Are Ozempic and Mounjaro the Magic Weight Loss Bullet?

I've lost 140 pounds, 130 while on Mounjaro; I've found that it has created the space for me to cultivate the habits that have changed my life.

New milestone.

One hundred forty pounds lost!

I started at 316 pounds in July of 2022 and am now at a new low of 175.9 pounds.

This week, I will dive into one of my weight loss tools. It’s called Mounjaro, and it’s a Type II diabetes medication that my endocrinologist prescribed me.

In my other articles, I mentioned my perspective on Mounjaro numerous times — I treat this medicine as just a tool. It has helped me quiet the noise my body gives me, enabling me to heal my relationship with the mental and emotional food noise I experience daily.

The emotional and mental noise would make me eat when I’m stressed with work, my wife is pissed off at me, I’m having a bad day, or even I want to celebrate.

These thoughts and emotional patterns want me to use food to soothe myself and feel good.

Mounjaro does not fix this for me.

It has created the clarity for me to know when I’m truly hungry or my emotions are at play. This has allowed me to become present with these emotions and fully experience them.

During my weight loss journey, I’ve come to accept that these emotional feelings that draw me to eat to soothe, comfort, and celebrate are not going anywhere.

They will be with me for the rest of my life!

My work has been to learn to recognize when these emotions are at play and change how I respond to them. I have learned to breathe deeply and journal instead of reaching for food when I’m stressed. To write an article like this to celebrate instead of having pizza.

I’ve also learned to see my human nature and to have compassion for myself when I miss the mark.

I’ve worked hard to cultivate awareness, find compassion, and enact behavior change.

The work I have done gives me the faith that when, later this month, when I take my last shot of Mounjaro, all my progress won’t be lost.

This work has also allowed me to acknowledge and experience my fear of life without Mounjaro — while maintaining my confidence and faith in myself.

The next phase of life — without this tool.

In June, I started the process of “titrating” off of Mounjaro. My dosage has slowly been lowered, and I have doubled the time between shots. As I’ve done this, I’ve noticed the subtle loss of the appetite suppression of the medication as I experience its half-life. By the end of each two weeks, I’m essentially experiencing life without the medication.

As I’ve done this, I have seen the dividends of doing the hard emotional work of bringing awareness and compassion to my food triggers.

This awareness has allowed me to catch myself mindless eating and then make a conscious choice around that behavior.

It has also allowed me to bring compassion to myself when the stress of work, life, or my emotions are driving me to food — without Mounjaro in my system, I’ve had to slow down and ask myself questions like:

“Am I hungry, or am I stressed?”

“Am I hungry, or am I upset?”

“What do I really need right now? — What need am I trying to fill with food?”

How Mounjaro and similar medications work.

According to Mounjaro.com, Mounjaro works by having the following effects.

• Enhances insulin secretion

• Improves insulin sensitivity

• Decreases food intake

• Delays gastric emptying and reduces glucagon levels. (which diminishes over time)

Combined, these effects result in lower glucose concentration in both fasting and postprandial states, ultimately leading to weight loss.

Many people, myself included, also report a quieting of “food noise” or the mental chatter telling you to go eat.

In my opinion and experience, this is where you have two choices.

You can use weight loss medication as a tool or use it as a magic fix.

Medications like Mounjaro, Ozempic, and Wegovy are like using the bumpers in bowling. They keep the ball out of the gutter so you can learn how to play — i.e., use it as a tool.

Sure, you can throw the ball randomly down the lane, and it’ll bounce off the bumpers. You might score an occasional strike or a spare — lose a lot of weight — or hit hardly any pins or no pins — lose no weight at all — Your results will be completely random.

The thing is, if you don't take the time to learn to play — use it as a magic fix — when the bumpers get taken away, the ball will go back to going in the gutter the majority of the time — you’ll gain the weight back.

The goal of these medications is to give you the confidence to get the ball down the lane consistently and focus on your technique so that you are not touching the bumpers every time.

That way, if or when the medication goes away, you have mastered the emotional and physical (diet/exercise) things you need to do to continue to lose and eventually maintain your weight loss.

