How's it going?

 

Picture yesterday.
I have a "start day" photo, but it's so
unflattering - not so much in the body,
but in my expression. I forget to smile!

This is week two of the weight loss meds. Today is Friday, and injection day is Thursday. I have found that this blog is very useful to me as a journal and a reference, keeping me honest in my memories. It's so easy for a memory to become a story, and as it does so, it morphs and changes. That's not all bad, but it's good to also have a reality check on the past. And so I think it's worth capturing what's going on with me even when I feel like the answer is "not much".

The first week on the meds was fine. I had a great deal of trepidation, but all I have felt is minor versions of classic side effects. My stomach feels full quickly, and remains that way for a while. I'm gassy (and I was gassy before, too!) and sometimes those burps seem to carry some acid with them. I am often cold - no more am I embracing the weather in full Scandi style. Instead, I'm huddling in layers, under electric blankets, and not going out as much as I was before. (My tiktok girlies tell me this is a common symptom.) My sleep varies, with several periods of being wakeful in the middle of the night, other mornings the wakefulness starts at 5, and I just get up. (One night I peed FIVE times, leading me to adjust my hydration schedule!) Don't know if this sleep disruption is a symptom, as this sometimes happened anyway. I'm consistently getting to bed earlier, which helps.

Wednesday, the day before injection day, I was truly hungry for the first time. And for the first time that week I went over my daily points. (My WW reset points week is injection day.) Weekly points had been accumulating, from leftovers and activity, so there was plenty of buffer in the budget. I am focused on the protein and fiber numbers, and it is truly an effort to get there. I just added "calories" to the summary stats WW posts for each day, and I find most days have been below their suggested minimum of 1200. I don't want my body to go into starvation mode, start digesting my own muscles, and become hyper-efficient, requiring heroic efforts to lose any weight. I've been at least close to the targets every day, but I'm now planning to add an evening snack every day I seem to be falling short. My work is to have an inventory of snacks that move me in the right direction, not ice cream or Trader Joe's treats.

The injection paraphernalia I have to assemble for
the actual injection. I had the instructions out for this,
the second injection, not trusting to memory. 

I'm trying to undo years of a habitual after-eating flop to the couch and instead get up and move around after eating, which is really helpful in reducing any discomfort. I'm also trying to slow down my eating, and I'm breaking meals into smaller pieces - stopping partway through a meal, but coming back to the leftovers after an hour or two. I'm eating, but I'm on a major campaign to preserve or even build muscle through this, and so eating enough is really important to me. For the first time, I'm really using the WW app to plan in advance in detail. I try in the morning to build a day that will reach the four-way optimization of enough protein, fiber, and calories, while staying below the total points.

I've talked to my trainer about the WL meds, and she's on board with upping the weights and really going for improvement, not just maintenance, to fight muscle loss. I've had great workouts, and right after the workout I'm drinking a protein shake. They are excellent sources of protein and fiber, and I've found a brand that is fine. It tastes good, and I'm able to eat a tangerine or something afterwards to do away with a not-terrific aftertaste. I'm also sticking to my 15 minutes of cardio on the days I don't lift weights (so 2x weight training, 4x cardio, one day off). I was exhilarated yesterday on the Nordic Trak, and again today on the stationary bike, to find it had gotten much much easier.  The purpose of the cardio is to improve my cardio-vascular fitness, and the last two days were the highest I've gotten my heart rate up in a long time. I'm trying to hit the cardio commitment for the entire month of February and I've tied the purchase of some fun new tech to achieving that. When I talked about a newer, higher commitment for March, my trainer wisely suggested seeing if I'm still improving with the 15 minutes - and I am. So we'll see how it goes.

What has happened to my weight, by day 9 of the meds? I believe I have ranted before about how I think about my weight:  it is not really the number that appears at any one moment on the scale, but an average based on the trend. Variation around that trend is caused by water, and other transitory factors. And certainly the weight has been as volatile as ever this week. Here is the picture:

My weight in 2026- turn phone to landscape
The small green dots are daily scale readings. The dark blue line is the weekly average of those.
The big red dot is the first day of injection. 
The orange fuzzy lines are the 5-pound range I've been in since midway through 2022. 

 My weight was at the top end of my range since the beginning of the year (including my mid-January vacation). My daily scale readings have certainly gone down since the first injection. This is not uncommon, in my first week of trying to lose weight. But I won't really consider I'm well on my way to actually losing weight until I consistently see numbers below the bottom orange line - out of the past few years' range. 

But it certainly is nice to see the trend line going down!