Weight lose stalled after a year but side effects are really bad if I ho up a dose still

[IncessantNameChanger]

Morning! I have been on MJ since April 25 and lost just under 3.5 stone but slowly and steadily by never up past 7.5mg.

Since April this year my loss has stalled so I decided to up to 10mg. However, everytime I go up to 10mg I get horrendous wind and the runs. Eggs burps the lot. But I did loose 4lbs that week. I halved my dose last week back to five mg because of the side effects. But not sure what to do next? Suffer a week of gas and go back up up 10mg or halve it again and see if can tolerate building up to 10mg. My bmi is 28 now and I realistically don't want to get much closer to a bmi of 25. I can maintain easily at 25 but not say 20

If you can tolerate 7.5 mg then why not go up to 8 mg and slowly increase by 0.5 mg bearing in mind that there’s quite a residual in your system and as you build up to a higher dose you might experience a “peak” after 3/4 weeks.

I will try that. I feel that even the 5mg topped me back up into a range I couldn't tolerate. I got over the 10mg but on day 8 when I did the 5mg, I was back to where I was I the 10mg.

I was going to split my dose last week but there's no way I could take the other 5mg

Was your last injection a 5mg dose? I would try to stay on the same dose for a period of 4 weeks, so maybe look at getting back to 7.5mg and then staying on that for 4 weeks.

Separately, look at everything else around the dose level, so exercise, calories, balance of protein to carbs etc and see if you can make changes there. That may help to start weight loss again. Weight loss will naturally slow down as you lose weight, and the way to change that is to make other changes to what you're doing around diet and exercise, not just increase your dose.

Instead of increasing my dose, I started dosing every 6 days to prevent the bigger surges and lows of MJ in my system. I’ve managed to stay under 5mg and lost over 4 stones since last August.

Have a play with the plotter website and it might help you work out a way forward.

glp1plotter.com

I’m in almost the exact same position except I know it’s my own fault. I feel so much better and am getting so many compliments that I’m not being as focused with my eating. I’m having more ‘days off’ so I tend to lose a few lbs and then gain them right back again.

I’ve lost 4 stone and have about 1.5 more stone to go. I was on 10mg but had such horrendous nausea, I couldn’t deal with it so I dropped down to 7.5mg. It still helps me a great deal but I’m aware that I’m eating more than I need to. I’ve just started upping my exercise in the hopes that it will balance out.

I guess I do take my eye off the ball with the exercise as it's been 18 months. I just keep seeing people loosing 10lbs a week and titrating up every 4 weeks while I'm plodding on 18 months in. But FML this feels like in.going to never eat anything due to side effects. Then I'm tired and it's self forfilling.

I feel like higher does set off a biome imbalance in my gut which is begging for a break from MJ. In my happy place I stay on 2.5mg never gain or loose but I want to come off at some point so need to shift that last half a stone.

I feel right now like this is close to loosing weight just because I'm unwell. Or is it just going up a dose I need to push through? I feel my diet is OK at this point. Ideally I want to get back down to 2.5 for a few months then wean off

I was on 10mg for 3 months and kept just trying to fight my way through the nausea but it honestly made me so miserable (even though I had ok losses). In the end I decided it just wasn’t worth feeling that pukey all the time.

This is my second month back on 7.5mg and I’ve just cycled between the same few pounds for the reasons I mentioned. However I’m now really knuckling down to a proper calorie deficit and doing my weights. I’m closer to goal than I’ve ever been so I’m going to push through and get the job done!

Did you feel 7.5mg was working in terms of the positive effects of it? Did you feel satiety/suppression/lack of food noise (if you felt them before)?

Did you always inject in the same (rotating) site? I find a big different between the effects depending on whether I jab my arm or stomach. If I were you, when I got back up to 7.5mg I’d use it as a good chance to kick start things myself - ie making sure definitely in a deficit, doing the exercise, maybe changing the site. For me, a refeed weekend helped me get out of a stall as well.

there’s no shame in moving up the doses at all but if the side effects on 10mg are really bad for you, I’d try to make 7.5mg work again first by changing things up. Then if you definitely need to go up, you can do what someone else has suggested and inject 7.5mg more often, or potentially 10mg every 9-10 days.

Also, the people losing 10lb a week aren’t ones with a BMI like yours!

10lb a week is very rare and usually only at high BMI for the first few weeks.

