Papal Bull

This blog started nearly a year ago with a story about a wedding and a sporran, and how I couldn’t get one round me.

My own kilt was a definite no no that day. Not a hope. Even the roomier kilt I had borrowed from my (formerly) well-upholstered mate Ali to attend my nephew’s nuptials was a real eye-popping pinch.

Being at that wedding last July was a sweaty, humiliating experience, and I was uncomfortable from start to finish. That was the day I spoke to my pharmacist nephew Naz about getting on Mounjaro.

On Thursday just past I said goodbye to my son, as he set off for his school leavers’ ball, after his graduation ceremony at Greyfriars Kirk - (the one made famous by the faithful wee dug Bobby, and the Covenanters too for that matter, but I digress.)

After nearly a year on Mounjaro I not only got into my own kilt, the one I got for my wedding 23 years ago, but it was, in truth a wee bit too loose. Which was gratifying.

After the ball the boy flew off yesterday to Paris to go InterRailling for a month round Europe with his pals.

Because I start work at 6am I wouldn’t see him before he set off, so, in front of his mates outside the historic church, I gave him a couple of words of fatherly advice.

“For f**k sake, please call your mother; make sure you look the other way first when you cross the road, they drive the wrong way over there; do not piss your money up a wall on day one; don’t be a clever dick in a bar or a club or someone *will* smack you; and just…take it easy.”

I think I told him I love him, that I am proud of him, I hope so.

And that is that, both of them, son now and daughter a couple of years before him, gone.

And it is very hard to think about that. Just two minutes ago they were babies in the bath together.

What happens now?

Well, one door closes and another opens. For the boy, I hope it is the summer of his life and I hope he has an adventure to remember . He will soon be at university alongside his sister and I hope he keeps there the academic focus which has seen him do so well until now.

For me? I am not so sure. I am very near the end of my year on Mounjaro, but I feel there is still lots more work to be done, kilos to cut, and muscles to build.

If truth be told I want to continue on the medication for a while longer, just so all my stats progress from red to amber to green. I am scared of sliding back to where I was. Very scared.

But I am conscious I have made progress, and that, I am probably less hard work to be around than I was. Maybe, maybe not.

I have had a couple of very productive weeks in the gym, usually two sessions a day and walking around Edinburgh at weekends, but still my fragile psychology and constant need for affirmation (exhibit A: this blog) is such that I did a very weird thing on Friday.

I did a very big workout and then a long long steam, and then I jumped on the fantoosh scales at my gym *full in the knowledge * that my heightened post-workout body heat and damp feet would trick the foot and hand sensors that the scales use into giving a false positive reading.

And so it was.

I am not sure what it says about me that I *know* not one of those results is accurate… but that I took some encouragement from it regardless.

However, much much more important than this false affirmation from shonky scales was the message my lad wrote me for Father’s Day last week.

That is real, and as you can imagine, it was pretty wild reading that, and I count myself very lucky.

So yes, the goal now is to press on, keep it all ticking over, and chisel away at myself, in every respect.

There was an advert a few years back on telly that showed a bloke with shades, porn star tache, and pronounced pot belly striding, carefree, along a beach in his budgie smugglers.

I couldn't remember what the ad was actually for until I looked it up just there and was reminded it was for Southern Comfort, (which coincidentally. is one of the very few alcoholic drinks | truly detest, largely because of a very ill-judged evening in the Star Inn in Stornoway in the summer of 1991, but that is another story).

Carefree: This the advert man, it is not me

Anyhow, the advert is called 'Whatever's Comfortable' (geddit?) and was meant, I think, to convey the message not to be ashamed or embarrassed when you ask for Southern Comfort and ...<fill in the random mixer....tomato juice?> in front of your mates.

If this middle aged man is happy in his skin with his gut out on the beach, mooching along drinking sugary alcoslurp - the pitch goes - then you should be too.

I was put in mind of the advert the other day when I, myself, was walking on a beach in Italy wearing not very much clothes.

I still have a belly, and I am working hard now to get that sorted, but, like our portly but confident pal from the advert, I can live with it. I can even lean in to it, as they say these days.

As I strode along the beach in my shorts, I thought, 'Ok I am not going to win any competitions, granted, but I probably don't need to worry about harpoons for the moment either.'

I currently don't feel like an embarrassment to myself, or to my family, and I know that any further change rests in my hands.

I have agency.

Mounjaro has helped with that.

We were in Italy to clear out Uncle Colin's holiday flat.

I detest waste, we all do in our house, so we all went through poor Uncle Colin's clothes to see what was salvageable and what had to be got rid of.

Uncle Colin was a wee guy, probably 5ft 7in at most, but, like me, had a penchant for Marks and Spencer's Blue Harbour range.

Whatever's Comfortable, right?

My 18-year-old son had first dibs and took quite a few items, probably in an ironic, taking-the-piss way I don't quite understand, but, happily, he also left me a couple of Large size never-worn, still-labelled, plain white polo shirts.

Now while these shirts would have been tents on old Uncle Colin, they are, conversely, a little snug, on me, but they are definitely do-able.

The White Brothers: Me and my new Puglian bezzie Peppe, who I met on the plane

I wore the two shirts for most of the holiday and sucked in my tummy when I needed to.

The same trip saw us visit a port town called Santa Maria de Leuca in Puglia, which is, I suppose, the Italian equivalent of Land's End, inasmuch as it is literally the end of the road, the last place at the heel of the Italian boot where the Ionian and Aegean Seas meet.

Due to it's location it has, perhaps unsurprisingly, got a very big lighthouse, which again, unsurprisingly, is at the top of a very big cliff above the port.

With nothing else to to, it seemed only right to do the tourist thing and visit this end-of-the-line lighthouse. From where we parked the car about half a mie away it wasn't clear through the heat haze if there was any kind of cable car or chairlift to this lighthouse, and none of us had done any research.

As we walked towards the foot of the cliff in the baking sun with a mounting sense of dread, it became clear there was no way to get us up from the port to the lighthouse except steps, and what seemed like an awful lot of them.

There was nothing for it except head down and press on, so I led the charge.

As we reached three quarters of the way up my son joked (i think) to my wife and said: "I wish dad was still fat so we wouldn't have to do this."

Many a true word spoken in jest, as they say. I am not saying I ran up the steps, but I know that a year ago, my son is right, I would have come up with an excuse, any excuse not to go.

View from the top

Since we have been back from out trip I have been in the gym every day, at least once, sometimes twice.

Some days, when I look at the scales I feel disheartened, because the weight is both up and down, but on the whole, I am doing OK.

I can fit in clothes I couldn't fit in before. I can see changes in my body andI feel healthier, and happier.

I have fallen out of the habit of writing in much the same way I have scaled back on the number of weekly gym sessions and my mammoth (for me) weekend walks.

It's a bit of a shame because I find writing is a release, in much the same way as the endorphin rush of the gym is addictive.

But real life gets in the way, and I need to be more disciplined to get to the keyboard in my spare time.

Gym has been so-so of late, from the high water mark of 10 sessions Monday to Friday I am now much less prolific, probably down to half that, which is still pretty good, upon reflection.

