The Modern LeadHer Way

[108] My GLP-1 Mounjaro Diary Update: Health, Identity, and Longevity

• Emma Clayton • Season 4 • Episode 108

Share episode

Send us a text

I share my Mounjaro (GLP-1) journey, now 32 pounds down, focusing on how I'm using this medication as a tool to implement sustainable healthy habits rather than just losing weight quickly.
I share how I am
• 32 pounds down with noticeable body composition changes despite recent scale plateau 
• Implementing strength training with a personal trainer to preserve and build muscle during fat loss
• Working with a functional nutritionist to address inflammation and gut health
• Using continuous glucose monitoring to optimise energy levels and sleep quality
• Focusing on protein intake (aiming for 150g daily) to support muscle building
• Creating an identity shift that will sustain results after medication
• Planning a support program for others wanting a mindful approach to GLP-1 medications

If you're interested in a program focused on identity shifts and sustainable habit change with or without GLP-1 medications, add yourself to the waitlist: https://www.emmaclaytonxo.com/f/mj-support-waitlist 

Get Your FREE Success Roadmap: https://www.emmaclaytonxo.com

✨ Join the waitlist to hear about the Next Time Out Retreat
https://www.emmaclaytonxo.com/f/retreat-waitlist

Join us in the Secret LeadHer Files: https://www.emmaclaytonxo.com/courses/secret-files

Book your Game Plan here: https://www.emmaclaytonxo.com/courses/game-plan

Subscribe to the video podcast and watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1Q8bQIq6BaPnRh5mht8E_Cxa8nn5SJ3Q

Connect with me & become part of the listener community on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emmaclayton.xo/

Speaker 1:

The podcast for ambitious, driven career women who want to feel good on the way to the top. I'm Emma Clayton and I'll be sharing with you tangible advice to help you stop sacrificing your soul in the name of success and experience more balance, confidence and fulfilment both in and out of work. Welcome back to another solo episode with me Clayton on the Mon Leelaway podcast. I owe you an update on my Manjaro diaries to date. I believe it was episode 99 that I last gave you an update and we're now on 107, so eight weeks or so ago that I last updated you and a lot's happened actually since then and, as always, this isn't just me talking about me and my life and my accomplishments. It's actually turning my experiences into life lessons that I hope you'll take away and find valuable on whatever journey it is you're on. I just so happen to be on my own health journey right now, with a real focus on longevity and being in the best shape ever as I turn 50, which is a few years down the line yet, but it really is my driving force when I'm thinking about finally cracking the nut when it comes to my health habits and behaviours around food and my relationship with food and my body and what that looks like. So, as you know, if you tuned into episode 98, you would have heard that I am using Manjaro as a tool to help me implement all the healthy habit change that I know I need to do. And I know all this not just from being years and years on and off the dieting wagon before I decided to finally throw in the towel on dieting a decade ago or so, but also through my studies in nutrition and lifestyle coaching and in eating psychology. So I really understand this stuff from a logical and theoretical point of view, and I've really been on a mission to try and integrate and embody the changes so that I can sit here and say I've done it and bring you along for the ride. So I know weight loss is such a ongoing conversation for many women, and the way that GLP-1 medications have taken off, not just in the UK but around the globe, is phenomenal, and not necessarily for great reasons. However, I've been determined to buck the trend of those potentially misusing it or using it misinformed or uninformed of. You know what they're letting themselves in for, and so I've really wanted to share that journey so that I can give another perspective, give another side of the story, to what we're perhaps seeing spread across the news headlines and, yeah, across our media. So I decided in April this year to use Manjaro as a tool to enable me to actually implement all the change that I knew I wanted to and needed to do in order to improve my quality of life and my longevity, etc. And be in the best shape of my life as I turn 50 and I have.

