August 2026 starters

[chocolatecoveredpretzels]

Hello everyone, I'm due to start on MJ in the next few days, and I'm feeling nervous!

I've been above size 20 since I was about 14/15 years old. The highest weight I've ever logged was 134kg, about 14 years ago. I'm currently 117kg. I also have issues with my heart caused by Cushing's, type 2 diabetes and PMOS.

In the past few years, I'm yo-yo'd between 125kg and 110kg three times. I know how to lose weight and can do it... but as soon as work gets busy or stressful, I fail and give up. I also have an issue with binge and secret eating.

I went for my annual diabetic review yesterday and the nurse basically used the whole time telling me about going on MJ, because my BMI is over 40 (well, as of yesterday's weigh in, I'm 39. something) and because of my other health conditions. I didn't have to fight for it, or request it.. they're just giving it to me.

Now I'm doing as much reading/ video watching as I can to clue myself up.

On my on-track days, I eat:

Breakfast: 2 scrambled eggs with some flavouring- chilli flakes or marmite or 15g cheddar.

Lunch: Chicken thigh fillet in some kind of seasoning mix, salad made of lettuce, pepper, tomatoes, cucumber, sugarsnaps, carrot. Sometimes 3 cream crackers and a laughing cow triangle as well.

Dinner: Varies- roast chicken dinner/ 5% fat mince spaghetti bolognese with wholewheat pasta/ beef burger without the bun with cheese, salad on half the plate, usually without chips, noodles with chicken and stirfry veg.

Snacks: Usually a portion of berries/ a nectarine/ cherries/ 25g peanuts at 4pm.

How does that sound?

I have a treadmill and run/walk at 6.5/6km/hr pace for 30 mins three times a week. The nurse said I should do some weights for my arms too.

Any recommendations for which day I should inject?

My understanding is that the response to any given dose tends to plateau over time as the body adapts. If you increase the dose too quickly, you may reach that plateau sooner. Staying on the lowest dose that remains effective allows you to maximise the duration of benefit at each dose, rather than escalating too quickly and potentially using the higher doses before they are necessary. In other words, it’s about using the lowest effective dose for as long as it continues to work, while preserving higher doses as options if and when additional treatment is needed.

Basically most say dose escalation should be driven by a sustained return of appetite/food noise or a meaningful slowing/cessation of weight loss—not simply by the calendar or after one slower week. It's very individual but I have read that 3 months out of each dose is not uncommon experience. Of course, I am not sure

Also some people get the higher dose and count clicks for the lower. This way they can go up if they need

Bad side effects are another reason not to go up a dose.

Question about placement of jabbing… I am going to do my 4th jab this evening, I started on my left side of my belly, then went into the right for the second and I went back to the left for my third. I feel most comfortable jabbing my belly, for some reason my arm absolutely petrifies me, I feel like it’s more of an awkward angle and I feel like I would feel the leg more.
My question is, can I continue just jabbing my belly only and the results still be the same? Is it also safe to just jab the belly as long as I alternate the sides each week? X

@Biosblbay from my impression of what I have read I think so? They only tell you to move around to avoid reactions. So same location but different side should be fine.

@BiosblbayI’ve done my belly each time, just swapping over sides. I think the back of your arm is for if someone else is injecting you I guess? My injection actually hurt a tiny bit yesterday for the first time - I’m not sure what I did differently!

I realised I have now lost -10lbs which feels nothing short of miraculous to me!

height: 5ft2
sw: 11st 3
cw: 10st 7
gw: tbd

I will be sticking to the belly myself

@getawayfromme that’s amazing! How long have you been on it now?

Anyone else noticing a complete drop in chocolate cravings? Won’t lie, I think this might be the break through for me 🤣

@Blushingvioletsthank you! I started it on July 27th.

Interestingly I had an appointment last week where they did my bloods and when I checked the NHS app I can see my thyroid is right on the borderline of being underactive.