I could put that at the door of a wee change in my work pattern involving more driving which I think I probably covered in my last post, but in truth I am just being a bit more sensible about it.

Meanwhile I am still on the same weight plateau I think, I say I think because I have not weighed myself in weeks and weeks, but I feel good, relatively healthy for a 52-year-old, and mixing in much more resistance work is slowly but steadily changing my body composition.

That said, the last very big ring of belly fat is proving annoyingly stubborn, It is starting to piss me off when I see it in the mirror, goading me into greater efforts.

I know that if I knuckled down and spent a month hard graft on it, I could really burn a lot of it off.

We shall see.

A friend recently said I now have a 'Dadbod' and I think that perhaps I will have to learn that if that is the payoff at the end of this process of a year on Mounjaro, that that ain't too shabby either.

Better a dadbod than a dead bod.

Onwards.

Mounjaro dose: 7.5mg

Weight today: 112 kilos / 17.637 stones

Weight last week: 112 kilos / 17.637 stones

Weight lost last week: zero.

Starting weight: 147.3kg

Total weight loss: 35.3 kilos / 5 stones 8 pounds

Mounjaro is once weekly injection and must be taken correctly alongside a balanced diet and excercise.

You should seek medical advice before starting a course of weight loss medication.

I am receiving my Mounjaro from Cloud Pharmacy.

It hasn't all *quite* gone to shit, but I cannot lie, I have lost my focus.

The last few weeks have been up and down and my routines have been knocked off, for lots of reasons, but principally through my own actions or inactions.

It is not like I haven't been in the gym, I have, the week before last it was seven or eight times, but just not to the same degree, and I feel like I am drifting a bit. I can feel my midriff stubbornly sticking where it has been for a couple of months.

The last few weeks have had some little successes, I can see that vein on my biceps when i am doing weights that all the muscley dudes have. I never had that in my LIFE.

Also, at a do the other night the wife of a pal who hadn't seen me in ages, said I looked 'phenomenal'..but she was phenomenally pissed, it has to be said.

I have just been...not as on it as before.

One of the main issues has been a wee tweak to my work pattern. Jimmy, our driver, has packed it in after reluctantly realising (or, I suspect, being told by family) that he is not getting any younger.

That means I have been driving in the mornings after doing a quick bit of butchery / cutting from 6am-9am.

Pootling about town and meeting customers, peeking into the kitchens of establishments that serve the city its meals is great fun - it coincides with me finally getting round to reading Anthony Bourdain's famous Kitchen Confidential, which has been very timely - and I enjoy it immensely.

But it means i don't always get back to the factory at the same time, and immeditaely sloping off to the gym for an hour when I am just back in the door seems a little bit of a liberty.

It is a poor excuse I know.

A close friend who reads this blog asked me the other day if I would advocate Mounjaro.

I had to think long and hard before I told her that while it has most certainly worked for me, I am not in a position to say it would work for everyone.

I was very *very* big before, and Mounjaro has given me the room to try to address what needed addressing in he simple input/output calorie equation, and offered me the encouragement of quick and very visible results.

The friend who asked my opinion is not big, though she thinks she is, and I suggested she try alternatives, more specifically getting more active before embarking on medication.

Why would I say that if it has worked so well for me?

Because you can't stay on the medication forever.

As my year on Mounjaro year barrels towards its conclusion I am more painfully aware of this than I ever was before. What will become of me afterwards? Will I ooze back into my blob shape?

A close friend from home (Isle of Lewis) is on Mounjaro long term via the NHS after paying for it for a year and losing five stones, and said it was relatively simple to get on it on prescription; I did read somewhere recently that GPs had been urged to prescribe it to patients more often.

Another friend, a Diabetes Nurse, when I told her what my first friend had said, shook her head ruefully and said my chances of getting on it here in Edinburgh are slim to non-existent. I don't know who is right but I suspect there is a Postcode Lottery element to it all.

Anyhow, I am just back from a week family holiday in Galloway. What a beautiful part of the world. I hardly know it all but I will be returning as soon as I can. I got to share a pint with my boy (and daughter!) to mark his recent 18th birthday, in a fantastic wee pub in Kirkcudbight called the Masonic Arms, which was a great experience. He is funny after a couple of ales, it is in the blood.

I didn't eat like I would have done pre-Mounjaro... but I didn't starve myself either. Lots of carbs and crisps and all kinds of shite. Also, the empty calories of alcohol are just a waste of time and money if you are attempting to lose weight... by any method.

So the dial has not shifted this month either. I feel bloated, a little disheartened and I need to get myself together.

As i said at the outset, it is about routines. I know it is.

Tonight is Sunday. We will have our usual roast chicken tonight, in fact I am about to pop it in brine before settling down to watch Celtic in the Cup sem-final.

No tinnies, no vino de plonko, I will get to gym afer the game, hopefully with a spring in my step.

Then I will prep my work kit for tomorrow, maybe sharpen my knives on my whetstone, then I will create my yoghurt pot for brekkie, then a tuna salad for lunch, and coffee for the morning

That way, when the alarm goes off at 4:56am tomorrow, as it does every day, I will be ready to face the day.

It is Ok to be blown off course from time to time, to hit a bump in the road, you just have to keep on keeping on.

Onwards.

Mounjaro dose: 7.5mg

Weight today: 112 kilos / 17.637 stones

Weight last week: 113 kilos / 17.8 stones

Weight lost last week: zero

Starting weight: 147.3kg

Total weight loss: 35.3 kilos / 5 stones 8 pounds

Mounjaro is once weekly injection and must be taken correctly alongside a balanced diet and excercise.

You should seek medical advice before starting a course of weight loss medication.

I am receiving my Mounjaro from Cloud Pharmacy.

Forgive me father, it has been four weeks since my last confession.

Have I sinned in that time? Undoubtedly.

Since i last took the time to write life has been chocca. First there was Lewis to see my folks and friends with our son, then Athens as a family, then Paris with my wife and pals just last weekend.

At work things have gone from zero to ninety with a 'perfect storm' of colleague absences for one reason or another. Given we are a small family business it has put new pressure on everybody. Maybe it was what I was needing to jolt me to reality.

This pressure of work has meant I have had to cut back on the 10 gym sessions a week, partly due to time constraints (and the desire to show I am a team player) and just...fatigue.

The various upheavals have knocked a hole in my routines which I am currently trying to grapple with. I am just about back in the saddle after all the excitement, with nightly prepping my yoghurt pot breakasts and gym kit. But there are only so many hours in the day, right?

The one unifying and, it has to be said, gratifying thread over the last few weeks is the support of friends and relatives who haven't seen me in a while commenting on my weight loss.

It makes me feel I am achieving something.

I am constantly amazed how many of my friends are on their own health journey. As a wise person once said to me 'Remember, be nice, everyone has their own thing going on.'

Before we go any further I should admit at this juncture that I have not been near a set of scales in weeks. I don't know how much I weigh. If you are tuned in for that, sorry to disappoint.

