Rare Adventures

Category: My weight loss journey

This is the story about how I lost 3 stone in weight, and without exaggeration, really changed my life.
Some of it crept back on, but generally, I’ve been fit as a fiddle since.
Now I’m 65, over last 8 years I’ve been able to do sports and lifestyle I’d given up in my 40s.

My weight loss journey 10 – Mounjaro after effects

Managing Weight After Mounjaro: A Real Challenge

See the rest of my Weight loss journey posts.

Coming down and stablisation

Generally the treatment was really successful in my view, but coming off Mounjaro has to be managed; it is deeply depressing to know that something like 80% of people put their weight back on within 6 months. The son and wife of one of my mates lost 5 stone before a trip to NEw Zealand, when they came back, they put it all back on again. To make matters worse, they are quite contented that if they need to lose weight off again it will cost them about £3000, so why bother staying fit.

I did some research around the topic and fortunately came across this podcast back in the summer. The podcast discusses the relationship between the food industry and the weight loss drugs. In summary, the problem is that many of us are addicted to food thanks to the disgraceful marketing by the food industry and now the pharmaceutical industry has found an antidote to the addiction.

So, it is like a heroin addict being hooked on Narcan as the alternative. There are people who even think there is a conspiracy between the two industries, but it’s not worth going there. Discussing it with another mate he couldn’t understand why people just couldn’t stop eating crap, he took some convincing that he was lucky to be one of the fortunate people who weren’t susceptible, just like he is inexplicably and annoyingly much better than me at mountain biking.

Positive side effects

The problem with Mounjaro is that you are likely to put the weight on when you come off it, unless you really focus on changing from the eating habits that got you there in the first place. The strange thing about the drug is that it seems to help with other addictions and habits, there is even evidence to reduces other addictions like gambling.

Human nature being what it is, people are continuing to use the jab to keep their weight down rather than taking the chance of putting the weight back on, basically people are hooked.

It helped me break some habits, notably I liked to have a drink in the evening while watching tv. This habit went back to when work was really stressful, I would come home, put the kids to bed and the drink was the signal to my body that it was time to relax.

It was normally gin and tonic, but since having the jab I can’t face a gin and tonic. The other mini addiction was bacon sandwiches or rolls in the morning, for some reason, the smell and taste just doesn’t do it for me anymore. My couple of months on the jab seems to have had more benefits than just weight loss.

I’m writing this just as the price of Mounjaro has increased 170%, apparently this is to reduce private demand so that there is enough supply for the NHS, apparently there are not enough stocks to treat the clinically obese and those with serious diabetes.

I’m sure the makers were heartbroken about imposing this price rise, but I suspect people will still find the money or switch to the slightly less effective Wegovy, which is now a lot cheaper, particularly if they are moving on to sustaining rather than losing weight.

I guess the major lesson from this experience is just how depressing it is that the food industry has got millions of people addicted to appalling and damaging food, yet no government on the planet is willing to stand up to them and stop it.

Negative side effects

Meanwhile, people are getting addicted to being thin, guaranteeing years of income to the drug companies, the whole thing is mad but here we are in the 21st Century, half the world is starving and the lucky inhabitants of the free world are taking drugs to stop us eating.

There are lots of other suggested side effects being suggested, including muscle wastage and impact on mental health, so anyone considering it should do their research first, there is a ying and yang to everything in life.

I’d recommend the approach for anyone who is in the privilege position to be able to enjoy it.

See the rest of my Weight loss journey posts.

22/10/2025
Weight loss journey 9 – Mounjaro, the short cut to weight lose

Mounjaro, me and food addition.

Would I recommend Mounjaro– yes most definitely, it is changing people’s lives for the better, but it comes at a cost.

See the rest of my Weight loss journey posts.

For 8 years I’ve been largely on top of my weight, the scales would sneak back up slowly but I’d find a reason to kick in my tried and trusted method to reduce it again. There was always some target to focus on, like a 100 mile bike ride, or climbing the Inca Trail, or a weekend mountain biking, whatever it was, I’d find a reason to kick in the calorie counting and down my weight would come.

If you haven’t seen my other articles on weight loss and my journey, you can find them here.

6 months ago, I noticed the weight creeping back to an unacceptable level, but for the first time I couldn’t find the motivation to deal with it. I was living a happy life, gym and sport every day, but that weight was creeping on because my appetite seemed to be getting bigger all the time.

