{"id":534014,"date":"2025-10-28T20:52:26","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T20:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/534014\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T20:52:26","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T20:52:26","slug":"i-thought-mounjaro-would-fix-my-weight-but-the-first-month-was-a-disaster-with-these-disgusting-side-effects-this-is-the-simple-tweak-i-made-to-supercharge-my-jab-and-lose-3-stone-and-three-dress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/534014\/","title":{"rendered":"I thought Mounjaro would fix my weight but the first month was a disaster with these disgusting side effects. This is the simple tweak I made to supercharge my jab… and lose 3 stone and three dress sizes"},"content":{"rendered":"

In May this year, I was waiting at the local train station barrier for my best friend, who was visiting from America, when she walked straight past me. The reason why? I look profoundly different.<\/p>\n

I had lost three stone, six inches from my waist and hips and dropped at least three dress sizes since we last saw each other.<\/p>\n

Not only do I weigh less than I did 18 years ago when we first met in New York, but I have ditched the voluminous maxi dresses I previously wore to hide my figure in favour of wide legged jeans<\/a> and clinging T shirts. Honestly? I\u2019m now in my 40s and I look great.<\/p>\n

You guessed it, I am yet another woman who has discovered the miraculous (and I do not use that word lightly) effects of GLP-1s, more commonly known as \u2018fat jabs\u2019.<\/p>\n

Last November, I tried on jeans in M&S<\/a> and couldn\u2019t zip up a pair of size 16s. I didn\u2019t own scales but I knew I couldn\u2019t continue pretending that my huge midriff wasn\u2019t (literally) an enormous issue.<\/p>\n

How had I got to this point? A radical hysterectomy in the summer of 2023 had plunged me straight into medical menopause<\/a> and, while my stomach looked substantially flatter in the immediate aftermath of the operation thanks to the removal of 2.2kgs of fibroids, the menopausal weight gain then kicked in.<\/p>\n

While some influencers would have us believe that HRT is a magic drug that makes the weight slip off, I think it\u2019s fair to say that this is not the menopausal experience for the majority of women.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t help that I love cooking (eating delicious food was my hobby) and I never felt full. As I live alone, I would cook supper for myself, and go back for seconds and thirds.<\/p>\n

\"On <\/p>\n

On November 27 last year, at 13st 3lb, and with a BMI of 31 (officially obese), Sasha Wilkins injected herself with Mounjaro for the first time<\/p>\n

\"Sasha <\/p>\n

Sasha had lost just 5lb \u2013 and three of those were in the first eight days. But she was disappointed as she saw \u2018I shifted a stone in four weeks\u2019 claims plastered all over social media<\/p>\n

I would tell myself it was okay because I was cooking healthy food from scratch, but nothing is healthy in those quantities: a whole packet of brown rice, huge dollops of Greek yogurt with my chickpea curries, three or four pieces of heavily buttered sourdough toast with my organic homemade soup, an entire slab of fried tofu in my vegetable stir fries, and so on.<\/p>\n

So, on November 27 last year, at 13st 3lb, and with a BMI of 31 (officially obese), I injected myself with Mounjaro for the first time.<\/p>\n

I was so nervous that I would mess it up and so it took me half an hour to administer the jab as I carefully read each line of the instructions over and over again.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t experience the early, dramatic results that some people do. Looking back at my daily weight loss diary, I see that the first month was the worst.<\/p>\n

I lost just 5lb \u2013 and three of those were in the first eight days. Not for me, the triumphant \u2018I shifted a stone in four weeks\u2019 claims you see plastered all over social media.<\/p>\n

I had hideous gastric issues, including acutely painful reflux, and soon discovered that eating anything rich and creamy meant a lot of time in the loo the next day. The worst and most unexpected side effect \u2013 apart from the bizarrely deep sulphurous burps caused by the drug making food stay longer in your stomach \u2013 was a ravenous hunger! The very opposite of what I had been led to expect by friends on the drug \u2013 who told me that they couldn\u2019t eat for three days, and only then would pop a cube of cheese, Devil Wears Prada-style, to stop themselves keeling over.<\/p>\n

What was different was the satiety. I might have been hungry but I was eating far less because I became full after quarter portions of food. Yet still the weight loss was sluggish.<\/p>\n

After six weeks where I had lost just four more pounds I was considering throwing in the towel.<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t really justify the drugs \u2013 between \u00a3150 & \u00a3200 a month at the time depending on the dose \u2013 if I was going to see such slow progress. I had changed my diet and portions so radically that I was wondering if I might have lost the weight anyway.<\/p>\n