I am not sure exactly why that is, probably a desire to avoid 'flatline frustration' but what I can say is I feel, in myself - and I have gotten a lot better at reading my own body in the last few months - that I am probably within a kilo or so of my last reading.

Over the course of a month a kilo off on a dose of 7.5mg of Mounjaro is hardly inspiring, I know, but I am not sweating it.

Since I last wrote the days are now noticeably longer, the crocuses and daffs are now out in Edinburgh in full bloom, and it feels like everyone is just a little bit more chipper. My wife's niece has just given birth to a beautiful baby girl, and our own kids are in good health.

I have come in yet another new notch on Uncle Colin's belt and I am really adding in more resistence training into my schedule. I can feel muscles.

I can sit on planes and not have to ask for a belt extension (yes, that happened in the past) and I can have the table down without sucking in my gut.

On the other side of the coin I am really aware I do still have a belly I need to tackle, and that the push buttons on my 2XL (the indignity) denim shirt I bought in Athens will still pop if i sit the wrong way. Sobering.

I should probably do a separate blog about the vagaries of clothes sizing, but my philiosophy these days can be summed up simply as 'if the cap fits, wear it'.

So where are we looking towards the last quarter of a year on Mounjaro? My weight loss has slowed, maybe even stalled, but I can live with that.

And the reason I can live with that is that I feel...well, and I know I have the ability to knuckle down and go up the gears.

I have just had a cooked breakfast which I intend to earn retrospectively with a good long walk around the town.

Then I am going to plop my arse in front of a telly and watch Scotland compete for the Six Nations trophy.

Carlsberg Saturdays? Let us pray.

Mounjaro dose: 7.5mg

Weight today: 112 kilos / 17.637 stones

Weight last week: 113 kilos / 17.8 stones

Weight lost last week: zero

Starting weight: 147.3kg

Total weight loss: 35.3 kilos / 5 stones 8 pounds

Mounjaro is once weekly injection and must be taken correctly alongside a balanced diet and excercise.

You should seek medical advice before starting a course of weight loss medication.

I am receiving my Mounjaro from Cloud Pharmacy.

Cloud Pharmacy is a registered pharmacy, licensed and governed by the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC)

Mounjaro is once weekly injection and must be taken correctly alongside a balanced diet and excercise.

You should seek medical advice before starting a course of weight loss medication.

I am receiving my Mounjaro from Cloud Pharmacy.

I am a bit late with this blog. No excuses except life itself.

Things have been heading in the right direction of late. I feel better, fitter, more 'on it' than I can remember. Something must be about to go wrong, right?

I bumped into a guy i worked with very briefly in my last job. He was a chef and I liked him, he was clearly going places and was ambitious, a hard worker.

Like me, he moved on from the place we both worked pretty sharpish (I did not mind it at all btw, it's just an opportunity arose for the job I am in now which I had to take) and we hadn't seen each other since practically the week I started on Mounjaro.

Anyhow, we chatted when we met in the street, 'where you working now' etc etc and he said something that caught me off guard.

"You look well, man, like REALLY well, and....happy."

It's not the kind of thing blokes say to each other. Especially ones who were only fleetingly colleagues. We had never even been for a beer together.

It made me think.

Did i look unhappy before?

That was fine. Then I met my neighbour Barry, whose own weight loss success with Mounjaro last year spurred me into action.

He has just come off it after going up to 12.5mg and noticing side effects.

He too said i looked great as I am and that I should quit now.

And that got me thinking too.

What does success look like? When will enough be enough?

Yes I feel healthier, but we are not at the end of this journey.

Of course I have seen all the reports about how most people pile the pounds back on after Mounjaro.

While i am nervous about life after Mounjaro I am going to stick to my current 7.5mg dose and meanwhile, what I am trying to do is build habits which will survive afterwards, and more crucially, break the habits which will make me unhealthy, and unhappy.

I have got 20 weeks left and by any rational measure there is plenty of fat left to trim, plenty of goals still to be achieved.

.

The scales are still heading the right way though. I have gone from a 3XL to an L. I may even need to get my old pre-fat clothes out of the loft.

I am going to claim that as 112 kilos, or 17 stone and nine pounds. Another kilo off this week.

Eating breakfast properly after my sugar crash scare last week has really helped and I have made sure I am taking my yoghurt / oat / fruit / honey pots to work with me every day.

One pot does me for two days breakfast and, supplemented by the odd sausage here and there at work, it keeps me full until my dinner.

On the output side of things I am maintaining the ten gym sessions a week, plus weekend walks, which I am loving. I might not be losing weight at as rapid a rate as before, but I feel like by putting in more resistance and weights i can feel a definite noticeable shift from fat to muscle.

I had an appointment with the cardiologist this week to review the results of a 24 hour heart trace I had just before Christmas.

A year ago he was trying to persuade me to have a pacemaker fitted. That was perhaps the shake, or one of them, that I needed to try to change things.

This week he said my results were normal. No more pacemaker talk then, for now at least.

I have written this blog with my thumb while on the coach up north with child 2 to see his grandparents, my parents, in Stornoway.

We set off at 10am, it is 1pm now and we won't get in until after 8pm but...we get to see Scotland and I can see blue sky for what feels like the first time in months.

Onwards.

Mounjaro dose: 7.5mg

Weight today: 112 kilos / 17.637 stones

Weight last week: 113 kilos / 17.8 stones

Weight lost last week: 1 kilo

Starting weight: 147.3kg

Total weight loss: 35.3 kilos / 5 stones 8 pounds

Mounjaro is once weekly injection and must be taken correctly alongside a balanced diet and excercise.

You should seek medical advice before starting a course of weight loss medication.

I am receiving my Mounjaro from Cloud Pharmacy.

Cloud Pharmacy is a registered pharmacy, licensed and governed by the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC)

#dieting#men's health#lose weight#mounjaro#weight#weight loss#on the pen#gym#gymlife#walking

#men's health#lose weight#dieting#weight loss#mounjaro#weight#gym#gymlife#on the pen#walking#cancef#cancer

As soon as I heard the massive ringing in my ears, the onset of Waltzers-style dizziness and my legs turning to jelly I knew that there was a very real danger I was going to go down.

In a room full of skeletons, random bits of dead humans and delicate glass cabinets, that prospect could have been spectacularly bad news for me, if also providing a hilarious free show for everyone else.

As I stood there swirling and shaking like a shitting dog, the black humour of a guy falling into some self-inflicted coma in the middle of Edinburgh University's Anatomical Museum was not lost on me.

But as bad as it would have been to have a hypoglaecemic incident in front of these people, I was equally as mortified that they might think I had fainted because of the gruesome nature of the exhibits.

"i need to sit down, now" I told my wife.

Instead, hand on my elbow, she led me to the cafe directly across the road where I ordered sensible food - a bowl of Greek yoghurt, oats, nuts, seeds and fruit topped with honey. Honest to God, this is my new favourite thing.

My nurse wife interrogated me on my intake over the previous days.

"What did you have for breakfast yesterday?"

"Um...two sausages I think, maybe three?"

"And what did you have for lunch yesterday?"

<<sheepish grin>>

"Nothing. Splendid. And what did you have for dinner last night?"