First, I passed through the 15 stone barrier, it was a mental upper limit for the last 8 years that normally caused me to react, but I didn’t. It was only when it reached 15st 4lb that I knew I had to do something because I was heading towards 16st fast, but why, I felt good and was living my best life.

My wife was the same, she had a method for losing weight with the Alavera clinic, but her cycle was different. She would lose 2 to 3 stone in a clinically controlled way, but it would always go back on. So, we were both on the upward weight cycle and both struggling for motivation, none of the adventures we had planned required much extra fitness, so why bother?

The awakening

Then we bumped into a friend in a bar, and I was totally stunned by the amount of weight she had lost, she was a totally different person, about a half the size version of the one we had seen a year earlier. After a bit of chatting she let us in on her diet secret, she was using the fat jab (in secret from her husband I hasten to add). I’d never heard of anyone using it, but it transpired we were probably the only ones left in the world that weren’t aware of it, we thought it was something only very obese people had access to on the NHS.

So, I did some investigation and was surprised how cheap the Mounjaro jab was. In fact, the monthly outlay was far less than what we had previously paid for the weight loss clinic, so in some ways it was a bargain at £200 per month and the promised weight loss was huge. Knowing my wife can be a bit slow to embrace opportunities I offered to go first and try it out and see what was involved.

Next day I was logged into the Numan website starting the process. First problem was I wasn’t 30 BMI, but not far off, so I calculated the weight I needed to be and uploaded the data and I moved on to the next stage, which involved a photo of me to prove I was fat, so I took a few photos of me breathing out in a baggy t shirt, and without much bother, I was through the medical stage and the medicine was on the way.

By this point, I was fully fired up on my weight loss mission. The sooner I got this weight off the sooner I would be off the medication; I wasn’t keen on the whole jabbing idea. I was straight into the calorie counting and my exercise was focused moved to calorie burning, I had lost 3 lb by the time the package dropped through the letter box a week later.

Starting the treatment

The first week of the dosage took me back under 15st, my first milestone achieved. It was difficult to know if the drug was having an effect or whether it was placebo. I had also started above my normal weight, so I had pounds to lose.

The second week we had a bit of a hiccup, I overdosed. I used the jab and was a bit confused why the syringe had not gone right down, the syringe goes down about 20% each week and leaves a drop in the bottom. I tried 3 times to apply it, on the assumption that it wasn’t working, I reported the matter to Numan.

An overdose

When they saw a photo of the syringe, they pointed out that I had used it up all up in one go.

If it was placebo before it certainly wasn’t over the next 5 days, I felt nauseous, floaters in front of my eyes and certainly no appetite, in fact I had to force myself to eat in the end. However, it did have some even better side effects as I lost another 4lb, so I was down 7lb in 2 weeks.

As I had proved my incompetence to Numan, they sent me another month’s worth of the minimum dose. To be fair, the support from them was really good. You get a coach to help with advice on food and lifestyle, and a clinical team for issues with the syringe and dosage. For the coach I was sorted with my approach, but it was good to have an online chat about different strategies and options.

I mentioned the jab to a few friends and their reactions were really interesting. I suspect a lot of people are embarrassed about using the jab, but the reality is that it is just another way to diet, so I wasn’t embarrassed at all. It was no more embarrassing than Weight Watchers or Man v Fat, you just want to get the weight off as soon as you can because it is making you sad and it isn’t good for you to be fat.

3 friends signed up to the treatment, which was excellent as we both got price reductions on our next batches, I almost became a dealer I was referring so many people. Most people started off inquisitive about the side effects and impact, and most of all the size of the needle!

From a personal perspective, the change wasn’t that noticeable because I was just getting back down to my normal weight which I had been 6 months earlier. I finished off after 3 months of “treatment”, my dose only reached 5mg (the max is 15mg), which is normally the second month. By that time, I had lost 16lb in weight in 3 months, so I hadn’t had time to become too dependent on the drug and in the hottest summer for 50 years, I didn’t put any weight back on.

So all round a very successful experience, however there are side effects that you should be aware of and need to be managed that I cover in the next article

17/10/2025
My weight loss journey: 7 Years of Transformation

As my youngest daughter pointed out, I’ve probably had an extra 10 years of life thanks to the weight loss.