The serum ferritin is high too (way out of the ‘safe’ zone) both of which cause tiredness. I am hoping that tackling these will help give me a bit of the energy that I had been trying to get from chocolate etc 😁

I agree on the total obliteration of chocolate cravings too! If I am honest I have a tendency to binge eat when stressed and tired and that has totally gone too. I have been looking into ‘mechanical eating’ a bit more as I’m terrible for skipping breakfast, having a big lunch out at work, being too full for dinner then eating crumpets later on. So I’m really working hard to have, say, Greek yoghurt and fruit for breakfast, lots of chicken salad for lunch and then pasta bake for dinner rather than starving and grabbing something in a rush! When I grow up I will keep an apple and some nuts in my bag but I’m not there yet 😅

Good luck to everyone weighing in today.

Excited to join you! First jab last night! Feeling nervous. I am 104kg at 5ft 7, hoping to get down to around 70kg over a year or so. I have fatty liver, bad back, hiatus hernia etc etc so desperate to lose weight and be healthier. Have four kids who I want to stay fit for and want to exercise again! Youngest is 18 months

Will read the thread now to catch up!

my instructions say it’s fine to alternative the same area for jabs but just choose a different spot.
After tons of IVF injections in my stomach (twice a day), i much prefer doing it in my leg now! It does probably help that this is a much smaller needle - I’m also questioning why I had to suffer so much with a giant painful needed with IVF now too!

I’m just not tempted by food - I’m having to remember to eat!
I have never ever been like this!
It’s absolutely amazing!

That’s why I don’t want to stay on a dose for too long as I don’t want the food noise and appetite back…

Welcome! I am the exact same height as you, and in the past have been a lot bigger than you are now - so trust me, change is possible. 70kg is my goal weight too.

Thank you - that's so encouraging! I, like I imagine a lot of us, have tried every diet under the sun starting from when I was 11 so I'm hoping this will be the last time I start a new weight loss journey!

Lost 0.5kg in my first week (2.5mg mounjaro). Haven't changed my diet wildly, except to cut portion sizes - but I think the content of my diet was more or less OK to begin with, there was just too much of it. Going to make an effort to drink more water this week.

I am not feeling myself today, I am getting cold. I am also tired, but not more tired if I was just eating in calorie deficit consistently for 14 days. I managed to do my short strength exercises this morning and my walk, ideally would like to hit the 10 000 steps (2.5k more). Touch of constipation too.

I don't feel like eating at all, I had some melon to take some nurofen for my throat but I do get hungry later during the day and I will focus on protein when I do.

I am glad I have flexibly in work, I am working from home and will have snooze at lunch time.

I have finally actually taken the plunge and done my first jab 😱 Feels like a watershed moment.

I'm also amused that since I ordered it at the beginning of the month, I have been being more sensible with my food choices (mostly much less in the way of snacking), and have lost 3kg in that time already 😂 Let's hope it continues!

Just sharing this thread in case it applies to others in here

www.mumsnet.com/talk/weight-loss-injections/5570772-off-script-mounjaro-start-aug-26?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

Lots of people felt cold as a side effect in the chat group when I did my first hit of MJ.

Snap again - I also started my first diet at 11! My mother despaired of her lesser measures, like no sugar in your tea or limiting sweets (she didn’t know how many I was sneaking) being effective, and handed me a diet sheet. I took matters into my own hands at 14.

While still far from skinny - and not expecting to be at the end of this Mounjaro phase either - I do believe that I have cracked the obesity nut this time round. For me, Mounjaro is an extra tool in a box which already includes

• major mindset shifts about what normal healthy eating is. I have learned to spot some of assumptions I’ve been working on, and things I’ve told myself to justify excessive eating. Things like “a meal has to end with something sweet”, “I deserve it because I’ve had a tough day”, “it’s not a party with no cake”, “everyone else is having some so I should to.” Those statements are not facts, just opinions - and not ones which have served me well. At the end of the day, my body does not respond well to sugar or other ultraprocessed foods. Other people may be able to eat them in moderation, occasionally. I can’t.