"Some beef jerky and rather too much gin."

"And what exercise did you do yesterday?"

"Two high intensity cardio sessions, one of 30 minutes, one of 60 minutes, plus a good whack of reasonably heavy resistance training...topped off with 30 minutes in a steam room in a sweat suit....pretty much the same workout routine I have had for the last five days."

"And what have you had to eat this morning before we walked two miles here?"

"i think I may have had a coffee?"

<<silence>>

"Right...it's not really a hard equation is it?"

No, no it is not.

I have been very stupid, and I have been given a wee fright yesterday.

The thing about crashing weight off in the way I suppose I have is it becomes addictive, both physically and psychologically.

I *like* looking in the mirror, and feeling better.

I *like* the positive comments from friends and relatives.

I *like* the way I feel when I get on the tram home after my second workout of the day; absolutely knackered but blissed out on the endorphin release.

I *like* seeing the scales and indicators all moving the way I want them.

But Jesus, one still has to eat and drnk sensibly.

The thing about Mounjaro is you really can, genuinely, forget to eat at all.

That healthy oat bowl I had yesterday was by no means massive, but by the time I had finshed it, a cup of sugary coffee, and a can of even sugarier ginger beer, I was ready to barf.

I have taken yesterday's warning as a double message:

1 - Sort out the input - proper food, properly timed, and less booze. That is going to involve prepping these oat bowls at home and taking them in to work for my breakfast / lunch.

2 - cool it with the output - ten gym sessions a week might be laudable, but it is not sensible.

So no ten mile walk yesterday, instead I watched Local Hero while sitting in my new (to me) Chesterfield chair, another potential favourite thing, and then made a beef stock and some oxtail ragu. A pretty good day all in all, except without the huge walk or gym session.

I should explain the reason we were in the Anatomical Museum at all in the first place was because of one of the other pledges I made to myself at the turn of the year, to live life better, to do more and to keep the old grey matter active. Their open days, and the talks on Burke and Hare, both free, are highly recommended.

So dialling it down next week, even keel, and press on.

I haven't done a weigh-in on my normal scales at my gym in Dalry because I haven't been there this week, I was meant to go yesterday, however the scales at my other gym in Leith are showing really positive results, with fat being converted to muscle at a good rate.

On that basis I am going to be conservative and claim 113 kilos, the same as last week.

Mounjaro dose: 7.5mg

Weight today: 113 kilos / 17.8 stones

Weight last week: 113 kilos / 17.8 stones

Weight lost last week: zero

Starting weight: 147.3kg

Total weight loss: 34.3 kilos / 5 stones 6 pounds

Mounjaro is once weekly injection and must be taken correctly alongside a balanced diet and excercise.

You should seek medical advice before starting a course of weight loss medication.

I am receiving my Mounjaro from Cloud Pharmacy.

Cloud Pharmacy is a registered pharmacy, licensed and governed by the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC)

#dieting#men's health#lose weight#mounjaro#weight#weight loss#on the pen#gym#gymlife#walking

Truth be told I have been a wee bit all over the shop since before Christmas.

With one thing and another it has felt a bit of a roller coaster few weeks, and the death of my dear old chum Uisdean has really knocked me for six.

Added to that I have other very close pals who are going through their own serious health issues.

Behind all of that was having to wait for my own biopsy results over the festive period.

That was the unspoken sword hanging over the whole house, and while I have tried not to dwell on it, or even talk or think about it except when well meaning pals asked me about it, I suppose it must have been preying on my subconscious.

Anyhow, the biopsy results letter arrived yesterday, and I knew instantly what it was as it sat on the kitchen counter.

You can tell an NHS letter from the colour of the paper they use, it is slightly grey, because they use recycled paper. When you see a sliver of grey paper in the wee plastic window in the envelope, it is from the hospital. Good for the environment, bad for those of an avoidant disposition like me.

I opened the envelope without actually considering what I would do if it was bad news.

I am clear. Breathe.

I went for a walk and had a wee blub, a mix of emotions. Relief, guilt that I don't have cancer while people I love might. Grief for my mate. All of the above.

Yet while my heid has been mince over the last while, the one constant has been my gym routine, I haven't let thst slide one bit.

Five days a week, twice a day, first session 30 minutes on the bike, second session 60 minutes on the bike and some weights.

The day I heard of Uisdean's death I dealt with it by going straight to the gym and beasting it for hours. It has gotten to the point now that I am increasing my calorie burn every week, and I feel cheated if I cannot get my endorphin craving sated.

While the weight has been frustratingly slow in coming off I can feel changes in my body composition. More muscle, less fat. Cheekbones reappearing, chins disappearing.

When I was home for Uisdean's funeral I was so glad to be with my friends and family as we stood in unity with Uisdean's family.

One of his pals who had never been to a Lewis funeral spoke to me of how moved he was by he experience, how the men all take a lift of the coffin between church and graveside how the community unites. shows solidarity.

I have been away from home for a long time, but I felt a sense of belonging on that trip that I have not felt in years. I am so so glad I went.

It was also heartening to see that I am less of a worry to my own folks in that I have taken control of my health a bit more. Five stone less of me is a real step in the right direction.

I took my gym kit with me to Lewis and I managed to get in a couple of sessions in the time I was there, as well as walks in my village, Branahuie. Again, a very emotional journey.

But reality has a way of pinching your bum when you think you are winning.

I bought some new clobber, including an XL size retro football top for Sao Paolo team Palmeiras for no other reason than I like the design.

It was sobering to realise it was, if not pinching, then snug around my stubborn tummy.

Likewise when I saw a photo of many of Uisdean's close friends when we convened for dinner in his memory I was horrified to see my middle age spread almost flopping on to the table.

So I would say I have got myself from a Shipping Hazard to a Dad Bod situation. Still got plenty of blubber, still far too many markers in the red zone, and still plenty of hard work to do, but I am heading the right way.

Hard to believe we are nearly out of January already. I am looking forward to Spring more now than I have in years.

Anyway. Onwards.

Mounjaro dose: 7.5mg

Weight today: 113 kilos / 17.8 stones

Weight last week: 115.5 kilos / 18.2 stones

Weight lost last week: 2.5 kilos / 0.4 stones

Starting weight: 147.3kg

Total weight loss: 34.3 kilos / 5 stones 6 pounds

Mounjaro is once weekly injection and must be taken correctly alongside a balanced diet and excercise.

You should seek medical advice before starting a course of weight loss medication.

I am receiving my Mounjaro from Cloud Pharmacy.

Cloud Pharmacy is a registered pharmacy, licensed and governed by the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC)

This last week has been tough. We have lost a dear friend completely out of the blue, and it has knocked us all for six.

It seems a wee bit perverse to talk about in what is meant to be a weight loss blog, but frankly trying to talk about anything else right now, kilos and pounds, would feel crass.

Uisdean Murray was, will alway be, part of our crew. A key part of it. A constant part of it, and he was as good a friend as anyone could wish for.

He was found dead last week in his flat in Glasgow, at the age of 52, and it has devastated his family and his very many pals.

