Yesterday I had my second injection of Mounjaro. Taking the injections is way easier than I imagined, probably partly becuase the needle is the thinnest I ever had to deal with, far from the large ones for blood donation and the massive one for piercings. Lucky that I the blood donating got rid of my anxiety regarding needles.
My hunger dissapeared right away and that starving feeling I usually get by lunch never came. The dinner hunger was mild and the reason I then ate ice cream after was a bad habit and the fact that I had it in the freezer. From now on I’m gonna try to not buy this I shouldn’t be eating.
After I stopped with Mysimba my body waged war on me and decided that we needed to eat EVERYTHING that we had avoided for the past months. I gained like 2 kgs in less than I month. As of this morning I’m down 1,5 kg from that peak weight, so it’s all moving in the right direction.
I changed health care clinic today. I don’t know why it makes me nervous. With the expection for the last doctor I met, pretty much every single one at the previous clinic haven’t given me a good experience. It’s only been the bare minimum. So how much worse can it get? Plus the new one has better opening hours.
I thought I had found a good doctor at the previous clinic when he helped me with the weigh-loss mediciation and when he wasn’t delusional regarding what is a good BMI for me, but the notion of me stopping the medication and then keep losing weight with “behavioural modification and diet changes” is laughable. If it was that easy I wouldn’t be overweight in the first place.
So now when the medication ran out in the end of december and no one reached out for follow up, just bit the bullet and made the change. I do not need someone to call me for a blood pressure test once a year without making it clear that according to their documentation I have hypertension, tell me it’s a bit high but not high enough to treat and I should just try to loose some weight and then not listen to me regarding my issues regarding weight-loss. If you’re not gonna help me, I’m gonna try somewhere else. You’ve had at least 5 years to change, so now I’ve had enough.
So a new clinic and new hope of some actual good treatment I move on in to the new year. Plus, this new clinic has telehealth, which I hope I will get more used to.
During last year, I was on medication for weight-loss for 10 month. During this time I did loose 10kg, which felt like a success. But the weight-loss wasn’t the biggest win. That was the fact that I could live my life without having to always think about what not to eat, to battle the cravings as well as the shame and anxiety that comes with “failing”. I was able to just live my life, in a way that ‘normal’ people without a fucked up relationship with food and eating do.
But after 10 months, my doctor had the mentality of “you can’t be on this medication forever, you just need to change you habits” and I wasn’t given the medication anymore. And of course, as soon as I stopped, my behaviour returned to what it was before. This makes med feel like this isn’t an issue regarding my habits (shouldn’t stopping to do something for 10 months break a habit?) but rather something wrong with my brains or hormones? I get medication that tweaks with the signal substances in my brain and I change my habits and then when the medication stops, I go back to what I did before.
So after struggling with my weight for 20 years, I need to deal with this for real. I’m going down the injection path. I will not be on Ozempic, but Mounjaro in hopes of my brain starting to cooperate with me and that perhaps I finally can loose the weight I keep gaining during the seasonal depression episodes. Maybe I for once in my adult life will reach a weight so that I don’t have to have the discussion with doctors about BMI being a stupid measurement for someone who’s just over 1,5 m and built like I should have been going into battle.
But I do have some, maybe not guilt, but something similar about it. It feels like cheating, the same way weight-loss surgery would feel like cheating. Why is that? If it’s not working the way it “should” be done, why should you keep suffering and not do what will actually help you? And who am I cheating? I know what I’m doing, I’m not fooling myself. I won’t go around bragging about my weight-loss (if there is any), but I will be honest on how I did it if someone asks. It’s like it HAVE to be difficult to loose weight and any time you get any help to make it easier, you’re cheating. Nothing else I’ve tried have worked and I have enough knowledge so it that it “should” work, but it’s not enough. I need help and so I decided to do this. I still will have to eat less and take care of myself. It will still be a process. So why does it feel like cheating?
How’s your quarantine going? Are you feeling happy and healthy? Or are you like me, gaining weight and ready to kill your neighbour?
For me, the biggest problem with the self-isolation is not the being alone. As an introvert I am kind of fond of it, it’s my go to relaxing stage. But the part of being forced to be by yourself, and not being able to go out and do the things I would usually do when I’m by myself is getting to me. It’s not like I can go to the movies, hang out at an amusement park or even travel in good conscience. And I do not own a car, my bike was stole a few years back, so I am reliant on public transport which feels like a cesspool of infection right now.