It was my sister who persuaded me to keep going. She pointed out that she knew how miserable inexorable weight gain had made me. And then suddenly, as I moved up to a higher dose, the gastric side effects lessened and the weight started to slip off \u2013 never less than two pounds a week. In February I was able to zip up a pair of size 12 jeans I\u2019d bought in 2015 that only a month before wouldn\u2019t get over my bottom. By March, I was struggling to find clothes to wear that weren\u2019t too big in my wardrobe and that felt life-changing.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, I tried on a dress which I had last wore in 2006 for an interview at American Vogue. It fits me perfectly. My body shape has changed beyond recognition: I\u2019ve always been an apple shape with large amounts of dangerous visceral fat and that has disappeared. I have a flat abdomen and an actual waistline for the first time in my adult life. I still have a little pot belly but post-hysterectomy, that\u2019s something I have to live with.<\/p>\n

Mounjaro has changed my relationship with food for the better. I haven\u2019t changed the essentials of my diet but I no longer eat when I\u2019m not hungry, or use food as an emotional prop.<\/p>\n

\"By <\/p>\n

By March, Sasha was struggling to find clothes to wear that weren\u2019t too big in her wardrobe and said it felt life-changing<\/p>\n

I have no desire whatsoever to eat processed foods or sugar. I\u2019ve also stopped feeling so debilitatingly hungry and woozy that I have to stop whatever I\u2019m doing to find food. Now when I do get hungry, I acknowledge it and then I carry on doing whatever I was doing if I\u2019m not in a place where I can eat.<\/p>\n

However, there\u2019s one thing that\u2019s made me really angry while I\u2019ve been taking Mounjaro: hearing slender women in the public eye, such as model Julia Fox and actress Sophie Turner, criticising weight-loss drugs.<\/p>\n

Thin privilege is enraging. If their struggle with weight is the difference between being a size 12 and a size 10 or having a little bit of a potbelly in a wedding dress, then they really have no idea what it\u2019s like to struggle with obesity. These drugs have changed the lives of multiple women I know.<\/p>\n

Banging on about how we don\u2019t know the long-term effects of these drugs or bemoaning the potential loss of muscle is beside the point.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The use of weight-loss drugs or ‘fat jabs’ has been met with plenty of scrutiny, this is something that Sasha has found comes mainly from more ‘slender women’ and models<\/p>\n

Obesity is the second biggest cause of cancer in the UK after smoking. Frankly, I\u2019d rather reduce the inflammation in my body and reduce my cancer risk now than worry about long-term effects 20 years down the line.<\/p>\n

Equally, last year my obesity made exercise a struggle: I couldn\u2019t even do a child\u2019s pose effectively in yoga because my stomach got in the way. Believe me, I\u2019ve got a lot more muscle now than I did then.<\/p>\n

I cannot overestimate the psychological importance of knowing you\u2019re going to lose the weight when you take the drugs (so long as you commit to the process). Before I started taking Mounjaro I found it so hard to get started on a healthy regimen, seeing weeks ahead of just painful self-restriction, the weighing of lettuce, hours and hours of exercise, and with no guarantee in middle age that any of this would even work.<\/p>\n

To anyone debating whether to use Mounjaro, the most important thing to know is that the drugs don\u2019t magically melt the fat off your body. You do have to put the work in, by eating consciously and sensibly, and you do need to exercise, even if that\u2019s walking the dog or, in my case, hefting boxes of antiques daily.<\/p>\n

I stopped taking the full dose I was taking back at the end of May \u2013 having been on the medication for exactly 6 months. I now take a half dose every couple of weeks and expect to be off the drug completely by Christmas. Much to my astonishment, I stayed completely steady at my goal weight over the summer and even three weeks in France where my diet consisted mainly of baguettes and cheese, it made no difference to my size. I think it\u2019s clear that both my hunger levels and the portion sizes that sate me have decreased so much that even indulging in delicious food makes no difference to the scales.<\/p>\n

However, while I am delighted by the reappearance of my cheekbones, like Nora Ephron I too feel bad about my neck, which definitely had a hint of the wattle about it after six months on jabs. But I think I can live with it. After all, as any self-respecting middle-aged French woman will tell you, isn\u2019t that what silk scarves are for?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In May this year, I was waiting at the local train station barrier for my best friend, who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[92,368,105,388,172728,4447,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-534014","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-dailymail","9":"tag-femail","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-lifestyle","12":"tag-lifestylebeauty","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115453779478901936","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}