I have known Uisdean for nearly 40 years. It feels strange to count it. He came to the Nicolson Institute, our secondary school in Stornoway, to start third year from Back School, like all the kids from out of town. There were just three days between us in age.

I can't actually remember the first time I met him, I think it would probably have been through either Ali Martin or Donald Carmichael who knew him from a very young age.

With our othe core group of muckers Donald Macarthur, Allan Macdonald, Gavin Simmons, Joan Martin and Ishbel Mackenzie, we kind of grew closer as we got older in the school, and while there have been many years pass by since, we have all kept up with each other to a greater or lesser extent, usually around 'hub' friends who bring us all together, like Ali Martin. I haven't seen Ali yet, but I know he is hurting.

Uisdean was from North Tolsta, a beautiul village at the end of the road that reaches up the east coast of Lewis from Stornoway and both his parents, Donald and Rhoda taught at the Nicolson. His family is the kind you would want as neighbours, good upright people who always worked hard and have achieved and contributed much to their village and the island.

Uisdean was quite simply the best of us. A quiet cove, who always ALWAYS considered his response before he gave it. When he did, finally, offer any opinion it was either measured, right or funny, often all three. I should have taken his example more often.

He was never flashy and if a camera was around he would likely make himself scarce or be in the corner of the frame.

I have hunted high and low for a decent photo of him and the only one I could find was from the night of our Sixth Year dance, taken in Donald Carmichael's front room in Garden Road, just before we set off out into the night to the Seaforth Hotel, but I can't bring myself to post it.

Instead I have borrowed this lovely photo from Uisdean's sister, Erica, with her permission and it shows Uisdean on the far right, with all his siblings - Erica, Ann and Murdo. I think you can see his pride and happiness. All of our thoughts are with them and Donald, his father.

Uisdean and I went to the same university, Glasgow, and shared a flat. I remember we would go regularly to Hubbard's on Great Western Road, just beneath Clatty Pat's nightclub. He was a creature of habit.

Uisdean always stood his round, and made sure if you needed to get home that you got home. His phone number was engrained in my memory, 945 - 5154 I think, (i might be wrong in the mist of time), in the event I needed to crash if i missed the last train. He would never shun a 2am phone call and he would do it for any of his mates.

More recently we went on holiday together and he took joy in our kids. I hadn't actually appreciated how important his own family and his friends were to him until I visited his flat a few years ago and saw his mantelpiece brimming with photos of his siblings and many nephews and nieces, and of course ourselves from a school reunion.

If he seemed shy to the point of painful silence, especially in his youth, by God he could sing after a dram or two. I never knew the song The Kishorn Commandos until he sang it word for word. There are more verses than you'd think. He loved to laugh, and it was one of my favourite pasttimes trying to get him to do so, either through tomfoolery or a joke.

It was pointless playing him at chess, he was literally a genius on that front and in all matters mathematical, but he never shouted about any of that either.

When we were young we spent a lot of time driving around our island, and we would often decide, on the long summer nights, to drive over from east to west coast to catch the sunset at Dalbeg. I can't even begin to explain that place to anybody who does not know it. The next visit there will be very painful.

But in truth, Uisdean was such a Mister Magoo that God alone knows how he passed the driving test. Being next to him in his Mini Metro was an experience.

He never married, and I never enquired about his private life. He was private and that was fine by me. I do know he would have made someone a stalwart, faithful partner. It is a profound sadness that that never, to my knowledge at least, came to pass.

The cruel irony of all of this terrible news, is that Uisdean was in the best physical shape of all of us. I am pretty sure he was still playing five-a-side football, and I know he did a lot of resistance training at home. He was tough as teak.

The other cruelty is that he always appeared, to me at least, the most 'together' out of us all. He never moaned, he seemed genuinely happy and content in his work at Strathclyde University where he had been since Moses was a boy, and he just got on with it all. He was so laid back he was horizontal.

I remember when we talked of retirement he confided that his game plan, his ultimate dream, was to sell the flat and go back up the road, to Tolsta, and to buy a wee boat and just potter around with some nets.

Uisdean's family croft stretches right down the Traigh Mhor, (literally Big Beach in Gaelic) and on most days you can see across the Minch to the hills of Sutherland. We used to walk it regularly. I don't want to euologise about that place too much because I like it fine and dandy the way it is in my mind's eye, empty.

It has been a while since I was there, and none of us know yet what Uisdean's funeral arrangements will be, but I do know that Tolsta cemetery looks over the same beach. There can be few more wonderful resting places.

My friend Donald Macarthur was the one who told me of Uisdean's passing. They were out together in Stornoway for a pint just last weekend and Donald told me Uisdean was in grand form in every respect.

In the days since, as we swapped anecdotes, Donald sent me this text. I hadn't known Uisdean was following this blog, but it does not surprise me.

"On Saturday Uisdean was talking about how well you've been doing with the weight loss while at the same time he was worried in case it was too quick and that you were looking after yourself. Genuinely thinking and hoping the best for his mate. I am sure you are, but it really sums up the man how he cared."

So, Uisdean, my friend, I promise you I won't leave anything on the pitch, and that I will live a true life with whatever time I have left.

It's been far too long since I checked in, and the main reason for that is just not finding the time among work and life in general.

That is me, I think, on week 26, so exactly halfway through this year on Mounjaro, and also at the beginning of another calendar year; a perfect time to take stock of 2025, recalibrate my goals, and try to analyse where I want to go next for 2026.

Before I continue, I should say that I haven't weighed myself since the last time I blogged, which feels like an age ago, largely because the gym, and hence the regular scales i use, has been closed over the festive season.

But added to that, I wanted to give myself a break, both physically and mentally over Christmas. It is easy to get just a bit too wound up in the weekly weigh-in.

So I have eaten and drunk well over the last three weeks, (if nowehere near as much as I would have done if I weren't on Mounjaro), and not beaten myself up over it.

On the other side of the coin I have not let my fitness slide completely while the gym has been closed. I have been walking pretty long distances, for me, every day, usually between 10k and 10 miles. I am not really counting but I reckon I must have walked nearly 100k in the last few weeks, which pleases me no end. My body feels like it is, at the very least, in the same ballpark as before the festivities. In fact my ass feels like two hard-boiled eggs.

So, at a guess I am going to claim I am the same weight as the last time I checked. I have made a decision I will not hop on the scales until this time next week, after a good few hard days back in the gym. And if it is bad it is bad, I know I can change it.

Work before Christmas was, as expected, full-on, but fun. I broke my routine of nipping to gym at lunchtimes because I wanted to muck in with colleagues and show willing at our busiest time of the year. It didn't feel like any kind of chore at all to be part of a team pulling together.

I somehow fitted in an operation in the middle of the week before Christmas and was back at work the next day. When I came round in the hospital bed from general anaesthetic I had to ask a nurse if I had actually had an operation at all, as I felt no discomfort.

Although I am still waiting on definitive results, the hospital experience was much more positive than I could have expected. The doctors were all very happy with my vital stats like weight, heart rate and blood pressure, and I know that would have been a very different story before Mounjaro heled me make changes.

