Author
Author · 66 posts
I haven't had a bacon, sausage and black pudding sandwich on farmhouse bread in so long it actually hurts to think about it. I'm not hungry. I just want it. So I'm going to have it, and I'm not going to make it mean anything.
A colleague mentioned drinking two bottles of wine with dinner, then went and bought a burger, a pasty and a cookie for lunch the next day. They don't look like they're paying for any of it. I sat there and sulked.
Halloween, the wife's birthday month, then Christmas. I can see the whole run of temptation coming before it's even started. Turns out the thing I actually need to worry about isn't any of the food.
14 stone 3 pounds doesn't look like much of a win written down like that. Write it as 199 lbs instead, and it's a number I've never been under before.
I commute on Mondays, so I wasn't home all day. Didn't matter — I knew my wife had made stew before I'd even reached the front door. Turns out that's the one day of the week I'm glad to have missed it.
There's a KitKat on my desk that's been there for longer than I can remember. I look at it, and nothing happens. I don't really know what that means. I'm just noting that it's odd.
Tai Chi is supposed to be slow and gentle. I feel like I'm sprinting to keep up and sinking at the same time. If you've ever been the one person in the room who can't make a 'simple' movement look simple, this one's for you.
My stomach has been churning since last night's dinner, and it's not the first Tuesday that's happened. The timing turns out to make a surprising amount of sense once you look at how long tirzepatide actually sticks around.
Two bars of 85% cocoa are sitting in the fridge, and I've started to wonder whether I'm just looking for permission. So I checked what the actual evidence says, and it's less flattering to my argument than I'd hoped.
I've started wondering if I've forgotten what physical hunger actually feels like. I'm not sure I can answer that one. What I can tell you is what happens when I open the biscuit tin now, and it isn't what used to happen.
I thought I'd learned my lesson about buying food in bulk after the 5 kg bag of sugar. Turns out I'd learned the wrong one.
A joke on Mock the Week's 2026 summer special landed harder than it should have, because it described a way of eating I genuinely didn't know existed. Then I noticed I do the opposite too.
I'm not really a chocolate person, but I've been eating less, the chocolate's still in the fridge, and somebody has forgotten the rule. Two bars of 85% cocoa are now the most difficult thing in the kitchen.
Shepherd's pie from the freezer, plenty of vegetables, and then I stopped. The old ritual was a pie-and-gravy sandwich on buttered bread, then more bread to mop up the gravy. Tonight I didn't follow it, and my brain has filed a complaint.
I want to move better, and the plan is Tai Chi in the front room. The hard part isn't the movements. It's being seen doing something that feels unfamiliar and slightly ridiculous.
14 st 5 lb this morning. Thirty-three pounds down from where I started, which is about three bags of sugar, which I can now feel on the bike.
Lasagne, salad, garlic bread and two leftover onion bhajis from a Friday night takeaway. Mounjaro had made me forget to eat lunch, so the bhajis had one remaining window, and it was Saturday dinner.
I never thought I'd be someone who injects themselves with medication. Then I remembered who taught me it wasn't a big deal, and it wasn't even a person.
The bubble the syringe left in my thigh was medication, not air — but it got me wondering what would actually happen if it had been air. Turns out that's a more interesting question than I expected.
It isn't cheap, and I've been worrying about what happens when I stop it. Then I did the maths and found what looks suspiciously like a loophole.
95 kg and 14 st 13.4 lb are exactly the same weight. They don't feel the same. Turns out it's not sentiment, it's just how the numbers move.
A Tesco Finest Belgian Dark Chocolate Ginger Cookie, and the realisation I hadn't had chocolate in weeks. Turns out eating some doesn't mean I've fallen off anything.
I knew the number would move again by next week. Didn't stop me smiling at it.
My wife's stomach says yes and her head says no. Mine is the other way round. Same drug, different doses, almost opposite experience — and it explains why she can leave food on a plate and I can't.
Mounjaro doesn't replace a calorie deficit, it just makes one easier to hold. Turns out my actual problem isn't breakfast or lunch. It's what happens to whatever's left on the plate at dinner.
Two slices of buttered toast versus a bowl of cornflakes and half a pint of milk. I assumed the cereal was the lighter choice. Then I actually weighed the bowl.
Not hungry, three hours after dinner, stomach still growling, and yet stood at the fridge wanting something I couldn't name. That's when it stopped being obvious where the medication ends and I begin.
No fanfare, no milestone. Just a week where I realised I hadn't thought about my stomach once. Three months in, that felt like the real progress.
The scales say I've lost weight. So did my jeans. But when I look in the mirror I still see the belly, and I'm starting to wonder whether I'm looking at me, or at the me I expect to see.
