Have weight loss injections helped anyone with emotional eating?

[NDornotND]

I have a lot of weight to loose - around 50 kg to get to a healthy BMI. I have lost more than 60 kg previously without injections, but I have regained most of the weight in the past year, after managing to maintain for about 3 years. I have had a really shit year and have been using food to help me emotionally - of course I get the quick fix, but long term the regained weight is making me miserable.

I am considering starting mounjaro to get me back to where I was a year ago. Thing is, when I lost all that weight, I was in a good place mentally. Now I am still struggling emotionally and wonder whether the weight loss injections will help? I don't have a problem with excessive hunger - I have a problem with using food to regulate my emotions. Are there other emotional eaters on here who have managed to loose weight using the injections?

Yes. The drive to get some dopamine and pleasure from food really dropped immediately.

Yes, as @MoneyJo says I just lost interest in food in that sort of way, and I used to eat every single emotion I had. It was really quite strange, the sudden lack of interest and I think even if I'd have tried to eat in the way that I would have done before I would not have been able to.

I also found that not having the cycle of emotional eating -> guilt & frustration -> sad/angry -> more emotional eating happening all the time meant that my emotions were more stable, as none of that was going on in addition to everything else on my plate.

Oh this sounds very encouraging @MoneyJo and @SilenceInside - thank you 🙂
Follow-up question - how did you decide on a supplier? I have been going round in circles - looking for the cheapest Mounjaro - not quite signing up. I am ready to do this, but money is an issue. Feeling that my health needs to take priority, but I don't want to spend more than I have to...

Initially I decided on a supplier by choosing a familiar name, so ended up going with Asda. I didn't know much about pricing and they definitely were more expensive than I could have found. I then learnt about the price comparison site monj.co.uk and now use that to help me find decent deals. I've used 7 or 8 different pharmacies over the last two years. Asda were fine, no issues with them at all.

You can get big discounts for your first order with many different pharmacies, but then the second and subsequent months the price will revert to the non-discount price. A few pharmacies don't offer big discounts and just always keep prices low instead. Medicine Market Place is usually the cheapest of those kind of providers. I've just ordered for the first time with them this month and they have also been good, quick to approve and dispatch.

I think the key to getting over the initial hesitation on choosing a provider is to know that you can always choose a different one for your next order if you find a better deal or want to change for another reason.

Yes definitely helped me. I would eat if I had a bad day or to reward myself. I used food as a crutch for a lot of things. I have only been using mounjaro for around 3 months and I haven't used food once as an emotional regulator. What I found key was that I don't deprive myself. I have a job that involves a lot of tasting different foods, often higher calorie ones. In the past I would try say some truffles, love them and then not be able to just leave them alone. Now the samples come in, I share one and then don't have any more. Saving me a fortune as I am not pinching a box from the shelf to take home!

I'm on the wegovy tablets and was also a big emotional eater. I've lost 5kg in 2 months and it's definately reduced my emotional eating to almost nothing. It's now easy to have one of something and put it back in the cupboard rather than continue to eat the whole packet.

Agree with previous posters. Have been on Wegovy for a couple of months. Initially I couldn't get my head around how lack of appetite would stop me from eating. I wasn't hungry before I started the WLI and I still mindlessly ate biscuits, crisps and sweets all evening because I was bored/sad/happy etc, but I really just don't feel like eating a lot of the time. One crumpet with butter is fine, I couldn't imagine eating 3 now. I put a handful of crisps into a bowl and have that instead of a a whole sharing bag.

i was a chocoholic before the jabs im diabetic get it from gp my levels were shocking, its a life changer not ate 1 bite of chocolate since been on the jabs lost 3 stone diabetic levels amazing, on low maintenance doze ,really worked for me

Right - i have gone ahead and ordered! Thanks all for your reassurance. I am excited and nervous. I really hope this works🤞

Well done on taking the leap OP!

same for me as many other - it literally stopped my comfort eating and grazing overnight, and wine habit for a long time! Now I’m in maintenance on the lowest dose, sometimes I do snack and drink wine but the quantities are tiny compared to pre Mounjaro.

I hope you feel the effects immediately too but if not please don’t worry it does take time or the higher dose for some but trust the process - works for the vast majority of us and it’s amazing.

I found that once I'd stopped wanting to emotionally eat the feelings I was eating to avoid came flooding in. So you might want to be prepared for that. I wish I had done it with a supporting programme or something even if more expensive.

Yes, i am a bit worried that might happen 😬

You need to find something else to get a dopamine hit. For me it was clothes and the gym, my changing appearance.

I have struggled with emotional / binge eating since I was 17. Yes MJ has been a great help I had no binges for the 1st 18 months & limited binges for the last 6. But those feelings are still there & as they are not being quelled by food it has led me to be a bit unhappy at times & I sit with those thoughts a lot more. But I wouldn't have it any other way. It can just be a bit tough so be prepared for that. You will need to find other ways to cope apart from food.

