What To Expect When Taking Mounjaro or Wegovy
It’s a big moment. You have decided to boost your weight loss efforts by using medication, usually Wegovy or Mounjaro. Your first pen arrives in the post, and you dutifully move it to your fridge as soon as you can.
But then what? How are you feeling? Excited? Nervous? Terrified? If we’ve done our job properly then you shouldn’t be terrified, but most people feel either excited or nervous when they actually have their first weight loss pen in their possession for the first time.
By now we will have told you how to inject the medication, and each pen comes with a very easy to follow instruction leaflet. We will have sent you an email with a link to a video that explains it, and you can watch it again here if you wish.
But this is important. You’re about to voluntarily inject game changing medication into your body, at this point unsupervised by any health care professionals.
The first thing to say is that you will be fine! We have gone through all the safety checks with you thoroughly to this point, so the chances of anything serious going wrong are very small. Navigating side effects is likely to be your main problem, and many people don’t even experience those.
Have a think about when is the right time to inject; I’ve written about that here.
Once you’re ready, go ahead!
Well done, that’s the hardest part over with. So what should you expect?
SIDE EFFECTS OF MOUNJARO AND WEGOVY
This is the one that people worry about most, so let’s get that over with first! Many people experience no side effects at all, particularly from their first injection which will inevitably be a low dose. If you do get side effects they will likely be mild and I’ve written about them in more detail here and here, and you will probably only experience them for the first day or two. Side effects tend to get better throughout the week, and throughout the pen – so your second, third and fourth doses will probably feel easier than your first dose.
WHAT HAPPENS TO MY APPETITE ON MOUNJARO AND WEGOVY?
It usually takes a couple of days for the medication to reach its maximum effect on your appetite, so you may not notice anything immediately. In fact, you may not notice anything at all during your first pen. Some people simply need higher doses before they see a difference. This seems to be true if you’re tall – I think the milligrams just don’t stretch as far because there’s more of you, and also we know that women tend to see benefits at lower doses than men.
Once you’re on the right dose for you then you should start to notice that you’re just not as interested in food as you were previously. It may not be immediately obvious; people usually say that the first time they see a difference is when they prepare one of their regular meals that they always make in exactly the same way, and instead of easily finishing it, they find that they want to leave some of it on their plate. From this point on, you should notice that your appetite reduces more as your injections continue.
WEIGHT LOSS ON MOUNJARO AND WEGOVY
This is the big question, after all this is what you’re here for! The first thing to say, is please don’t compare yourself with people who post about their weight loss online. They are usually extreme cases, and their results are not typical.
Most people find that they lose weight steadily rather than rapidly, and this is good. By the time of their three month review, most people have lost around 5-10kg, approximately. This is extremely variable. It depends on how much weight you have to lose, what your diet was like before you started the medication and how much it has changed, your height, gender and any other medical problems that you may have.
Please don’t fall into the comparison trap. This is your journey, and we really want you to enjoy the process and celebrate your success. You won’t be in the right mindset to celebrate your wins if you’re sad because you haven’t lost weight as quickly as that influencer online whose photos have been through endless filters and who undoubtedly looks amazing.
It’s not really possible to predict your weight loss in more detail than that, because there are so many variables affecting it. But over time, almost everyone loses an amount of weight that they are happy with on these medications. If it’s not happening for you, please do check in with one of our doctors to see if they can help you to work out why, and to fix it.