Grudey1

I'm down over 55 lbs. since February WITH NO MUSCLE LOSS. I know this because I regularly use the high-end InBody machine at the clinic I go to. Now, I am very careful about eating enough protein everyday and weightlift heavy 3x per week. I also bike 2-3 days per week.

You feel full very quickly so you have to prioritize what you eat. You can literally fill up with bread and then have zero appetite for your actual meal if you aren't careful. I occasionally get mild heartburn the day or two after my weekly shot but that is the extent of my side effects.

DMC707

Thats good. We started at roughly the same time . I am 10 months into this and the day i get my shot , i still feel poorly for the remainder of the day. Listless and lethargic.

I have had periods where i havent lost any weight for 2 or 3 weeks but overall , it is working as i am closing in on the 70 pound mark. I am going to make a big push but i am looking at the reality that i may not hit my 100 pound down mark in a calendar year. I started at 324, so even with 100 pounds down, i will still be a Clydesdale (although my local racing organization has changed the Clydesdale weight from 200 lbs to 225 )

My goal when i started was 225, but after further consideration and looking at body fat analysis scans and the like , my goal has shifted and i would now like to get sub 200. I just am not carrying the muscle mass to make 225 work out the way i want it

arex

https://gizmodo.com/wegovy-semagluti...oss-1851103279

RubeRad

yikes! OD is obviously not good.

I just heard this morning though, Wegovy is showing improvements to heart health, even when controlling for weight loss

DMC707

Had my weekly weigh in and received shot at the clinic this morning. Followed that up with a trip to another facility to have my body composition measured to make sure I am staying ahead of the curve. Weight loss has been slooooow the last couple of months but since my last scan I was down 8 lbs with only 2 being lean muscle mass

im good with losing some muscle mass, I’m a meso-endo body type , meaning my base structure is quite heavy and dense, but I also have the endo ability to pack on a lot of fat too. But it’s a highly individual thing and very dependent on the amount of lean body mass you have to start with and I have a surplus of that too.

Alan K

Not commenting on your specific case, but watch for loss of muscle mass, which is not a good thing.

donalson

I think that can be said of any form of weight loss... it was one of the reasons I had a DEXA scan right along when I started... it'll allow me to closely monitor both fat and muscle.

Alan K

I’m not sure that weight loss methods based on exercise and sensibly reduced calorie diet (nutritionally balanced) cause loss of muscle mass. GLP-1 analog are a different kind of thing.

Leisesturm

To avoid lean muscle loss requires a LOT of hard work in the gym. That's the only place (home or commercial) where you can get under enough load to stimulate muscle growth. Most of us aren't working that hard so we are, as we age, losing lean muscle mass at the best of times. In a dieting scenario, and the Ozempic assisted weight loss is just dieting assisted by high performance appetite suppressant, lean muscle loss is an inevitable consequence of the reduced nutrition intake. Even harder work than average can limit the losses but, just saying, it is possible that adjusting activity and bodybuilding workload to exceed calorie intake would reach the same conclusion. Good thing, because far more are locked out of being able to obtain the high performance appetite suppressants than those who can afford it or have their insurance cover it or even have their GP's prescribe it.

DMC707

Really depends on your body composition and how much weight you have to lose. If a person is over 60-70lbs overweight or more, unless you want to take 3 years to get it off , its a guarantee that some muscle mass will be lost in the process. Its why in my case, i think the body composition scans have been very important for my peace of mind in that regard, but in my case, my LBM (lean body mass) was hovering at 200 when i started this process

arex

https://gizmodo.com/zepbound-tirzepa...rug-1851226858


.