This graph tracks my weight from the start of the journey in Episode 1 back in 2017, to where I am today. As you can see, it has been a bit of a roller coaster with lots of ups and downs.

I never expected to maintain it the mid 13 stone lower levels but I have managed to keep it within a reasonable boundary in the mid 14 stones, which was roughly 2 stone lighter than my norm before I started so that has been really good.

Click here to follow the rest of My Weight Loss Journey

This has had a radical impact on my life, I have been absolutely amazed what abuse the body of a 60 something can take, just keep pushing it as far as it will go but listen carefully to what you body is saying.

7 years ago I was a workaholic, in 2018 I became a sort of dietaholic, and then moved on to being a sort fitnessaholic which gave me an overall much better worklife balance and helped me along the road to retirement.

Being lighter made me so much happier, I always hated tight cloths so being able to walk around in smaller sizes and not having them stretching the seems was great for self confidence.

But I lived in fear of putting the weight back on, and going back to the bigger me and having to go through the battle to lose weight, I didn’t want to have to do that again as it felt like a one off experience.

You have to watch your calorie consumption constantly if you have an appetite for food and beer like mine. In the graph you can see the drops, that is normally after a holiday or there is a particular challenge coming up and I start calorie counting, that tends to focus the mind on what you are eating, you avoid the snacks and know the cost of alcohol so don’t do it – or at least make the right choices.

The company team entered the 10km together for charity, it was a first time for all of us

I am constantly setting targets, I hated running but decided to do the Bristol 10km as a challenge, I ended up running 10km twice a week and eventually did a half marathon.

During Covid, I used the time to cycle. I cut down on the mountain biking as I guessed I wouldn’t be popular in hospital if I had a crash, so started doing longer rides, 50km, then 100km and finally 100 miles in a day – these were tough but so glad I’ve done them, and all of them on my own without support of a group.

Running a half marathon distance, on my own was a massive adrenalin rush.

In fact, I then found out the qualifying time of the GB Over 60 Triathlon team run and managed to achieve it in a 5km sprint, at this point I decided I had to stop somewhere at that was it.

The day I cracked the sub 25 min 5km at 61, on a wet January afternoon, just for fun !

I had my hip replaced last year after I smashed it on a mountain bike fall in France, but within 2 weeks I was back in the gym, 4 weeks did 50km on the bike and 6 weeks I was back playing football because if you keep yourself fit and have reasonable control of your weight there is surprisingly few things you can’t do and overcome.

Up and about straight after the op, walking without crutches after a week and back in the gym after a month!

So that’s it, after the diet you need to find your equilibrium and focus on staying in that zone.

I am normally about 14st 8lb now, I’m happier a few pounds less but if I start to go too much above it then it is time to start calories counting again !

See the rest of my Weight loss journey posts.

30/04/2025
My weight loss journey: Myth busters
The key lessons from my 7 years of managing my weight

I learned a lot from doing Man v Fat, we all did really well, losing 10-20% of our weight over 4 months. It was lots of fun but very competitive as well.

Click here to follow the res of My Weight Loss Journey

The basic principle is that our bodies are machines that need fuel.

Calories in (food) v Calories out (exercise) = weight

Too much input and the body stores it for a rainy day, too much output and the body calls on its reserves to survive and burns the fat. We are still Mk 1 human beings and our bodies know how to survive, they just don’t know too much about modern living and junk food !

To lose weight you have to reduce incoming and increase outgoing. Trying to lose weight just on exercise is very very hard, 1lb in weight is 3500 calories, so to lose 1lb through exercise you need to do 7 x 500kcal sessions in the gym, or walk up Snowdon once a week (roughly what I burned doing that).

So basically this is a calorie burning project, there are lots of ways to do it, diets, exercise, fasting – loads of options, but the only thing that matters is reducing input and increasing output.