Speaker 1:

I started slowly. I started on 2.5 milligrams for two months and then I've been on five milligrams since then, and that has served me well. I am asymptomatic, so I don't get any symptoms whatsoever, other than potentially a little bit, a little bit of something. I can't even describe it just a little weird feeling about 24 hours after taking some jabs not every week, though. What I would say it has enabled me to do is think clearer, think less about food, make better choices when it comes to eating and feel fuller quicker, if you like. So I'm not actually needing to eat as much as I once was, and I think what I've learned about myself is I had this. I've always had a very fast constitution, so food would go through me very quickly, and I genuinely don't think I felt satiety so would constantly want to fill my belly up, and I also know that from a psycho-spiritual perspective that probably means that I have had this emptiness right, this unfulfilled feeling inside that I've always wanted to feel, and I've done it through food. And I know that I'm probably not alone out there. And if you've stuck around for the last sort of six or seven episodes, you'll have heard me talk about redefining success on your terms, so that you actually don't just have success that looks good on paper, that others admire you for having, but actually feels good on the inside, right, it actually feels fulfilling, like that's ultimately what we want, because when we feel fulfilled, everything else kind of just slots into place and life becomes a lot more enjoyable in the process.

Speaker 1:

That's a bit of a recap as to how I've got here now, where I've been since the last update. I am 32 pounds down and I would say I have been 30 to 32 pounds down for the last six or seven weeks. So there hasn't been a major shift in the scales at all, and that's important for me to point out because I am using the scale on a daily basis as one measure, so I get to see the fluctuations that go up and down around my cycle and other factors that come into it, and it's not the only thing and it also is not derailing me when it doesn't move. So sometimes I can feel a little bit deflated if I feel like I've really reined it in and done well. But to be honest, the majority of the time I am very aware that I have started a strength training protocol which has really ramped up quite quickly after originally starting me on a kind of rehab plan. The progression has increased because we've seen that actually I've got really good muscle memory, I know how to lift, I've got the technique, I can listen and really get that technique nailed and therefore we can go a bit heavier quite quickly.

Speaker 1:

So I am loving my progress in the gym with my personal trainer. I see her twice a week and she's given me a third workout to do that. I do at home now, but that's only a more recent thing in the last three or four weeks that I've added in that third workout a more recent thing in the last three or four weeks that I've added in that third workout. Obviously I walk the dog most days. I would say we do four to six kilometres as a norm. I have been picking it up sometimes with a bit of a jog on some of my walks, but generally, yeah, I just I walk the dog seven a week. So that's on top of my exercise that I've been doing in the gym.

Speaker 1:

And what I would say on top of the weight loss that I've seen is I have seen a big change in my body composition in the last probably four or five weeks actually, and that just looks like more muscle definition. Where I hadn't seen muscles before, like even in my forearms, I'm noticing a muscle. I can feel it, I can see it. In certain ways I can see it in my legs and my waist as well. My waist has definitely shrunk in size and my belly from the side is now starting to look a bit slimmer. So even though the scales haven't budged so much, I am noticing it still in my body in other ways, and this has been really important to me to add that strength training in, because a big part of my concern when I was doing my own research around introducing a GLP-1 medication into my diet, into my life was the fear that I had around fast and rapid weight loss being largely due to muscle loss and not just fat loss, and I was determined to let that not be my story.

Speaker 1:

I didn't want to lose weight fast and know that muscle wastage was happening as part of that. I wanted to maintain what muscle I had and build on that as I lose fat, because obviously, the more muscle you have, the more calories you're going to burn, more metabolically healthy you're going to be anyway. But what I've noticed is, as I've shifted from a reliance on carbs in my diet to a reliance now on protein, is there has been like this real massive sluggish period that I've gone through, and so I think I'd already said that I was working with Liz Sargent, who's a functional nutritionist, and her team around looking at my bloods and looking at what's going on inside as we make this transition and as we go on this journey to losing fat, building muscle and shifting our metabolism right. So we did some blood tests to look at my vitamin levels and my thyroid and all the things, and what I'm pleased to report is it did actually show quite a good picture. So my thyroid is okay and that's consistent with previous bloods that I've had. My vitamin C, my vitamin D, my B12 is all looking really good.