So 26 weeks gone, 26 to go. Five stone gone, and how many to go?

I really don't know, maybe three stone, maybe four? I want to tone up my body now, so I think I will introduce some callisthenics into my routine from tomorrow (Monday).

I would love to return to Lochend Boxing Club for some circuit training at some point...but I can remember how much an hour of intense cardio training there could hurt when I was 15 years younger, so that is something I need to consider carefully before diving in.

But there are other markers in life apart from scales.

It seems a lifetime ago that I asked my pharmacist nephew Naz if he could help me change, and I remember his confidence that Mounjaro would work.

Well, he was right. Mounjaro has helped me change my life beyond the measure of scales. I feel healthier, happier, and more ready to enjoy the present and the future.

The other changes I want to make, and have already made really, in 2026 are more fundamental.

I started 2025 as a supermarket delivery driver and ended it as a qualified butcher working for one of the most prestigious butchery shops in the city. My bosses have understandable high standards that they have developed over generations and it is my duty to learn them, emulate them and repeat them day in day out, and maybe even pass them on to next generations. That is a work in progress.

Outside of work I want to discover more new music, I think I already mentioned I want to learn to dance properly, but I also want to take up the drums again and go back to playing in a pipe band, (if I can find one that will have me), and similarly to take up photography properly again. Maybe even have my own litte bathroom darkroom for the first time in 30 years.

I want to kep my mind active by going to university and Royal Society talks, to maybe get a licence to drive minibuses so I can have the flexibility to be a tour guide on the side, to try new things like skiing and distance swimming, to increase and maintain my health, to take care of the way I look and what I wear for the first time in years, and generally to be an all round better person both for myself and for those I love. That is the hardest part.

Anyway. Onwards.

Mounjaro dose: 7.5mg

Weight today: 115.5 kilos / 18.2 stones.

Weight last week: 115.5 kilos / 18.2 stones.

Starting weight: 147.1kg

Total weight loss: 31.6 kilos / 5 stones

Mounjaro is once weekly injection and must be taken correctly alongside a balanced diet and excercise.

You should seek medical advice before starting a course of weight loss medication.

I am receiving my Mounjaro from Cloud Pharmacy.

I realised yesterday that my previous weigh-in was actually a few days old, and i figured that after a weekend of workouts, frankly silly long saunas and two 10km walks...the needle might have shifted a tiny bit.

But I never thought it would be quite as big a shift as this.

I am going to claim that as 115.5 kilos, a loss of 3.5 kilos.

I just worrked out, as i sit here on the exercise bike qorking up a sweat again, that that takes my weight loss to 31.8 kilos in total. Bang on five stones.

I have a few caveats around this before I congratulate myself.

1. I don't trust these scales.

2. Even if it is correct, most of that loss will be sauna water weight, which i predict will go back on this week as easy as it comes off. If I put too much faith in this reading I will only be disappointed next week when the needle goes up.

But i will take it regardless.

Mounjaro dose: 7.5mg

Weight today: 115.5 kilos / 18.2 stones.

Weight last week: 119kg / 18.74 stones

Starting weight: 147.1kg / 23.15 stones.

Weight Loss:

Mounjaro is once weekly injection and must be taken correctly alongside a balanced diet and excercise.

You should seek medical advice before starting a course of weight loss medication.

I am receiving my Mounjaro from Cloud Pharmacy.

Legend has it that when ABBA's Benny Andersson excitedly rushed home from his Stockholm recording studio one night in 1975 to play his wife, fellow ABBA band member Anni-frid Lyngstad, the embryonic backing track of the song that would later become Dancing Queen, she broke down in tears at its beauty.

That was just the melody and backing lines mind you, long before Ann-frid and Agnetha had even laid down a single word of their own magical chemistry on top of Benny and Bjorn's melody.

Once the completed masterpiece was given to the world in 1976 it had been further polished by the band and their manager and co-writer Stig Andersson ao perfectly that it is still, 50 years later, the perfect pop song.

I've been listening to and watching the video of Dancing Queen a lot recently during my gym sessions and I have tried to analyse what makes it so epic a tune, but I am afraid my musical knowledge is scant. I know I love it but I can't adequtely explain why I love it, but I can try.

From the initial punch in your guts of Benny's trill right along the piano, the backing singers 'ha, ha, haaaa-ing' the catch, and then Agnetha and Ann-frid straight into the second half of the 'you can dance, you can jive' chorus, before any verse has even been allowed to set the scene, Dancing Queen does not waste one breath, one moment of its near four minutes of divinity.

I think it is that straight-out-the-gates, in your face, instantly recognisable Phil Specter-esque burst of noise that makes kids rush to the dance floor as soon as it comes on, often performing ill-advised slide attempts on varnished floors to herald their arrival.

I love everything about it, it's joy and zest, but mostly probably because it has been part of the soundtrack of my life, for all my life.

Dancing Queen and I are almost direct contemporaries, and It has always been there.

Nobody of my vintage has ever had to try to learn the words or the tune to Dancing Queen, you just inherently know them, they are in your DNA.

It is the sum of its parts, the marriage of Roger Palm's driving drum beat and Rutger Gunnarsson's bass line which stops the strings and the vocals from climbing away up to heaven altogether in ecstasy.

Even on its own terms, taken at face value, it would remain the perfect pop song.

But I read a very interesting piece by a writer called Angus Harrison Titled "Why Abba's Dancing Queen is the Saddest Record Ever Made" where he delved a little deeper.

He writes:

"The basic point – the important point – here is this: you have spent your entire life believing “Dancing Queen” is a song about a 17-year-old girl, dancing. And to a point, it is. Yet, have you ever thought about the song’s vantage point?

You are the Dancing Queen, young and sweet, only seventeen Dancing Queen, feel the beat from the tambourine You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life See that girl, watch that scene, digging the Dancing Queen

Make no mistake. This song is about the dancing queen, but it is most definitely not sung by her. Herein lies the tragedy. Our narrator has realised that she is no longer the Dancing Queen. She is no longer young, no longer sweet, no longer 17.

Now, instead, she watches from the bar; the dancefloor a maelstrom of lost faith, memories and missed opportunities. She was once 17, and as such was totally oblivious that the moment would ever end."

That analysis works for me only up to a point, and even if it was spot on I don't think it quite qualifies Dancing Queen for the title of Saddest Record Ever Made. ( Willie Nelson? Dolly Parton? even ABBA themselves with another of their classics, The Winner Takes it All?)

And what if the narrator, like me, takes joy, rather than wistful pain out watching people enjoy themselves?

One of the things I wanted to do throughout this year of taking Mounjaro was to move things in my life ledger from the 'never again/ too fat' column to 'give it a go' column.

Dancing was one of them.

It has taken me up till now to must the courage to go back to a nighclub, and to get on a dance floor.

Luckily my mate Brian has exactly the kind of 'safe space for oldies' club night in the basement of a pub in Marchmont where greying Fred Perry Northern Soul afficionados rub shoulders with mostly posh, mostly studenty youngsters, and they all enjoy soul classics together.

So it was that I found myself there with Brian's partner Jo and her friend Linda last Friday, and I had a total blast.