Just another vote for yes. I’ve been stress eating for the last 8 years. For the last few years I’ve been much more aware of what was going on, but I still couldn’t seem to lose any weight.
I’m now in my first week of Mounjaro and it’s been amazing. No stress eating at all. When I get stressed, that’s all it is. I feel stressed, but I don’t feel the need to comfort myself with food. I’m just not hungry at all.

For me, the emotional eating comes back as soon as the supplier reduces the dose. So I know it will come back full force if I were to ever stop taking it.

Can you change supplier if you are on maintenance? Thanks

I definitely am just less interested in food and alcohol. Just be careful that you don’t stop eating!! Make sure that you drink water ++ ,eat protein and fibre.
I have lost about 20 kgs over 14 months ,so slow and steady . I do still eat rubbish food ie Mars bar this evening but generally feeling more confident about myself.
Edited to say that my highest dose is 7.5mgs and I take it every 10 days.It works for me.

Absolutely. It was so weird. For the first time in my life I experienced some difficult times and couldn't face eating! Historically all I wanted to do was eat. I'd never experienced difficult emotions putting me off my food before.

Well done for taking the leap @NDornotND! I didn't experience any rush of big emotions, for me it was the opposite, as if my brain finally felt calm for the first time in years. All those negative thought patterns that would go round and round in my head suddenly stopped alongside the need to eat my emotions. That's just one of the reasons I know I'll stay on MJ (or a decent equivalent) forever.

This was an issue for me too. I was a massive emotional eater - if I was having a tough day I would literally be thinking about what I was going to eat later. I did struggle a bit with low mood on MJ because I had nothing to soothe myself with. Once I had lost a bit of weight I developed a Vinted addiction which definitely fed the dopamine need! Now I’m addicted to the gym and running. I use excercise to regulate my feelings which probably isn’t 100% healthy but definitely better than eating! I’m maintaining on 1.25mg of MJ at the moment and even if I miss a dose the emotional eating hasn’t come back - I’ve been on it for 18 months now so I do wonder if I’ve learned other coping strategies.

Totally agree with all the previous comments. I have lost around 6 stones on Mounjaro and have maintained a stable weight for a little over a year now. I am in my sixties and have been obese for more than 50 years. During that time my weight profile has been like the Pyrenees, up and down but never stable and my emotional state has mirrored this: elation and excitement on the downward slope and shame, guilt and despair when gaining. Now I have no emotional connection rollercoaster around food and I wonder whether the emotions were driven entirely by the hormones that these new drugs suppress, rather than emotional disregulation driven by gluttony, sloth or weak willpower which I previously attributed it too. Never been more happy in my own skin than I am now.

I am on a maintenance dose and accept that I will be for the foreseeable future. I am with Ouch.

Damn autocorrect Oushk!

I’ve done it the other way round.

First I joined an online programme supporting intermittent and longer fasting, which recommends a diet not dissimilar to what is recommended when on WLI: real food rather than UPF’s, adequate protein…. and also low carb. Through that, I discovered that my physical hunger sensations are greatly influenced by WHAT I eat. Simply put: stick to real food and eat fewer carbs, I am much less hungry.

Second, that program included a significant amount of work on mindset and stress management. That helped me change some of my justifications for overeating, such as it’s my/your birthday, it will make me feel better, it’s not fair if I can’t have it, one won’t hurt, I have to have it because there’s nothing else etc. These things are not true, they were just things I was telling myself, and now I tell myself something different. And the stress management is good for reducing chronically raised cortisol, which also stokes appetite, and it gives me alternatives to food when I’m stressed or upset.

With all the above I lost well over 5 stone, and reached a weight I hadn’t seen for 30 years. But then I got back into binge eating again, and before you knew it I had gained over a stone. Terrified, I went to Overeaters Anonymous. Now that is tough work, but is providing me with a toolkit and a source of power which, so long as I use it, enables me to stay away from the sort of eating which is about dealing with emotions, or responding to strong physical urges which arise from crap food. That enabled me to lose about half of the regain, but then I went into a cycle of more-or-less stability. I was just under the threshold for obesity, plus or minus a few pounds, rarely deviating by more than that, and then not for long. But not getting any lower, for about 8 months.

So now I’m on Mounjaro, aiming to get down to the top of the healthy range. It does reduce appetite, and has also made it easy to let go of the feeling that I “have to” have 2 squares of dark chocolate and a handful of nuts (which sometimes became 3) to finish a meal. Now I can have just the chocolate, or just the nuts, or nothing some days. Is that “have to” feeling emotional eating? Possibly, but it’s not on the scale I knew before.

So, in short, I don’t believe MJ is the answer to emotional eating, but it can reduce it, or perhaps reveal it. If someone came to MJ without having done the prior work on mindset and emotions, MJ will buy them some time and peace. They would be well advised to use that to do the work, if they ever want to be able to reduce their dose, or stop altogether.

I think there’s a difference between physical hunger and eating for emotional comfort, so I wouldn’t expect the medication alone to solve everything. It may make managing appetite easier for some people, but getting some support for the emotional side could be just as important

Yes. Sometimes now I can’t face food. Never experienced that in my life before.
hasn’t helped with gin and tonic though 🙄