Speaker 1:

What it did flag up was I am low in B6, so I've implemented a supplement for that, and also my ferritin levels, as well as my high sensitivity CRP, which are both inflammation markers. Markers were high, so there is a lot of inflammation in my body. I could have told you that you know my knees being the prime example where that was stored. But also when you look at inflammation, it's got to come back to the gut. So what that showed us is there is probably stuff going on in the gut that we don't know about, and ideally, a stool test would have been great to have a look at what is specifically going on in the gut, and I've had stool tests in the past where it has shown one specific bacteria that we have in our gut that I just had too much of. It loved sulfurous foods, so I had to cut out any sulfurous foods for a period of time to kill off the bug and bring it back to normal level. So I know the power in having a stool test.

Speaker 1:

However, I wasn't in a position to invest in ongoing not just testing but also supplementation that comes with it and the support, so I will be back at some point for a stool test, but also for a hormone test to look at what my levels are doing, and it just so turned out that, timing wise, it didn't work to get my bloods done and to have the hormones done at the same time. I would have had to wait about two weeks into the month's support that I was having from Liz and the team. So it didn't work out this time. But I will come back at another time and get those hormone levels checked because there is no doubt, if you remember, that my sleep is impacted. I've got sleep apnea. There's no doubt that's weight related, but also it's likely to be hormonal related, given I'm 46 and um. You know.

Speaker 1:

This is when progesterone starts to drop off and you become oestrogen dominant and then oestrogen drops off at some point as well, and you know. It's good to know what's going on in your body so that you can respond accordingly. But in the meantime, in the lack of um, you know the test results. Then there are a few things that we can do. So we've added in a supplement to support my gut and a prebiotic and a probiotic which is going to crowd out the unhealthy stuff that we don't want too much of with the good stuff and hopefully that will start to rebalance things there. And then, on the sleep side of things, we just introduced a. I already take magnesium, but we introduced l-theanine for the evenings as well, so just to aid in some sleep there and I have, I am able to report some improvement in sleep.

Speaker 1:

But the biggest improvement came when I was working with Liz and we got me to wear a continuous blood glucose monitor, which I've done before plenty of times and just seeing some of the peaks and troughs throughout the night, which was really interesting. So when you go on manjaro in particular you are it instantly improves your insulin sensitivity. So if perhaps, when I pre manjaro used a cgm, it would have shown my levels around 5.9 percent, averaging 6, 6.1 maybe on average, it was instantly showing me down at about a 5.6 level, which you know is a lot healthier a blood glucose reading. So how much of that is down to the manjaro? I guess you could give it some credit. We don't know, but at the end of the day, I'm on manjaro for a period of time and so it is what it is right now.

Speaker 1:

So we've seen some improvement and there were some real peaks based on certain foods that I was eating and some real troughs in, especially overnight, um, as a result of what I'd eaten the previous day, that were impacting my sleep, waking me up to go to the toilet, and then also a waking stress response that we were seeing, which is normal. It's normal to have a waking stress response. In the morning, however, mine wasn't really recovering and that was because we realised that I was getting up, getting ready to go out on my dog walk, taking the dog for four, five or five, six kilometers, coming back and then eating something, and that just wasn't being supportive of my blood sugar levels. So what we did was we implemented a small meal before I went out for a dog walk. So the only thing I'm really stomach first thing in the morning was a bit of Greek yogurt with some, some berries, and I had like flax seeds to it and a little bit of cacao nibs and my collagen powder just to make it a little bit more protein fueled. So we did that and that started to flatten out that stress response in the morning. But we were still noticing these peaks and troughs. That was particularly going throughout the night.

