BMI 38.1- ROCK BOTTTOM'

[Fingerscrossed22]

Hi,
Im the heaviest Ive ever been- I feel and look revolting.

I eat well but have zero motivation to exercise- this is the main issue and I really need to change that.
For me exercise helps me lose weight-
I need to lose 5 stone.
I dont want to use the jabs.
Is there a good weight loss supplement that anyone has found really helps?
Ive signed up for the gym!
Thank you

Just take the jabs. Life changing for me

Exercise is important for health, but it isn't the key to weight loss. I was my heaviest at BMI 38 too. BMI 20 now, not achieved through supplements, although I did try a few.

Would you consider the Wegovy pill that is just coming out in the UK? I haven't tried it, but it could be an option if you are against injections. Less effective but still a valuable tool.

I don’t mean to sound harsh but you say that you eat well and I’m not sure that can be right if you’re so overweight

BodySlims works. Best of luck.

This is the weight loss injections/treatments topic/thread so I think you’re going to get us all being pro weight loss injections. Also as we’ve taken that decision for ourselves to improve our health we may not want to justify our decisions! However, I’d say take the injections - it’s life changing. Agree with pp the research evidence shows that exercise helps but won’t be what helps you to lose the weight.

I have found in the past that exercise has helped me lose weight, can you start at a comfortable level- very short walks- they are mood boosters too. I must say I am being slightly hypocritical as I don’t walk as often as I should/ would so I do get it can be hard

re food, if you eat well is it possible you are eating too much- emotional eating.

I am sorry you feel like you look revolting- I’m betting no one else thinks that when they look at you

Apologies - I didn’t notice this was the injections topic- I have no experience of those.

backs out slowly 😆

Start by honestly tracking what you eat and calories. I suspect you will be surprised at how many calories you're consuming.

Other than that, I'm with the pp who said take the jabs. I spent decades trying other ways to lose weight. I've lost 3 and a half stone in 4 months on the jabs.

None of the supplements that claim to work for weight loss actually have any evidence that they are effective. No harm in trying things other than your bank balance taking a hit.

Exercise is great for health and well being but it’s only about 20% of the picture when it comes to losing weight. You can easily eat in a few minutes the calories that you’ve burned exercising if you aren’t on top of your diet.

You posted in injections.. take the injections.
I've tried for 5 years with exercise and diet and its stressful and demoralising.

I think it’s unlikely you are eating “well” and moderately all the time.

i find it illogical that you would dismiss the jabs without trying them. No supplement is going to be a golden bullet.

I’m sure you eat ‘well’ and pay attention to nutrition but even a tiny bit over will cause continued weight gain.

Honestly, what is the point of torturing yourself/ blaming yourself/making out it’s YOUR fault, making out it’s a moral failing? When the reality is you suffer from a disease called obesity.

I spent the best part of 30 years trying to lose weight and blaming myself, don’t waste your life like I did. I have never been happier in my life being fit, healthy, slim enough to wear anything and feel comfortable.

You need to be honest with yourself.
You're not eating well.

If you eat well and do 0 exercise you won't become so obese. You're eating far above what your body needs to maintain a healthy weight.

Download MyFitnessPal. Weigh and log absolutely everything you eat for a week. Seriously, weigh and measure everything. You're going to be surprised by your calorie intake.

As others have said this is the injections topic. It’s full of people who have experienced being overweight for many years with all the successes, failures and frustrations that brought, so inevitably we are positive - and sometimes evangelical about the thing that finally worked.

If you are genuinely looking for help I would suggest.

A) calculate your BMI and TDEE honestly and find out how many calories you need to eat to lose weight. Typically a 1LB a week loss is 500 fewer calories each day, but it varies in individuals.

b) think about what you would want to eat if you were your ideal weight and wanted to maintain it. Plan your healthy eating around that.

c) look for medicated support to manage your hunger and appetite hormones. If you don’t like the idea of injections, look at tablets. it’s not cheating - your body’s hormones try and undermine you, so it’s stopping that sabotage.