• Awareness of the effect of hormones on hunger and satiety, including but not limited to insulin, cortisol and female sex hormones. The easiest way to reduce excessive insulin is to reduce carbs, especially processed ones. The next easiest way is to reduce the number of times you eat per day, aka no snacking. Stress management and good sleep help with cortisol. Also eating a minimally processed diet low in carbs and adequate in protein is a good way to promote GLP-1 production naturally.

• The value of community, providing support from other people treading adjacent paths. I belong to an online fasting community, and to a 12-step fellowship, and they are both tremendously important to me.

• Never to give up, because I will need to give attention to my weight for the rest of my life. It’s not - at least with the degree of obesity I have had - something you can fix with one period of weight loss and then everything’s great. Just as fitness doesn’t mean training for a marathon and then never moving again after you cross the finish line. There may be times when you train harder to reach a specific goal. But if you want good health and longevity, you always need to come back to moving your body. And when the day comes that I hit my target weight, I will get up that day and do the same things I’ve done in the days leading up to it. And the day after that, and the day after that.

• This may seem odd to say given that we are all here to lose weight - but it’s not really about weight! It’s about enjoying life in a wholesome way and being able to do that for as long as possible. I don’t want to get hung up on my belly not being flat and still having flabby bits. That’s just part of life. But if there are things which truly interfere with my well-being - like being so heavy I could barely move, so constantly sweaty I was always embarrassed to be seen - then I wanted to fix those. And I have.

So now I’m on to the next phase, where I get all my health markers as close to absolutely normal as possible, so that I can carry on doing all the things which have come back into my life through the weight loss I’ve achieved so far running and jumping and not worrying about seatbelts and chairs and being able to walk 8-10 hilly miles and still function afterwards.

And, while I’m about it - being able to choose clothes, rather than having to have whatever would go round me. And feeling happy with what I see in the mirror. I do want that as well!

That's such a lovely post, @PuzzledObserver ❤️

Absolutely agree that it's about being able to live your life easily, and that means being able to move around comfortably. I have no illusions about ever being skinny: I have a short and stocky build, and even when a teenager comfortably inside the "normal" BMI, I never had the willowy elegance that I'd like to have. I'm aiming for more achievable goals - being able to kneel down and actually sit on my heels; being able to chat while walking briskly; being light, strong and balanced enough that if a friend offers me a go on her pony I'll be able to say yes without second-guessing myself. All those feel doable 🙂

@PuzzledObserver such an eloquent post and includes a lot of my own sentiments about this journey.

i wish you all the best and look forward to reading about your journey and milestones

fantastic post @PuzzledObserver . I can relate to a lot of it.

It's my 14th day and I am really not into eating today. I think the constipation got me little bit - I need to take magnesium tonight

@PuzzledObserver thank you so much, that was exactly what I needed to hear. I’m feeling a bit frustrated as the scales are moving up and down the same kilogram without bridging the next number down. I’ve only felt suppression once, just after jab 2 of 2.5 on MJ. Apart from that, I’m hungry at meal times, eating roughly 1700-1900 calories per day, tend to have bone broth mid morning and some fruit mid afternoon. I’ve had some extra wind and a tiny bit of constipation but day 2 or 3 after injecting, I seem to get diarrhoea, so that makes me worried about returning to work after the summer holidays.

However, yesterday I did a walk with my family on a route I remember doing alone a few years back. I remember finding it really difficult then, and it felt like an easy, fun walk yesterday. I’m also feeling so much softer in my stomach instead of the previous quite firm, hard fat. I’m doing resistance and weight training, which is brand new.

I had a question about injecting, though. I push the end in slowly and then count to ten before pulling the needle out. When I did it this time, there was a tiny drop of the fluid that sat at the injection point. Smaller than half a grain of rice. Is that normal or should I wait longer before pulling the pen away?