Speaker 1:

So Liz just asked me if I was up for taking out sugar altogether, including any carbs, which meant most fruit and, yeah, most carbs, unless it's like leafy veg and stuff like that. And I was like, because I'm just in the zone at the moment I was like, yep, sure, let's do it, let's see it. And what she really wanted to get to was get beneath the noise that the carbs was creating, because obviously, if you eat a carb, you're going to see a later spike in your blood sugars. Whether it's the healthiest carb on the planet, you're still going to see that spike and that is going to have a knock on impact later on with the troughs. So we took it out. So that meant that I didn't have my berries in the morning, I just had my Greek yogurt with my collagen powder and just adapted over the next sort of week or so with taking it out. And I must admit, I did feel hideous, felt really really hideous for a couple of days. But day three, I think it was, or day two in the afternoon, I just remember feeling absolutely freaking amazing and being like, oh my God, okay. So it is as simple as this reminder that the impact of sugar or blood glucose, or should I say the impact of glucose on our blood sugars, is, you know, it's there's there and actually if you can limit that through your food choices, then why wouldn't you if it's going to improve your energy, which is the whole reason I went to Liz for in the first place, because my energy slumps in the afternoon. I must admit, since doing that, I have reintroduced fruit absolutely, and sugar is not as bad as it ever was in my life, but it is still there. It's not a reliance, it's just a go-to, so it's something I want to improve on, but certainly it has had a knock-on impact positively on my energy levels in the afternoon. So that slump I wasn't experiencing and therefore I wasn't needing to nap. I was more focused, more switched on for longer and, as a result, more productive and more creative and just like, yeah, really getting through a lot more than I was able to before. So that was really positive and something that I want to wind in.

Speaker 1:

A. Little bit Summer's been. It's been nice because I've been here through August, bit summer's been. It's been nice because I've been here through August. So I haven't been traveling up the country, going to festivals, going to retreats and all that kind of thing like I was in July. I've been very much more settled, but I have also been helping out with my friends on their truck, which I said I wasn't gonna do this year and I ended up doing the whole of August.

Speaker 1:

So that's obviously a different physical activity. That kind of has taken it out of me in a in a different way, in a good way, like I've been. Like I'm two stone lighter than I was last year when I was doing it, so it's definitely a lot easier. Um, I also wasn't picking as much. I'm not drinking diet coke anymore like I was when I was on the truck before um, so I've been able to go at it with a very different lens, which has been nice, but it's definitely yeah, it's definitely tested me physically. So last week was a particularly intense week, with five shifts that I did in a row, and they're intense because you're feeding hungry campers and you know sometimes service can be a bit slow because you can only do so much in a certain time, so you're dealing with public that are hungry and a little bit unhappy sometimes. So, yeah, I am here cat sitting with my for my sister this week and just taking it a bit slower, which is really welcome, and taking it slower because we have no wifi and no TV or anything like that. So hence you got me wittering at you with my update here. But yeah, I think they're the main things.

Speaker 1:

So my focus moving forward is very much on reining in the nutrition side of things again so that I can start to see the scales budge again. So whilst it's not my main priority to lose weight fast, I do want to see some progress while I'm on the medication. So I have been talking to my PT about my ideal calorie levels and then what the macronutrient split looks like, and actually for me, my protein levels are need to be over 200 grams of protein a day, which is a hell of a lot of protein, and I'm sure I'm nowhere near that. I'm probably around 120, maybe 240 on a good day. So I'm just going to start to ramp up like really remember to prioritize that protein on my plate, first and foremost, and then, by sheer virtue of that, you eat less carbs, because protein keeps you fuller for longer. It's just a better way to eat if you can get in that habit of less carbs, because protein keeps you fuller for longer. It's just a better way to eat if you can get in that habit of prioritizing that protein on your plate. So I'm looking to up my protein levels, looking to just make sure I am in that calorie deficit, because, ultimately, if you're not eating in a calorie deficit, then you're not going to lose weight. And, at the same time, if you're just eating whatever you can stomach because you don't feel like eating, because you're on the drugs, you're not getting the nutrition that your body needs to be functioning well and to be sustaining this level of weight loss when you come off the drugs, because you are going to have an appetite back when you come off the drugs and this is the common thing that I'm seeing. That I'm really trying to avoid myself is just to eat less because I don't fancy food. But it's actually prioritising good nutrition and enough of the right nutrients to help me build muscle as I lose fat and make it sustainable in the long term. So that's the kind of focus that I'm going to go into September with.