DMC707

I started this thread on 2/10/23 referencing the program I began on 2/6

2/5/24 was my one year anniversary at the clinic I go to. I’m down 75 lbs even. I had been weighing in even lighter a couple days Before I went to the clinic to get my injection but although I have been keeping records I only count the Monday morning weigh in as the official one

went to a separate facility to get my InBody body composition scan next. Out of 75 lbs, 10 was muscle mass and as I documented in the thread, that was lost in the first 3 months where I dropped 40 pounds almost too quickly. In the last 8 months I have lost zero lean muscle mass. The hard particulars? I started at 324 and Monday was 249
Went through a very nasty breakup in the fall - don’t ever discount the affects of personal stress and cortisol on sabotaging a program- between July and December I only had a net weight loss of 6 lbs, but have dropped 15 since December 18 (last court appearance was Dec 7 - hmmmm)

I’m not stopping and have shifted my goal from 225 (A weight I was formerly quite Lean at) to 200. Being 225 and lean was over two decades ago the 10 pounds of lost muscle mass won’t magically reappear —-

pics below on the right are from Jan, 2023. I wore the same hat and found a similar buffalo plaid shirt . The bike pic is me finishing the Hotter Than Hell hundred in August and I was probably weighing between 265 and 270 and I am likely around 280 in the motorcycle pic

At 249 , If I am to be brutally honest with myself , I’m still looking pretty haunchy , But it’s a dramatic improvement over the pic on the right from around the time that I started

I am amused to think that if I hit 225 I’m not eligible to race Clydesdale class in my local mountain bike series and I hope to hit that in two or three months. It’s irrelevant because I’m racing Cat 2 e-bike class though, but Will still be a fun mile stone to hit

It’s not an easy program or a quick fix for me because my body had reached a state where it just didn’t wanna cooperate at all. Cheat days will also punish me unmercifully at the scale, but I like the discipline. The diet took a lot of experimentation but to get this to work I’m probably 75% carnivore and thanks to some supportive friends who are avid deer hunters I have a freezer full of lean venison So it’s been the backbone of my diet program (venison stew, venison chili, bison burgers etc)
When I reached that big sticking point for a few months I finally had to drop all my pride and say “ how bad do you want this“

So with 50 pounds to go I’m a bit over the halfway mark. This goes hand-in-hand with cycling because cycling is all about suffering, and suffering is life.

those of you following a similar journey or who have similar goals, keep pushing

RubeRad

Great work, thanks for sharing!
By 'haunchy' do you mean big waist/butt? or jowly cheeks? Because the latter could just be looser skin with age

249 beats me, I hover at 255 all the time, and the fact that there is no reason I couldn't be a healthy 180-200 is a fact that I can give mental assent to, but always have a hard time really believing.

I don't think ozempic is the path for me though. Just need to eat a lot less. (And exercise maybe a little more). I've noticed a change in myself the past 6mo or so, in opportunities for gluttony (free food at work, pot lucks at church etc), I get full quicker and end up eating less. Tryna lean into that.

DMC707

LOL -- just too big at the waist-- i gotta pay attention to the clothes i wear more. Have lots of pants that are too big now too and all the material just bunches up , then when you throw a shirt over the top of the whole shooting match, it makes you look wide as a bus. The loose skin deal is already starting to correct itself in the upper arms and chin area.
The lady who referred me to the clinic i go to didnt have as big of a problem as me, so when she lost 40 lbs, she looked like she was just released from a POW camp, but now months later, she's still the same weight, but her face has got some fullness back and some loose skin on her neck has tightened up. The human body has an amazing ability to heal itself as long as we are patient -- depends on how much we're dealing with too though for sure

Sounds like you've got a good bead on what your triggerpoint food issues are. Id say that something like ozempic for me was a last resort issue -- i was so fat i had people asking me if i had considered heading down to mexico for gastric bypass surgery and things like that -- thats a ego crusher. I'm still a long ways from goal weight and i am gearing up for a fight as i dont think the last 1/3rd of the journey will be easy at all but i'll keep popping in from time to time to update, good bad or indifferent



but if i wear some

Shredhead757

So, I had Semaglutude, along with Metformin, firstly as a weekly injection, then later, when it became unavailable in the UK, in tablet form. Both forms of the drug controlled my blood sugars beautifully. I did not really notice much of a reduction in appetite, and carb carvings, even though it is being haled as the new miracle drug in weight loss. It did however have some fairly awful side effects on my digestive system, including severe bloating, nausea and unexpected toileting. As a dedicated fatty, I was still able to lose no weight what so ever. If on a lower carb diet, these side-effects were more manageable. I did then finally decide to go on a very low carb diet (keto / caveman), upped my exercise and stopped all my diabetes drugs. Feeling much, much better now and have average blood sugar of 7.2 mmols / mol.

