The week started off looking rather frantic, with visitors planned for three days running. However, for completely different reasons, the first two visits were postponed. And I have to admit, I was actually quite pleased!
Don’t get me wrong, I love having visitors and catching up with people, but three days in a row – all of which involved feeding several people – was beginning to feel like quite a lot of work. We were still living in piles of boxes whilst the utility room was being refurbished and – as always, these things seem to coincide with all the other regular, time-critical jobs that need doing. I had staff payroll to sort out ready for the end of the month, a submission to put together and circulate (more about that in a future post), and a draft agenda to prepare for a meeting at the beginning of September.
Once I’d got all those deadlines out of the way and two lots of visitors had cancelled, everything suddenly felt considerably calmer.
We did have friends here for lunch on Wednesday, but by then I had a fridge packed full of food I’d bought and prepared for all the visitors who hadn’t actually arrived, so at least feeding them wasn’t a problem!
The friend who came with her husband is someone I’ve known since primary school. Her husband is a local man, so he and Mike had a fine old time reminiscing about bands, live music and various venues around town. It’s lovely when people discover they share that sort of history.
On Thursday, when Sam came for her regular visit to help me, we had the exciting task of putting everything back into the newly refurbished utility room. The decorating had been completed the day before, so these really were the final touches.
And actually, it was exciting!
There is something enormously satisfying about going through cupboards and getting rid of all those ancient bits and pieces that you know perfectly well you’re never going to use again. Does anybody even use shoe polish these days?
We consolidated all the cleaning products, disposed of things that were well and truly past their useful lives, sorted a box for a charity pick-up and reorganised everything into the cupboards. I’m really pleased with the finished result. All the disruption was definitely worth it, and the room is now much more practical, with a little more storage than we had before. There’s nothing quite like opening a cupboard and seeing everything neatly arranged inside. How long it will remain like that is another matter entirely!
Tuesday evening was our community get-together, which I’d organised for a couple of the local groups I’m involved with. There isn’t really much organising involved – it’s largely a case of advertising it and hoping that people actually turn up!
Last year’s gathering was very successful, with probably around 12 people dropping in during the evening. This year there were eight of us, although three were newcomers, which was lovely.
One first-time was clearly expecting something rather more grand and organised and arrived at the venue asking where our reserved table was. There wasn’t one! I’ve never bothered reserving a table because there’s usually plenty of seating, particularly when the weather is good enough for us to sit outside. I think I’d done too good a job on the invitation design!
I think she enjoyed herself nonetheless, and actually having a smaller group worked rather well because we could all sit around one table and hear what everyone else was saying.
The food was decidedly mediocre, but I did have a couple of pints of “Blackguard Nitro Stout” from a local brewery. It was very nice indeed. Two pints later and I was ever so slightly tiddly! I drink alcohol so rarely these days that I clearly have absolutely no tolerance for it anymore.
This is the Bank Holiday weekend, and rather wonderfully, we have very little planned. That suits me perfectly. Even things like sorting out the utility room take quite a lot of energy – both physical and mental.
I must be getting old!
And so, on to Mounjaro.
There is still absolutely no noticeable change in terms of appetite suppression or a reduction in food noise.
I found myself giving myself a bit of a talking-to this morning because, in some ways, I keep thinking that the drug isn’t working.
But then I realised that perhaps I’m looking at it from the wrong perspective.
After a lifetime of needing to lose weight, I’ve become accustomed to judging success by whether the scales are going down. Week after week, for years, that was the objective.
But I’m not actually trying to lose weight anymore.
I’m supposed to be maintaining it.
And I’ve been successfully doing that for well over six months.
When I stopped and thought about it properly this morning, I realised just how extraordinary that is for me. Particularly when you don’t weigh very much in the first place and therefore don’t have a huge amount of wiggle room.
Since reaching my goal weight in January, my weight has remained within a range of around seven pounds – approximately 3.5kg.
For more than six months.
That is a huge achievement and, more importantly, something I have never managed before.
So perhaps the question shouldn’t simply be, “Is Mounjaro suppressing my appetite?”
Perhaps it should be, “Is Mounjaro helping me maintain my weight?”
And the answer to that is much harder to know.
I’m certainly still doing my part. I continue to log everything I eat, moderate my intake, try to reduce snacking between meals and weigh myself regularly.
But perhaps most importantly, I’m also trying to be kind to myself.
I’m an almost 64-year-old woman who can’t move very much, who is very short and who has spent more than 50 years of her life being overweight.
For the first time, I’m no longer carrying that weight.
And it feels good.
I took my second 7.5mg injection of Mounjaro on Friday 28th August, and for now I’m simply going to plod along and see how the land lies.
Maybe maintenance isn’t supposed to feel dramatic. Maybe the absence of anything happening on the scales is actually the whole point.
That’s something I’m still learning to get my head around.
Are you maintaining your weight on Mounjaro? How are you finding it? And what has the experience been like emotionally, as well as physically?
I’d genuinely love to hear how other people are getting on, because I’m sure we’re all very different – not just in the way our bodies respond, but in how we adjust mentally to the idea of no longer constantly trying to lose weight.
And perhaps also to the possibility that this little injection may, in one form or another, be part of our lives for a very long time.
This week’s weigh-in…
Weight this week: 55.85kg (8st 11.2lbs)
Weight last week: 56.55kg (8st 12.6lbs)
Weekly loss/gain: -0.7kg (-1.5lb)
100% – 6 months 19 days in weight maintenance range (54 – 57kg or 8st 7lb – 8st 13lbs)
My week began with a jolt. I’ve spent hours recently helping a wheelchair-using friend who is visiting London from Australia in October. She’ll be spending 12 nights in the capital and asked me to help her find a good accessible hotel in a convenient location from which to explore London.
If I had to talk about the things that contribute to my own sense of wellbeing and good mental health, being involved with my local community would definitely be right up there. Working alongside other people to make improvements, particularly when you can actually stand back afterwards and immediately see what you’ve achieved together, is enormously satisfying.