1-2lb at your stage is still really good going at your stage, but in my experience most weeks had dropped down to 1lb a week or less. The important thing was not gaining and generally still heading in the right direction.

As PP have said, try to stabilise yourself in terms of side effects on your current 5mg dose before increasing incrementally.

But my bmi was higher 18 months ago. I think it was 37 and I have never lost more than 3lbs in a week.

I'm not interested in food at all snd haven't met hungry since I started as I intermittent fast. Even if go down to 2.5mg ( if I'm going on holiday abroad I get back down to 2.5mg and then I come off for the two weeks). So that's all good.

I think I'm just in cycle of feeling sick and exhausted now. I'm going to try walking more this week

You need to have realistic expectations though, you don’t want to be losing 10lbs a week. I started May 25 and my average weekly loss is 1.4lbs a week and frankly I’m thrilled with my progress.

not everyone responds to 2.5mg, the people with those initial big losses are crowing about it but that’s the exception rather than the rule.

im not sure what you mean with your second paragraph. Do you mean you aren’t interested in food and aren’t hungry BECAUSE you intermittent fast? If that’s the case, do you feel the medication is doing anything at all?

Mounjaro works by decreasing your appetite so you eat less than you burn and lose weight

However, it does nothing to protect you against adaptive thermogenesis- your metabolism will decrease to the level of the new calorie intake and you have to keep decreasing your food intake to continue to lose weight. You will also start to feel tired, cold, have poor circulation, stop all the non exercise energy expenditure such as fidgeting, and all the other signs of adaptive thermogenesis. This is why they eventually stop working, your body just adapts to new very low levels of calorie intake.

I was eating about 700-800 cals a day by the time I came off them and was losing no weight at all.

How much are you eating and exercising at the minute? That will help determine whether you should go up a dose or come off them and try and fix your metabolism first

I had exactly the same experience, I felt awful o. 7.5 but never moved up because I couldn’t cope with feeling awful all the time. I’ve put nearly a stone back on now and I have absolutely no idea where to turn from here.

Nobody is losing 10lb a week at BMI 28, be reasonable! I don't understand how you are not losing weight but simultaneously have too many side effects - are you eating past your comfort level despite feeling significant effects of the drug? If you're not losing then you need to calorie count, simple as that. You can't maintain a deficit reliably without counting.

Nobody is really losing 10lb in a week! Do you understand how calories work? To lose 10lb of fat you would have to have a deficit of 35000 calories a week. If you were burning 3000 calories a day you physically couldn't create such a deficit as even if you ate nothing at all you'd only have a deficit of 21000. Some really large people might see 10lbs drop on the scales in their first week but that would be about 1/3 fat at the most and the rest being water loss.
3lb loss is 10500 calorie deficit in a week which is more than most people can create realistically.

I lost 9lbs in my first week, but I was 22 stone! And I had strong appetite suppression from day 1 and found it hard to eat very much at all in that first week. Also I think a lot of that would have been reducing water retention and stored glycogen - essentially I was accidentally doing a liver reducing diet which can lead to that kind of weight loss. But it’s not proper body fat losses and can’t be maintained. I didn’t get that sort of loss again.

I’m still not sure what dose you injected last, @IncessantNameChanger ? If 10mg is too much and 7.5mg not enough then logically an inbetween dose might be better?

I hope I understand how calories work as I have Biology degree so I do get basic metabolism.

I'm on 5mg. The suppression is what's contributing to having no interest in food but intermittent fasting and keeping blood sugars steady does help.

I don't feel great on 5mg but I suspect that's because I still have too much of the 10mg in my system. I did loose 3lbs the week I went to 10mg but feel shit for it. Don't feel amazing on 5mg but on 2.5 I don't loose weight but neither do i feel hungry.i don't gain either. I only gained when I came off over Christmas.

I guess I will stick at 5mg and see if it gets better. I'm not eating over 1000 calories a day most days.

I just wanted to be on it for a year and then come off.

So why are you hankering after 10lb losses if you understand basic metabolism? It makes no sense. Also if you're eating 1000 calories a day you absolutely will lose weight. If you're not, you're not eating that amount.

When you say intermittent fasting, do you have a daily eating window, or is it more like 5:2? If it’s the latter and you’re having 1000 calories on your ‘5’ days, it doesn’t sound like enough overall to me.

I find i lose more consistently if I have a higher amount of calories - I go around 1500-1600 a day. I try not to eat less than 1000 even on high suppression days as I find I’m hungrier the following days.