Rare Adventures

Tag: nutrition

  • Weight loss journey 9 – Mounjaro, the short cut to weight lose

    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

  • My weight loss journey: Myth busters

    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.