Last week, I said that I began talking with my doctor about medical intervention for weight loss. That was two months ago, and she told me about a new medication on the market, Mounjaro. This is a medication that is primarily used to treat blood glucose and A1C for people who are diabetic, and it can also induce weight loss. It’s similar to – but not the same as – the Ozempic that failed me so spectacularly in 2019 and 2020. We decided to give it a try, to see if I reacted better to it than I did to Ozempic, and I took my first injected dose on August 31st.

For the first four weeks, I was on a pre-therapeutic dose that was meant to prep my body for a therapeutic level. During these four weeks, I really only had a few mild side effects. If I went too long between meals, my stomach would ache with an almost nausea-like feeling, except that it was actually my body trying to tell me that I was hungry. The glucose-stabilizing effects of Mounjaro meant that I didn’t always feel traditional hunger signals, so I sometimes forgot to eat for longer than normal, and that “nausea” would remind me that I still needed to eat. I also had some abdominal cramping/bloating if I ate too much fiber or heavy fat in a single sitting, so I had to be slightly more careful about balancing meals.

As for how much I was eating, things stayed pretty similar to pre-Mounjaro. Breakfast remained the same, and at both lunch and dinner, I would eat a few bites less most of the time. Pre-medicine, I was eating 2-3 small snacks at different parts of the day, and post-medicine, this dropped to 1-2 small snacks. Altogether, I was eating about 90% of the calorie level I was at pre-medicine most days, and the kinds of foods I ate didn’t really change. In the last week of this trial period, the pre-therapeutic dose stopped really affecting me (as expected), and I returned almost to 100% of my calorie level.

This was a huge difference from my experience with Ozempic, which caused major food aversions and severely decreased appetite (cutting down by over 50%). Furthermore, in my two experiences with Ozempic, I gained a few pounds the first time and gained a ton the second, despite eating less than 1000 calories a day that second time! With Mounjaro, though, while eating maybe 200-300 calories less per day, I lost 7.5 lbs in the first three weeks. In the fourth week, when the medicine was only working a tiny bit, I didn’t lose anything. Obviously, the total loss is well more than the total calories not eaten, but I’ve always said that calories-in-vs-calories-out was a load of bunk, especially when something is OFF in your body. Clearly, the Mounjaro reset something right in my body!

A week ago, I took my first dose at the lowest therapeutic level of Mounjaro. For two days, I had some pretty severe nausea off and on, especially if I ate too much at any one sitting. Then the nausea went away, and I went back to eating the same way I had for most of the last month. There were some complicating factors in this past week that increased how much I was eating, and I’m happy to say that my body accommodated the extra volume of food with ease (no nausea!). And in five weeks, I’ve lost a total of 9 lbs now, all without major changes to what I was doing.

I feel better – not because of the weight loss, which honestly makes barely a dent in my body at this size, but in the stabilizing of my blood sugar. I love being able to go long periods without worrying if my blood sugar is going to suddenly drop on me. My anxiety has lessened, and the polyurea that I was seeing the kidney specialist about has almost disappeared completely. I sleep better, food tastes better (though this might be because we’re finally starting to make a dent in the long-entrenched thrush overgrowth!), and I’m in slightly less pain. If some nausea for a few days is the price to pay for that, I can handle that! I just hope the good continues, and doesn’t tip into the Ozempic Route!!