Kish

I've been on Wegovy for over a year now and it's been interesting to say the least. Now that I'm on 2.4mg things are way easier with hardly any side effects and I've identified what foods work for me and which ones don't. I have dropped 4 pant sizes, two shirt sizes and have lost 75 lbs since I started. I want to say that a lot of the weight I've lost is due to a massive change in my diet and spending more time at the gym, mostly doing upper body lifting.

Now that Washington state is experiencing it's second spring I can hop back on my bike and start riding after work, and bonus that I can use my down tube shifters without having to contort my body to compensate for my no longer chubby gut.

arex

I'm going to talk to my doctor next week about Ozempic. Realizing that my obesity isn't going to fix itself following my knee infection 15 months ago, and my overall health is cratering.

DMC707

My last thread update was 2/7/24 - given that its 4/2 today , thats almost 2 months , although Feb. is a short month, but i'm at 241 at my lowest daily weigh-in but bounced up a couple of pounds after Easter - had a meal that is a little out of my wheelhouse. Nothing crazy by most "healthy people" standards, - beef tenderloin skewers with roasted green beans, and the hardcore offenders, mashed potatoes and cheesy pasta. Really couldnt eat much but the carby stuff triggered some probable water retention - that and a handful of beers

But it'll settle back down soon --- looking to get under 240 this week, but only a pound a week average is a bit disheartening, as some weeks i will be up 2 but then rebound the next by losing 5 , but the brightside is this rate of loss may be the reason i am managing to have minimal lean body mass lost (at least i can keep telling myself that, but who knows ) - i knew the last half to third of the journey was going to get hard , medications or not

exercion

Good to hear from you. I'm not a year into it, am down 42 lbs. I've been going to a barbell class at a local gym usually 3 days a week,ago my weight seems to have plateaued at the moment, but clothing sizes are still going down a bit. At 228 I'm as light as I've been in over 20 years, it's great being lighter at the start of the season than I have fi ished, so I'm looking forward to things. Another motivator is hitting new PR's on regular bike routes, so weight down/power UP!

RH Clark

I failed at the eat less exercise more school for more than 40 years, dropping a few pounds and then slowly gaining back even more. IMHO, what you eat matters more than how many calories are in it. I was able to lose 180 lbs. in 2 years with no drugs or surgery when I stopped eating carbs and started an IM fasting routine of 16 hours without any calories and 8 hours feeding every 24.

professorbob

After 8 months, I lost 5 pounds and my A1C dropped by one point. Oh,and it made me sick to my stomach. I'm done with it. Without Ozempic I went from 280 to 230 in about 3-4 years. I lost it slowly on purpose as every time I've lost weight quickly, I've gained it back quickly. So far, so good.

RH Clark

I cut carbs down to less than 20 grams per day and steadily lost 10-12 lbs. per month for nearly 2 years. I felt bad the first 2 weeks with low energy but when ketosis kicked in, I had good energy. I wasn't cycling extreme distances, but I averaged 100 miles per week my second year by cycling nearly every day.

monogodo

I never was able to get back on Mounjaro with my new insurance, because they will ONLY cover it for a full Diabetes diagnosis. Not for pre-diabetes.

But because of my wife's great insurance coverage, and the fact that she couldn't get it for a few months due to the shortage, she ended up with quite a few extra Ozempic pens in the fridge. We talked about it and researched it, and I started on Ozempic 4 weeks ago (tomorrow will actually be my 5th dose).

She's been getting three 8 mg pens every three months. She had been ramping up from 0.25 mg for four weeks, then 0.5 mg for four weeks, etc., and is now at 1.75 mg. She's having some issues at that level, so she's going to drop down to 1.5 mg. She recommended that I see how I do at 0.5 mg. I'm currently losing about 1lb per day on the 0.25 mg dose. If I do well at 0.5 mg, I'll stay on that, which will make that 8 mg pen last 4.5 months, and the next pen will last 4 months. She picked up a 100-count pack of replacement needles for the Ozempic pens, so we're able to use the pen for much longer than the intended 4 weeks.

I did discuss this plan with my doctor, and he's all for it. I just had my bloodwork done, and my A1C was at 5.5. Back in August, just after I stopped taking Mounjaro, it was at 4.8.