@Fingerscrossed22 , my heart goes out to you; I have been where you are and felt exactly as you described and it’s a horrible, horrible place to be.
My BMI was a little lower at 35 but that’s still grim. For perspective I’m only 5’1”.
Years ago I managed to lose around 50lbs which took me down to a size 14, not bad but still too big for my tiny frame. I achieved that by fairly extreme fasting where I ate 4 meals a week! I would not advocate this method while I did lose weight it was miserable and I imagine I was badly malnourished. When I stopped this extreme fasting my weight all went back on and more to boot! 🥴
At a size 18/20 which is huge for me I was despairing, my diet was I believed healthy and it was largely. I’m mainly plant based and don’t eat processed food. I felt like my body was fighting to be fat and in retrospect I believe that was true.
In early November 2024 I ordered my first dose of Mounjaro, I was desperate and terrified in equal measure and I posted on here to that end. One lady responded by saying that she thought most people who start the injections are nervous to start with and that simple reassurance felt like a handhold and it helped me.
I know you aren’t interested in the injections but I wanted to share with you what I’ve learned after all these months. I have lost around six stone, sometimes a little less as I’m maintaining now and my weight fluctuates around 4 or 5 Lbs. I am now a size 8 sometimes 10 and my BMI is around 20 or 20.5 which feels good for my height and frame.
I hadn’t realised there was such a thing as food noise until it was turned off, oh the peace! The medication gave me the space to look at my eating patterns with honesty and when I did I could see that yes I had been eating healthily but it was also pretty constant. Exercise is extremely important in our weight loss journeys because we must do all we can to preserve our muscle mass but ultimately it’s what goes in our mouths that determines if we are slim or not.
I revisited my fasting but in a much more healthy way because it is very good for our bodies to give them a rest from digestion and now I don’t consume any calories until lunchtime, for me this meant I had to swap my morning caffeine from tea to coffee because I can’t drink tea without milk. I made my whole journey about health which I started reading about with a degree of obsession, I was particularly focused on diet and health. I found the Zoe podcasts really informative and would strongly encourage you to give them a listen, they have an extensive back catalogue and there is plenty which will be pertinent to you. The really big thing I came to understand is the role of insulin in our weight and if you read around only one subject let it be this. I found The Glucose Goddess helpful. Essentially if we are insulin resistant our bodies are fighting to be fat and we can have ’clinically insignificant’ (in so far as the figures are not yet at a level that doctors would diagnose diabetes or pre-diabetes) raised blood glucose levels and underlying insulin resistance for years and years. One of the big reasons the GLP-1medications are so effective is that they were designed in the first instance for type 2 diabetics to lower their blood glucose. There is a complicated hormonal interaction which hopefully you will read about but suffice to say if we don’t get our blood glucose controlled weight loss is nigh on impossible!
So you don’t want to take medication, fair enough you don’t have to but you do need to control your blood sugar. Fasting is an excellent tool in this respect I go for a daily 16/18 hour fast from when I last eat in the day to lunchtime the next day, you can start off by pushing your breakfast later by an hour each week until it becomes lunchtime. If you’re minded to The Obesity Code by Dr Jason Fung is a good read. Ditch processed foods and cook from scratch, we need to be in control of what we’re consuming, I’d recommend Ultra Processed People by Professor Chris Van Tulleken on this subject. Completely eliminate white carbs and limit the carbs you do keep, red lentil pasta is a great swap. Cook your carbs and let them cool completely before reheating them, this changes the starch to resistant starch which doesn’t spike our blood sugar so much. Focus on protein and fibre and add fermented foods to your diet, there’s heaps of great diet advice on those Zoe podcasts. Psyllium husk is a great addition because it provides fibre but it also acts like the GPL-1 medications by forming a gel in the stomach and keeping us feeling full for longer, I use 1 tablespoon in a pint of water and hour before each meal and before going to bed so three times a day, you need to work up to this gradually though. After you have eaten, go for a ten minute walk or do some other form of exercise like cleaning the bathroom, this blunts the blood sugar spike. Get some support, there is here of course but there are also numerous groups on Facebook. Try not to snack! Set your expectations to realistic, even on Mounjaro my weight loss averaged out at less than 1.5Lb a week, some weeks I stayed the same; some weeks I gained. Weight loss is frustratingly not linear.
I wish you the very best of luck, it would be great to hear how you’re getting on.

if there was an effective weight loss “supplement” there would be no need for weight loss treatments/medications as we would all have been taking it years ago.