The office kitchen rarely has treats in it. When it does, it's grossly unfair. And this time the treats never seem to run out.
I'd been telling myself I'd lost about a stone. Then I did the sum, and realised how much a number depends on the story you tell around it.
Three roast potatoes and a Yorkshire pudding left on the plate, half the crackling handed to the dogs, and then the real test: a Sunday dinner with no pudding to follow.
The scales didn't tell me. The jeans did. Halfway round a woodland walk, my wife pointed out my trousers were on their way to my knees, and the belt had to click a lot further than I'm used to.
Last Friday I used a syringe for the golden dose. Drawing it up was easy. Getting the needle in far enough turned out to be the part I got wrong.
She's tried every diet going, and only Mounjaro has ever worked for her. I never needed her to change. What I hadn't understood, until I started taking it myself, was how differently the two of us actually experience food.
A workplace safety sign for the only hazard that actually threatens this operation.
I've lost ten kilos. It didn't leave the way you'd assume - and the actual answer is stranger and more obvious than pissing, shitting, or sweating it out.
It's not really about eating the thing. It's about deciding I deserve it, and then seeing how long I can leave it sitting on the desk while I get on with a day's work.
Sat with a cup of tea, thinking about a KitKat, and my mouth starts watering. That's not supposed to happen if it's just in my head.
A four-finger KitKat surviving three days on my desk, then my wife puts a bag of yellow-label custard doughnuts and a cup of tea right next to me. This wasn't a clean win. It was a genuine fight, and I very nearly lost it.
95.2kg today. A hundred grams was all it took to tip from one side of the 15-stone line to the other, after hovering right on it for the best part of a week.
Trying to actually live by Friday's plan to cut the rum measure - a smaller glass, a battle I didn't win, and a silver lining that's real even if it isn't the one I meant to earn.
The pen ships with more than four doses' worth in it by design. What's actually left over after the fourth injection, what the manufacturer's own guidance says about it, and what it means in milligrams if you use it anyway.
I've got pretty good at noticing when I don't need the food. Turns out I needed to point the same question at what's in my glass.
Half a burger, a very good Kung Po, and a battle with the biscuit tin I actually won - followed by my gut presenting its bill the next morning.
A posh burger van, a venison burger I didn't finish, and the difference between stopping because I'm full and stopping because I just don't like it enough.
Crossing BMI 30, and working out that I'm now carrying around more weight less than when I started than my actual work backpack weighs.
Not finishing the beans - a trivial-sounding moment that was actually the old instinct losing an argument.
Two previous Rotties, both called Roxy - neither would touch raw food, but one treated even cooked food like a suspect and the other would eat anything - and what that taught me about eating because it's there.
What Mounjaro has and hasn't done for my relationship with food, and why the biggest change isn't the number on the scales.
Stopping halfway through a halloumi wrap and fries, and losing interest in finishing it just because I paid for it.
Starting weight, current weight, and why I'm still not chasing a target.
My wife pointed out I go for the good stuff first at Sunday dinner - which makes leaving food behind now a much harder argument than it sounds.
A flashback to 2020, when COVID took away my sense of taste completely and I still finished the whole Sunday dinner - a reminder of what my relationship with food actually was.
A pub toilet, an occupied cubicle, and a level of bowel pressure that turned out to have a rather good comparison waiting for it on the internet.
After the 5mg experience, I stretched a 5mg pen into eight weeks of 2.5mg doses using the click count instead of buying a dedicated pen - the maths, the manufacturer's objection, and a financially tempting idea I'm not going to pretend didn't cross my mind.
A restaurant meal where being full finally won the argument against finishing the plate.
A more visceral way of feeling the weight I've lost than a number on the scales: it's now more than the backpack I cycle to work with.
A ridiculous but genuine example of wanting food and choosing not to eat it anyway.
What the dose increase to 5mg did to my digestive system, and why I dropped back to 2.5mg.
Mounjaro changed the physical side of eating. It didn't install willpower - it just showed me how much of it I'd been using all along.
Mounjaro doesn't just kill appetite, it slows everything else down too. What that's actually meant for me, and whether reaching for Immodium on the bad days is a good idea when the gut's already running slow.
Mounjaro made physical hunger quieter, but my brain never got the memo.
A side effect I wasn't expecting: sulphurous, uncontrollable burps that arrive with zero warning - unlike every other burp I've ever had, which I can at least manage.
I have not become someone who treats food as fuel - I just started noticing that finishing a plate and being hungry are two different questions.
Why I never set myself a number to hit on Mounjaro, and what I actually want instead.