Closing Thoughts

I will close today with a note I shared with my brothers in the Man Talks Alliance early in February 2023. It was the moment I realized that doing the Emotional Work around food would be a lifelong journey for me. It was also the moment I surrendered to the fear I was avoiding about coming off of Mounjaro.

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Emotional Work In Action

February 2, 2023

I am working through some wounds this week...

Many here [in the Alliance] probably know I've been pushing my edge by publicly sharing my weight loss journey on social media and writing about it in my Substack publication.

I'm finding that by doing this, I’m coming up against my protector parts.

This week, oddly enough, the topic I'm writing on for my Substack is emotional work. It's the second component of my formula for excellence. I'm writing about how emotional work has been a critical component of my weight loss success — what it looks like for me to do the emotional work.

Fitting the universe would give me some emotional work this week.

So, this brings me to where I'm at right now...

Yesterday, on the Wednesday Morning Wisdom Circle, I shared some challenges I worked through last week. One of them involved ensuring I'm being transparent in my writing about the medication my doctor put me on to help with my weight loss. It's called Mounjaro, and it's a GLP-1 agonist.  It aids weight loss by suppressing appetite and lowering blood sugar (it's a type II diabetes medication).

My endocrinologist put me on it because of how overweight I was and that I was pre-diabetic.

In my writing last week, I discussed how I view this as a tool, just like my fasting practice. I am making a big point NOT to consider this medication as a FIX. It is helping me to separate the body food noise from the emotional and mental food noise so that I can build good habits. So I can heal the wounds around the mental and emotional noise with food.

I view fasting the same way. It is very much a spiritual tool. On fasting days, I practice being with emotions; on eating days, I practice giving up control and being disciplined with food.

One of the men on my team sent me an article about how people who come off GLP-1 agonists tend to gain weight back. A key detail in the article is that it's critical to make lifestyle changes while you are on the medication and not just depend on it so that you are more likely to maintain your weight loss when you come off.

Most people don't do this.

It turns out that that man sending me this article was indeed a gift - it triggered the crap out of me. 

Yes, that may be an odd thing to say... “It was a gift I got triggered???”

It was a gift because it showed me something I have been avoiding... 

The fact is that when I come off of this mediation, statistically speaking, I will not succeed.

I say it this way because even though I'm doing all the right things in my weight loss journey, to some extent, I have been bypassing the fear that statistic creates. 

Last night, I let myself experience the fear...

When I did, I saw something related to the parts map I created as part of my Internal Family System (IFS) Therapy.

My battle with weight loss has always felt like a tug of war between the part of me that wants to numb out from pain and the part of me that wants to push me to extremes to fix what's wrong with me through control.

Last night, I saw the third player in this dynamic. The part of me that wants to stay out of trouble.

When that part of me is teamed up with my controller, it looks like trying to get it right.

When he is teamed up with the numb-out part, it looks like being invisible but in plain sight...

In the past, this played out in my ballooning to over 300 pounds...

For the first half of my adult life, I was a reservist in the military. I was up against a standard I had to meet twice yearly. I would push and push to get it right and pass the fat test, only to let go and gain weight.  When the rollercoaster finally became too much, and the fear of getting in trouble with the military became overwhelming, I became invisible and got out of the military.

So, back to last night and the fear of coming off the medication.

I saw the part of me trying to get this right - he wants to push me past my edge. He wants to present a perfect image to the world.

I also saw the part of me that wants to be invisible - he wants to tell me I shouldn't share my journey because "what if I gain the weight back?" He tells me I'm an imposter. He wants me to bypass sharing I'm on the medication (lying through omission). Because if I'm invisible, I'm safe — I can’t get in trouble.

I'm just letting myself sit with the bombshell of insight today, allowing myself to feel it, and looking to where I can provide those parts of myself safety.

On the other side, I know I'm doing the right things. I am cultivating good health habits. I'm doing the hard emotional work around healing my addictive tendencies with both dieting and numbing out with food. 

Just a reminder that part of the road to success includes the emotional road bumps along the way, for they are where the growth is.