I may not have had the moves like Jagger, but not caring what anyone thinks of my moves is one of the benefits of age, and I loved seeing a younger generation really getting into Brian's great selection of tracks.

And anyway I am thinking of upping my game in the new year by getting myself along to DanceBase, Scotland's National Centre for Dance for someproper lessonsearly in the New Year. Why the hell not?

I will write more about my ever evolving gym n walk music playlists, and if anyone has any recommends, please do punt them my way.

The last two weeks have been good and steady in the gym, with 8-10 sessions a week topped up with my 10km weekend walks. I am putting in some big efforts, am feeling more energy and am able to burn more calories in every workout.

I am also now paying attention to a few other metrics rather than solely weight. Which is just as well as the scales have barely budged in the last fortnight.

But every other measurement on the Boditrax scales at the gym seems to be going well.

So, not great in terms of weight loss, in fact I am going to call it a nearly zero loss over the fortnight, but I can live with that this time, given the general postive direction of travel.

This week ahead is promising to be the most rewarding of the year work-wise, and we will be busy at the butchers preparing the centre-piece for hundreds of Christmas dinners across the city, whether that is rib roasts, turkeys, or the all-important trimmings. It is high end butchery and I will need to be on my game. Mounjaro has definitely helped me with concentration and focus in my daily work environment.

As corny as it sounds, it honestly feels like a privilege to be trusted with so many Christmas dinners for families I will never know. In fact, if you are reading this before the 16th you still have a chance to grab a piece of that action here.

Anyway, onwards.

Mounjaro dose: 7.5mg

Weight today: 119kg / 18.74 stones.

Weight last week: 119.7kg / 18.85 stones

Starting weight: 147.1kg / 23.15 stones.

Weight Loss: 28.1 Kg / 4.424 stones

Mounjaro is once weekly injection and must be taken correctly alongside a balanced diet and excercise.

You should seek medical advice before starting a course of weight loss medication.

I am receiving my Mounjaro from Cloud Pharmacy.

This is just a quick check in post as i am, frankly, jiggered.

I have wanted to write for quite some time about music and how important it is to me, especially for motivating me in the gym but i just don't have the energy, not tonight.

I am going to claim this week's weight loss as just a pound or so. Not bad, but not great, especially given the work i have been putting in.

On a more positive note other health indicators have been good, such as the metabolism age recorded by the fancy Boditrax body measurement scales in the gym. I am 52, so this reading below pleased me highly.

I went to a party at the weekend and let's just say i enjoyed the hosts' excellent hospitality to the full. My stats would probably have been better if it wasn't for that. But we have to live, right?

Anyway, as i said, a quick post tonight. Tomorrow is another day.

Mounjaro dose: 7.5mg

Weight today: 119.7kg / 18.85 stones.

Weight last week: 120.5kg / 18.97 stones

Starting weight: 147.1kg / 23.15 stones.

Weight Loss: 27.4 Kg / 4.31 stones

Mounjaro is once weekly injection and must be taken correctly alongside a balanced diet and excercise.

You should seek medical advice before starting a course of weight loss medication.

I am receiving my Mounjaro from Cloud Pharmacy.

My friend Phillipe used to live and work slap bang in the middle of Paris. He had a tremendous habit of going to his favourite restaurant, Chez Rene, once a week, usually on a Tuesday if I remember correctly, for his lunch.

The walk to Chez Rene would take him from his studio/ office in Le Marais, across Rue de Rivoli, past the Hotel de Ville, across the Seine stepping stone of Ile de St Louis, then a short push to Boulevard St Germain where Chez Rene, a Paris institution, sits serene and unchanging on a corner.

As he pointed to Notre Dame on the day I accompanied him he explained: "By the time I finish my morning work, I have a good appetite for what I know will be a splendid lunch, because the food is always splendid at Chez Rene, and then afterwards I aid my digestion by walking back. And look, I also get to see this beautiful city fresh every time."

He was right on all counts and I adopted his habit, albeit substituting an impossibly chic old brasserie with my local pub, when I got back, but then I fell out of the way of it. That was years ago.

When I started on Mounjaro in July I re-booted this old habit and I have fallen in love with it all over again.

My preferred route takes me in a loop along Princes Street, then over North Bridge, back up the Royal Mile past St Giles Cathedral, then round the back of Edinburgh Castle at Johnston Terrace down to Castle Terrace and then along to the foot of Lothian Road to complete the loop. Genuinely on a par with anything Paris has to offer.

When I first started this walk, I would complete this loop once and I would have to stop every time on North Bridge just in the shadow of the old Scotsman building, completely peched, for a breather.

But as the weeks and months have gone on I have gradually upped my game and now I complete three loops of the same route over the space of a few hours, on both Saturday and Sunday if I can, and if life allows me that much time out.

That works out at almost bang on 10km, or 15,000 steps.

I have been asked if I get bored of it, and it has been pointed out by more than one person that Edinburgh has lots more to offer, both in terms of beauty and more varied walking challenges.

But now I have this routine I really want to keep at it. And every walk is different. It's not just the light or the weather that changes each loop, although they both do, but more so the people, and that is probably the main attraction.

The first loop, when I set off early, is the morning weekend mix of joggers, tourists trying to maximise their time in the town, and hi-viz workers setting off to start their day.

Often as not I see young lovers making their way home, either together, or on their own smiling to themselves about the fresh memory of the night before.

By the second loop most of the shops have opened, and by the third, the tourists and shoppers, even as deep into November as we are, are thronging the town.

Even in a city of anonymous neighbours there are people you come to recognise over time, like Benny the street sweeper with his cart festooned with the weird and wonderful trophies he has picked up on the way.

Or there is The Running Man, a cove I have seen for years with long kind of auburn hair who runs everywhere or Old Shiela, the lipsticked delicate lady who must live somewhere in the locality.

Then there is the guy I used to work with a million years ago who now works as a doorman in one of the Big Two hotels who I nod to every time, even though he never nods back.

The tents and the sleeping bags in the doorways are a distressingly increasingly evident fact of life, and over the months, I have come to recognise some of their inhabitants. Likewise the many troubled folk who are on the streets, like the man who paces back and forth, angrily barking to himself outside the Royal Bank most Saturdays. Did they do him bad?

This loop, the tight little route of central Edinburgh, has been the backdrop of many of my most cherished memories and locations since I pitched up here 25 years ago, and seeing them brings me a measure of reflection and, mostly, happiness.

The playpark in the shadow of the castle where our kids would thunder around, the balcony of the former newspaper office overlooking Princes Street where I worked and where we would watch the Hogmanay fireworks like kings, the bars where we forged lifelong friendships and drank far far too much, the spots where I have said hello and goodbye to my favourite people, they are all on the route.

I try to see, to notice, something new every time I do each loop, whether it is the changing exhibits at the RSA or mentally noting which shops and restaurants have gone to the wall and been replaced with whatever is the new zeitgeist. The city centre is an ever-changing canvas.