Speaker 1:

And then, I guess, just a note on the price hike that's happening in the UK. When this first came out, I was like, oh, how do I feel about this? Because if it's going up 170%, that's, that's a lot of money every month. Do I feel like I could do it unaided at the moment. I mean, actually, I forgot to take my jab. I was due a jab on Monday and it's now Wednesday and I forgot to take it on Monday before I came here. So I'm going to be five days late by the time I get back, and I do not feel like I cannot handle it. You know, this week, however, do I feel ready? Probably not yet, because what I'm really using this time for using the drug as the tool is to help me embed this identity shift, and so that's the main thing that I'm really keen to do, and I don't feel ready yet.

Speaker 1:

However, the reality is always not as bad as it seems, and because I'm on a lower dose, the price hike isn't actually as much as it would be if you were on 15 milligrams or even 10 milligrams. I think that goes up quite a bit when you get to those higher doses. Because I stayed on the five milligrams. The increase is about 43 pounds, maybe with the provider I'm at the moment, and I'm sure you can shop around and find it cheaper elsewhere. So I think it's just a case of doing that. At the moment, a lot of places are out of stock because everyone panicked by, including myself, I must admit.

Speaker 1:

As soon as I heard, I went on and I just ordered my next pen from my provider. I did it in a very calm way though, thinking I'll just get that next pen and then at least I know I've got that next month and then we'll work out where we go from there. So so yeah, for now I'm continuing and because the price hike isn't too bad at the dosage that I'm on, for now we will continue. But I think that's where I'm at to really help others have a strong start or to reset when they're on this medication and actually come up with a program that I can take people through. So if that's something that's of interest to you, potentially whether you're already using GFP1 medication and you kind of want to do it in this way that's really mindful and is really focused on the identity shift that you're making, so that when you come off it a, you can come off it, you feel like you can do without the drug. But also, when you do, you've actually implemented so so many good habits that you actually don't need the drug to maintain those habits and therefore the weight loss will be sustainable, rather than you know the alternative, which we're seeing a lot of out there.

Speaker 1:

If that's something that you feel like you could do with support for and you like the way I'm talking about it and that could be of interest to you, I will create a wait list or something like where you can sign up and you can just hear about it first as and when it comes out. It's not something I'm prioritizing at the top of the list at the moment, but it's definitely something that is percolating in the back of my mind and it's something I'm really I can see myself doing, because you know, when I first started my career in coaching, it was all around food, freedom and body confidence, and so it is ingrained in who I am. I want to help other women with this and I want to make sure I've cracked this nut enough to be able to help others with it, and it's not coming from a place of giving medical advice or encouraging others to take it or anything like that. In fact, you don't even need to be on a GLP-1 medication to be in this kind of work that I'm thinking about doing, because it is all about the identity shifts. It's all about the habit change, the behavioral change, the mindset and the emotional stuff as well, because actually, when you take out food, that has been a crutch for you, whether that's with a GLP-1 medication or or not you are left with facing the emotions, and that is a big part of this journey as well that I haven't actually talked about this time around because it hasn't been a big factor for me since the last update. I'm sure it will be there.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, if that's something that might be of interest to you, either dm me. If there's no wait list available, in the show notes just say something like identity shift and I'll know to inform you as and when the details of what this could look like come through for me. So that's my update at the moment. I guess we'll go through probably pretty much to the end of the year before I come back and give you another one.

Speaker 1:

I've got so many amazing guests lined up to talk to you about how they've redefined success on their terms, how they have pivoted in their um, in their careers, in their businesses, how they have reinvented themselves and their identity time and time again, and I'm super excited to bring those conversations to the podcast for the autumn and winter season. Stick around for more of that and, yeah, let me know if you're interested in this, share this episode with someone that you think could benefit from hearing just a different perspective, a more grounded, reasonable, realistic perspective of being on the weight loss drugs than perhaps you might be seeing out there from the masses, who are just focused on the number, on the scales and not necessarily on what's happening internally, not just physiologically but mentally and emotionally and, yeah, from an identity perspective. Thanks for being here, thanks for listening and tuning in, and I will see you next week. Take care, thank you.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Emma Clayton

Host