Generally I’m not afraid of getting sick, I believe I’m in good enough condition to survive a round of Covid (I’ve survived the swine flu and mono without dying, I’ve got this), but I don’t want to risk the health of others who are less equipped to handle it. Like my grandfather. The whole uncertainty of the world, with global finance being in the shitter and the traveling restrictions (and the shaming, rightfully so, of people who can’t stay put when they should) is adding a layer of constant, low energy stress to my life that I don’t need.
Other than what’s probably a little bit of lowkey depression, it messed up my weight loss completely. I had been steadily losing weight for like 8 months, was down like 8 kgs and getting back to a pre-drepression weight and the BAM! Fucking pandemic! I did not handle it well, and I’m now, 5 month later, up 6 kg. Fun isn’t it? Let’s just not only have constant mild anxiety that it’s like the world is coming to an end, let’s make all the hard weight-loss work undone while we’re at it. Because God forbid we’d happy AND less fat. I’m not gonna say skinny, because I’ll never be skinny (I’ve never been skinny as an adult), but less fat/obese perhaps?
Add to that the over 100 days of working at home with a neighbour on the floor above that plays techno on max volume at random times during the day, daily moves his furniture by dragging it across the floor (can someone get this man an interior decorator that can get his floor plan figured out?!) and stomps up and down the stairs as well as through his apartment with what I can only assume is combat boots, for shits and giggles. And no fucking way I’m knocking on his door to ask wtf he’s doing. I’ve done that once in the past like 8 years (around midnight a Tuesday when he must have been flipping his furniture over like a cross fitter flips tires) and he opened with a baseball bat in his hand telling me there’s no way he’s stopping and then slamming the door.
So how are you doing? Are you hanging in there? Are you struggling or are you all good? Let me know! If you’re doing well I’d love to know what you’re doing and if you’re struggling, well then we can bitch about it together.
If you’re getting in to the whole fitness-thing you’re going to hear that the most important part of getting into shape is not the workouts, but your nutrition and to build muscles you need to eat protein. And lots of it. But how much protein do you actually need and how much can the body process?
From time to time I’ve had a goal to eat more protein just because I’ve been told that you need it when building muscle. But just knowing that I need more made it feel so fluffy and hard to follow-through on. So I tried to do some research and here’s what I found out.
tl;dr 0,8-2,0 grams per kilo body weight
Why do you need protein?
Protein is called the building blocks of the body and is part of all of the bodies tissue cells. It’s used to build up cells and to form enzymes and hormones. Protein is made form about 20 amino acids, nine of which we can only get through our food since they can’t be produced in the body.
How to calculate protein intake
Protein intake requirement is calculated per kilo body weight and the amount should be calculated as part of your daily caloric requirement.
How much do you need?
According to the Nordic nutrition recommendations, 10-20 percent of your caloric intake should be protein. That’s 50-60 grams of protein daily. But for physically active people you can need 65-160 grams per day.12
The World Health Organization recommends 0,8 grams per kilo for adult and 0,9 grams per kilo for children 2-17 years old.
For very physically active people the protein requirement is larger. Some studies show that elite athletes needs as much as 1,4-1,8 grams per kilo.
The Swedish Olympic committee recommend 1,6-1,7 grams per kilo3 and Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition recommend 1,4-2,0 grams per kilo.4
So, what does this mean? Well, you should stay above 0,8 grams of protein per kilo, but elite athletes can consume up to 2,0 grams per kilo. So where do you fall? Well, it’s up to you really, but if you are working hard on building those muscles, perhaps get you protein intake up, but don’t kid yourself, you’re not a professional athlete, so no need to go overboard. So make it 1,2 gram per kilo, just so we actually have an answer to this question. Start there and see what works for you.
Why more protein
Protein is one of the macro nutritions we need and it’s an important part of your diet. A protein containing high protein can help you keep full for longer and help you keep to your diet.
Sources for protein
You find protein in meat, like red meat, chicken and fish and these are sources with high protein content. There’s also protein in dairy product, like milk and yoghurt as well as whey, and also in eggs.
There is vegan sources for protein which include nuts, peas, quinoa, beans and tofu, as well as leafy greens, seeds and hemp.
Too much protein
A diet with too much protein can affect your kidneys and cause stress for the heart.