Ultimately, weight loss comes down to maintaining a calorie deficit. Being around 5 stone overweight generally means you've been consistently consuming more calories than your body needs over time.

While exercise is great for your health and can help with weight loss, creating a meaningful calorie deficit through exercise alone is difficult. To offset your excess calorie intake and create a weightloss deficit, you'd likely need to consistently burn an additional 500–750 calories per day through activity, which is a significant ongoing commitment for most people.

If you can’t, or don't want to use obesity medications, your best approach is probably to track your calories and macros using an app to achieve a deficit, focus on portion sizes, and build sustainable eating habits rather than spending money on weightloss "supplements," which generally don't have good evidence to support their effectiveness beyond temporary placebo effects. I have lost weight many times using an app, it is possible, the problem I had was consistency to lose as much as 5st and then sustaining it long term which led to many wasted years of yo-yo dieting.

good luck.

Thankyou for all the replies.

Apologies, I completely missed the bit where I was posting in weightloss jabs.
I hope I haven't offended anyone, apologies if I have.

I have absolutely no issue with people using the jabs- I know several friends that have- they look amazing!
I'm just 'scared', I will become ill (Ive only read one article where someone had complications and warned against!)

I absolutely agree, I am definitely not realising how much I do eat! Total denial!!
The only exercise I do, is walking the dog!

I think I'm also worried about loose skin-

This is actually what is mostly putting me off the jabs tbh.

I really appreciate all the replies- thank you

If you are prone to loose skin, you'll get it however you lose weight.

@Fingerscrossed22 loose skin is something you really don’t have a lot of say over. For me I hit obese at 11yrs old and I then moved between obese and morbidly obese throughout my adult life. I had a child too. The skin was so stretched it was just never going to be taut and tones, it’s like a balloon once you’ve fully inflated it you’ll never get it back to what it was fresh out of the packet.

im 10 stone lighter than my heaviest weight and yes i have loose skin but its infinitely better than having a whole extra person attached to me and wheezing walking up stairs.

The jabs don’t give you loose skin losing weight does.
The health implications definitely out weigh any loose skin in my opinion.
As others have said you need to look at food you can’t out exercise a bad diet.
Whether you take the jabs is your decision. I did and lost 4.5 stone I couldn’t believe the lack of food noise and realised that some people just don’t think about food. The were a game changer. If you broke you leg and someone offered a crutch would you not take it?

Yep. The injections don’t cause loose skin, being obese and stretching your skin beyond its capacity to regenerate is what causes that. Any damage that may happen has already happened, and your tendency towards loose skin is based on genetics and age.

I was scared of being ill but I've only had a couple of headaches and reflux. You can always stop the jabs if it doesnt work for you.
Not wanting to nag you op, but it really is worth a go in my opinion.

Good luck whatever you decide and lots of support here regardless

Loose skin may or may not happen with jabs, I’ve got a little bit on my stomach but everywhere else has shrunk back pretty well. I’ve lost 5 stone in 12 months, BMI 31 to 21.8. I didn’t rush up the doses, as long as I was losing weekly I was happy.
Taking it slower (still around 2lb per week) reduced the risk of complications that come with rapid weight loss and gave good habits more time to bed in.
I also “ate well” but I ate vast amounts of it, I’d totally lost sight of what a normal portion was and was overconsuming calories by a significant number. MJ has reset that for me and I’m now full after a normal portion.
I’d tried all the supplements/weightloss teas/shakes etc and wasted loads of money as none of them worked!

Sorry if this has already been covered but the Wegovy pill comes out today - the Juniper provider was on the radio this morning - worth a try if you don't want to jab?

@Icanthinkformyselfthanks that’s an amazing post. Thanks for sharing.