A few common things that I’ve learned to dismiss.
1. A male needs 2500 per day – not convinced about this one. We are all different and if I took in 2500 every day I’d be the size of an elephant, and I do loads of exercise.
2. Muscle turns to fat – nope, it turns to flab, which is different, it can be rebuilt, this is why athletes use steroids, once a muscle has been grown, it can always go back to the maximum size.
3. Turn fat in muscle – nope, burn off the fat, it cant turn into muscle, that needs protein and fibre.
4. Muscle burns calories faster – this is actually true but if you start doing weights you will get heavier so this is something for 3 months down the track. I’ve got mates who are the literal muscle brick shit houses and they do burn calories but they are unique. We don’t want minor weight gains in muscles affecting your weight downward trend.
Your action plan

So what we need is the tools to manage our calories, so here goes
1. Get the myfitnesspal app – this is where you log your food and it also pulls in the data from your exercise tracker to work out your daily score.
2. Exercise tracker – you can do this on a phone but it is much better with a watch that is counting steps and importantly heart rate. I’ve got a Garmin because of the other sports, but Apple and the others are just as good.
3. Linking the two can be a bit of a faff because it involves personal data permissions but stick with it.
So for the first week, get the tools set up and you can start tracking your food intake.

Food intake – don’t get bogged down in being too precise, I spend about 2 minutes a day on this max. Most of the food we eat is available in the tracker, it’s just working out the portion sizes.
28/04/2025
My weight loss journey – how exercise changed my life
If you set yourself a vision then you should enjoy it

Click here to follow the res of My Weight Loss Journey

Stick with the method

In hindsight, once I had the method sorted it wasn’t difficult at all, it was just a case of keeping going. By the start of May I was back on the board after hardly doing any surfing for years Being much lighter and stronger made a massive difference to what I could do, I not only found my football mojo I rediscovered my surfing mojo as well.

I didn’t give up anything I liked, and in fact, ate a lot more of the things I like which fortunately are mostly protein. One cappuccino a day instead of 3, 2 bottles of beer instead of 2 pints, it all adds up.

I’ve had to change all my cloths and now buy L or XL rather than XXL and XXXL and was a buzz getting into the Levi’s I bought 20 years earlier, and in fact they are too big for me know.

I’ve also been absolutely amazed at how fit and strong a 59 year olds body can be, now that most of the muscle and joint problems have been fixed by exercise it does feel like there are not limits. I’d always liked Superdry, but their t-shirts and stuff were always too tight, so a new wardrobe of Superdry clobber made me so happy.

New cloths, new lifestyle

So I didn’t have to buy baggy or out of shape cloths, I can wear anything I want, I’ve had all my suits taken in round the waist and the shirts that I had “grown” out of are now the ones I wear all the time. To make sure I don’t grow back I haven’t kept my “fat wardrobe”, it’s all gone to the charity shop so I can enjoy buying new stuff.

The icing on the cake was when a mate, who had been following bits and pieces on facebook got in touch quite out of the blue from Brisbane, he was still playing competitive football in his 50s. On a trip down under I’d watched one of his games and couldn’t believe he was still playing at his age. This turned into an adventure that I didn’t expect.

He posted on Facebook he was about to play in a football tournament in Bali for his club the Brisbane Lions. I joked that I could have played and surfed at the same time and before I knew it I’d agreed to play to travel to Australia to play in a tournament, I combined with my surfing trip to Bali and canned the trip to NZ, you only live once !

So in 15 months, I had gone from hobbling around a football pitch shouting at the boys to playing in an international football tournament in Australia and surfing in Bali. All this was possible because the exercise helped free up my arthritis, which in turn meant I could do more exercise – it was a wonderful cycle and I’ve since discovered that there is a lot of research to support this now.

At the start of summer training for the boys team, instead of having me shouting at them from the touch line, Gary and I were leading them around the field doing circuits and playing in the practice games showing them how it should be done.

The boys ended the season as League 1 champions after years of being also rans

But most of all I feel happy and confidence, its really nice people paying me compliments and its not something that’s ever happened in the past. The last year probably sounds like it was a party but we had really tough times in work, but I am 100% sure that I got through it because of the health journey.

Achievements

I appreciate that I have opportunities that others won’t, but if you grab everything that comes along you can make a massive difference, so my life changed in 2018 to this extent:
1. I won my first football tournament in over 30 years
2. I’ve met more pals during the last year than in 20 previous years in the area, and some of them are now incredibly good friends
3. I went half way around the world to play football
4. I achieved a dream of surfing off a boat in Bali
5. Spent a week travelling along the surf coast of northern Spain with my youngest lad surfing and camping
6. My boys football team won the league, they have gone from bottom of division 2 to winning division 1 of their year group in 15 months – largely because Gary and myself were fit enough to lead the fitness training and improve their discipline
7. I even bought a Mini Cooper S so I could have more fun – I was young again
I really really did do it
24/04/2025