go to your GP and ask for investigations because if you truly are unable to lose weight eating so little then there is something wrong. Unless you are 4 foot and underweight there is no way your BMR is 900 calories. There is either a medical reason or you are not accurately counting your calorie intake.

My stats tell me I need 1251 cals a day to lose weight. I don't take weight loss injections but surely if I did my cal needs wouldnt change would they? I thought the jabs just made less food easier to cope with. This is why I don't lose weight as it's really not much food and I would struggle with this and feel I wasn't getting decent nutrition.

You've lost 2 stone in 3 months. Your weight loss hasn't stopped and you must NOT reduce to 500 calories FFS. Weight loss isn't a straight line downwards. Your body will have lost significant water over those two months and when that water starts to be replaced and retained, the scales will stop moving for a while. What that means is that you lost maybe 1.5 stone of fat and 0.5 stone of water, and over the last month you regained 0.5 stone of water whilst losing 0.5 stone of fat so the scales look the same.
It's full eating disorder territory to be eating 500 calories a day. Stop that immediately!

We've been sold a lot of lies in our diet culture and it has messed up our bodies in ways we are only just establishing. There are answers though and you are far from alone, these drugs have given some powerful clues about the answers.

While it is true that eight is about calories in vs calories out but our bodies have clever ways to limit calories out, including making us tired and less fidgety so we don't move about as much (so reducing our non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT)) and reducing the energy it puts into our immune system, which is quite scary to think about.

Before it does that it burns not only fat but also muscle, especially as muscle is 'expensive' to keep as it needs more energy just to maintain.

500kcal a day (or close to it even if you are not recording accurately) is probably doing both of those things.

Fuel yourself with the things your body needs, at least 30g of protein per meal (more at breakfast if you can) and 30g of fibre per day, much of it from natural sources (build up to it slowly if you are currently having much less).

Tell your body it needs the muscle, do some resistance work either 15 minutes per day or 45 minutes 2-3 times a week. There are various free programmes online but if you want help finding them then ask, there are people here who will happily help you and cheer you on. 💐

If you can afford it then buy some bioimpedance scales that don't just tell you a weight, they also give a rough idea of what that weight is made of - they aren't perfect but they will show trends over time. The greatest measure will be increases in strength as you find you can lift heavier and heavier things more often but the output of the scales week by week can help too.

Thanks for sharing this - it’s prompted me to get an amino supplement. I know I’m not eating enough naturally in my diet.

There is a lotnof media putting out 1200 kcal a day
That is the bare minimum you need gor a healthy diet.
By eating less you are not getting the nutrients you need for your body including your metabolism and muscles to function properly.

Try eating nutrients not calories