Taking Mounjaro for perimenopausal weight gain.
I have been slowly gaining weight since peri-menopause started. The more weight I gained, the more random pains I started to feel. Back, hips, and recently, knees.
– 2 min read
Whilst we were on vacation in the States I received a text from my doctor, inviting me for a 'now you are 50' wellbeing check up. I put it to the back of my mind for a few weeks and thought I best get on the scales, I thought I was in the lower end of the overweight range – turns out I had creeped into the obese BMI bracket.
I have been slowly gaining weight since peri-menopause started. The more weight I gained, the more random pains I started to feel. Back, hips, and recently, knees. Thinking it was the start of arthritis I started to pace myself a lot more, and most exercise ended up with me suffering pain, sometimes during and always after. I was stuck in a vicious cycle of want-to-exercise, exercise, pain, can't-exercise.
I consider my perimenopausal symptoms to have been not that bad; Occasional hot flushes, foggy headed, a bit more emotional than usual and some insomnia. All on and off symptoms, nothing unbearable.
Six months ago I started HRT. Oestrogen gel every morning, and sequential progesterone (two weeks on, two weeks off). All of the above eased considerably.
But I still needed to tackle the weight gain. Already eating healthily (minimal processed foods + lots of wholefoods), not drinking or smoking, weekly strength training, cycling and hitting my target 10k steps daily I became pretty despondent. My weight wasn't coming down, it was continuously creeping up. I tried to work out why, having a thyroid test to see if that could explain it, it didn't, the function was perfectly normal.
I started hearing about weight loss injections via the news. Then a friend mentioned she had some friends taking the injections and what a difference it had made for them and the seed was planted in my mind.
Fast forward two weeks and I was sat on my bed, administering my first 2.5mg dose of the drug Mounjaro. Nearly a month along, it's made a huge difference.
I'm going to start sharing my journey with the treatment, including side effects, results and thoughts, here on my blog, incase anyone else can find it useful.