And I try not to get too exasperated by tourists holding me up as they crane their necks and block my path as they look up to the Bank of Scotland (where once I had a very jolly rugby press lunch in the boardroom), or the Castle, or the many statues that dot Princes Street and Princes Street Gardens below, like Wojtek the Bear.

When I pass the Scott Monument I look up at our most revered novelist and can't help but think his gaze has a measure of humour in it, like he has seen it all before. If he could tell the Spanish language school teenagers it is rude to walk so slowly abreast, that would be great. I live in hope.

After three laps of this yesterday I was ready for the French onion soup I made through the week.

Anyway, to brass tacks, this week I have upped my Mounjaro dosage from 5mg to 7.5mg and I have really noticed a further dampening of my appetite.

I have shaved a further kilo off, which takes me down to 120.5 kilos, or 18.97 stones, the first time I have been under 19 stones in years.

I feel great, but I need now to kick on again, and focus on this belly fat, which now feels like an inflatable life ring.

Anyway, much more I could write, but I am away off to the rugby.

Onwards.

Mounjaro dose: 7.5mg

Weight today: 120.5kg / 18.97 stones.

Weight last week: 121.5kg / 19.13 stones

Starting weight: 147.1kg / 23.15 stones.

Weight Loss: 26.6 Kg / 4.18 stones

Mounjaro is once weekly injection and must be taken correctly alongside a balanced diet and excercise.

You should seek medical advice before starting a course of weight loss medication.

I am receiving my Mounjaro from Cloud Pharmacy.

I realised this week that I am a third of the way into what I hope will be a year on Mounjaro, and that that was worthy of a bit of reflection.

I have changed. Mounjaro has undoubtedly helped me change, but I have had to make the change myself, if that makes sense.

My health is better, my outlook is happier, I have a bit more self-respect.

I am more liable to smile than before, I would consider jogging to catch a bus now, I am thinking of going to a nightclub soon and maybe even dancing if I get there.

But my body, and my mind if I am truthful, are still works in progress, I know that.

I still have a pot belly, and sometimes when I catch sight of myself in a changing room mirror I sense how ridiculous I still feel, like a baggy old cat.

This last week I have lost another 1.5 kilos. That takes me down to 121.5 kilos. That is 25.6 kilos off my starting weight of 147.1 kilos, or, expressed another way, I have lost bang on four stones.

If you had to carry 25 kilos up my stairs you'd shit yourself. Somehow I did it every day.

That weight loss didn't just happen with a weekly injection, yes it gave me the agency to make changes but I have worked hard in the gym lately, two sessions a day most days, and I watched my intake. I am aiming to burn about 1000 calories in these two daily workouts. That is plenty.

Today I did 11km walk, and I will do the same tomorrow. Those are another 1000 calories each, and when the sun shines they feel like no effort at all.

The nature of this blog is to record it all, week to week, not because I think anyone will give a fig, but to motvate myself to keep plugging away. I don't want the public shame of humiliation.

Every indicator is heading the way I would like just now, but I am conscious there is more work, much more work to be done. My BMI is coming down slowly slowly slowly but it is still in the red zone and 121.5 kilos is still way way too much.

But to mark the passing of a third of this Mounjaro journey I have created this day one / today before / after to show how I am doing. Frankly, to me it seems like I could have done a lot better, but it is what it is.

I went to the hospital this week for a pre-anaesthetic check up. They give those to people who they are concerned might not survive a general anaesthetic.

Had i not been on Mounjaro, and had I not lost the weight I have lost, I doubt they would have given the go ahead for the operation.

As it was, the anaesthetist was happy with my progress and the operation, hopefully only a minor thing, will go ahead soon.

So that is my latest motivation, to get some serious weight off before I get on the slab. Maybe another stone, maybe two, depening on the length of the NHS waiting list.

Anyway, that is more than enough for now.

Onwards.

Mounjaro dose: 5mg

Weight today: 121.5kg / 19.13 stones.

Weight last week: 123kg / 19.37 stones

Starting weight: 147.1kg / 23.15 stones.

Weight Loss: 25.6 Kg / 4 stones

Mounjaro is once weekly injection and must be taken correctly alongside a balanced diet and excercise.

You should seek medical advice before starting a course of weight loss medication.

I am receiving my Mounjaro from Cloud Pharmacy.

After a few frustrating days, this last week just gone has been much much better.

Ii redoubled my efforts in the gym and watched what i was eating and drinking.

I had one eye on the weekend just gone, a weekend away in Dublin, so i weighed myself before we went, on the basis that i wanted to enjoy myself in Ireland without too much self-hatred.

If i remember right my weigh-in the previous week was on the Monday so that only left 5 days between weigh-ins.

The photo is a bit blurry but I am going to claim that as 123 kilos, or two kilos off, in the space of five days, which I will take gladly.

In the event, I needn't have worried about Dublin, I didn't eat or drink anywhere as much as I might have expected. Just wasn't fussed.

Not so long ago the prospect of a fill-your-boots buffet breakfast at a good hotel would have had me preparing disguises to enable me to go up at least four or five times without shame, but Mounjaro has stripped me of such urges.

I still enjoy food, but just not as much of it.

A photo of me at Dublin's GPO, the site of the Easter Rising, was posted in the family whatsapp group, and then shared by Child 1 with her mates and, somewhat amusingly, generated the following response from a pal of hers who I have known since they were all tiny together.

It s a long long time since I heard anyone say that I was too skinny, and again, I will take it. If she thinks this is skinny she will be in for a surprise in a few months time when I get down to a proper fighting weight.

The next step then, the next set of goals to aim towards, is to get down through 120 kilos, then 19 stones, then four stones off, three separate milestones, and frankly I don't know which comes first, but I am looking forward to knocking them all off one by one.

Gym, gym, walking, and more gym.

I have lots more I need to write about, and I will get to all the topics I have stored up, but for the moment it is heads down, bums up.

Onwards.

Mounjaro dose: 5mg

Weight today: 123kg / 19.37 stones.

Weight last week: 125kg / 19.68 stones

Starting weight: 147.1kg / 23.15 stones.

Weight Loss: 24.1 Kg / 3 stones 11 pounds

Mounjaro is once weekly injection and must be taken correctly alongside a balanced diet and excercise.

You should seek medical advice before starting a course of weight loss medication.

I am receiving my Mounjaro from Cloud Pharmacy.

Cloud Pharmacy is a registered pharmacy, licensed and governed by the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC)

Ten workouts last week, ten feckin workouts, two 11km walks, and not a gram off.

But, on the other hand, not a gram on.

I am frustrated, but I am going to press on with my lunchtime sweat suit sessions.

Also. I appear to have moved my body composition from 'solid' to 'muscular', which i will take.

Small gains.

So, aye, a bump in the road, not what I expected or hoped for, but....we go again.

Mounjaro dose: 5mg

Weight today: 125kg / 19.68 stones.

Weight last week: 125kg / 19.68 stones

Starting weight: 147.1kg / 23.15 stones.

Weight Loss: 22.1 Kg / 3 stones 5.4 pounds

Mounjaro is once weekly injection and must be taken correctly alongside a balanced diet and excercise.

You should seek medical advice before starting a course of weight loss medication.