NADINE DORRIES: I used Mounjaro weight-loss jabs and now I’m a size 10. Here’s my plan to keep the weight off

If you hadn’t already heard, the Government has entered into a partnership with the American pharmaceutical giant, Eli Lilly, which intends to invest almost £300 million in trials of the weight-loss jab Mounjaro — in an effort to tackle the UK’s obesity crisis.

The trials, in Manchester, will test the effectiveness of the new jab, leading –hopefully — to a large-scale rollout of the drug on the NHS for anyone who is clinically obese and wants, or needs, to lose weight.

Having spent three months on Mounjaro, the ‘King Kong’ of weight-loss drugs, so named due to its effectiveness, I can attest it will be money well spent.

Some 500,000 people are out of work and claiming benefits each day due, in part, to obesity. Health officials will be carefully monitoring how effective the Manchester trials will be at getting people back into the workplace.

I wish them every success: getting people back to work will not only enhance their sense of worth and their personal health and wellbeing, but be an important boost to the economy.

So where am I on my weight-loss journey? I stopped the jabs a month ago and have now embarked upon the second phase of the battle: how do I stop the weight from piling back on? Because, as evidence clearly shows, half of people who lose weight on such medication, over a period of time, do gain all, or some of it, back.

I don’t want to be that person because there is so much joy in my life right now as a result of my losing weight; I don’t ever want to go back to the place I was in. Every year when I pack away my winter wardrobe, I tell myself as I fold clothes I’ve bought and can’t get into – some of which still have the labels on – if you don’t fit that next year, it goes to a charity shop.

As I unpacked my winter wardrobe this year, I could have cried with happiness; everything not only fits, it fits amazingly well. I now know what Kate Moss meant when she said that ‘nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’. I’ll never be skinny, but I do feel not only good, but well.

I have every intention next October of weighing in at the 8 st 12 lb and perfect size ten I do today, even though I have taken the risky route to achieving that goal by stopping the jabs and going cold turkey – most people who do so tend to regain most of what they shed once they stop.

The answer for many to prevent weight gain is to stay on a ‘maintenance’ dose of the drug – a smaller amount to keep the weight off — for a longer period of time once the weight has been lost.

I should probably stay on 2.5 mg per week, compared to the 5 mg I had been taking, for at least six months, but have chosen not to and, one month in, I am feeling nervous but determined.

I have researched the life out of how to arm myself for the coming year, and one thing I have learnt is that there is an emerging school of scientific thought focused on how the brain controls appetite and metabolism post-weight loss.

According to the Set Point Theory, if we shed the pounds, our bodies will graduate back towards the weight we were before we began to lose it via hormonal shifts, metabolism and by adjusting our cravings (in my case). This is because the body wants to maintain its weight within a certain range and it will take time for the body to adjust to a new weight.

The reason I chose to stop the jabs and didn’t continue on a maintenance dose was because I was struggling with some of the side-effects — continuous burping, nightmares and stomach cramps – in the midst of an increasingly heavy workload.

My new book, Downfall, is about to be published. I needed to be firing on all cylinders and it was an inescapable fact: I just wasn’t doing that.

However, the important part was done. I had responded well to Mounjaro, even though I never got anywhere near the higher doses. I managed my weight loss of 1 st 12 lb on only a 5 mg dose over a relatively short period of time. So, Mounjaro doesn’t just work, it works well and lives up to its nickname.

Those who read my earlier article may remember that the reason I set out on this journey in the first place was as a result of nuisance calls I was receiving from my GP.

Some may describe them as helpful and informative ones from a caring doctor doing his job well. I found myself debating whether or not to answer the phone when I saw the familiar number popping up on the screen, bringing what I knew was going to be miserable news about another set of blood tests my GP had forced me to take.

The first call was to tell me I was pre-diabetic. The second to tell me I had non-alcoholic fatty deposits on my liver, the third to tell me my cholesterol was high. In short, I was breaking down. The road ahead was filled with flashing red lights and the answer to every problem appeared to be, ‘you need to lose weight, fast’. There was no avoiding it.

A quick glance in the mirror at my side profile and my protruding tum did not lie. Something had to be done.

For the first month, I began on the 2.5mg starter dose of Mounjaro which enables your body to adjust. There was no adjustment about it for me. It kicked in straight away and it never stopped. I could barely eat and I could virtually see the weight falling off me.

In those early days, some of the side effects were grisly, but the worst of them soon passed.

There were two that lingered, and I soon came to recognise the pattern they would follow. They were nausea and tiredness. I mean a bone-deep tiredness that makes getting out of bed an effort for the three days after the weekly jab.

I cut right down on exercise because the only place I wanted to be when I wasn’t sat at my desk was lying on the sofa, and that made me feel miserable.

Taking the dogs for a walk became such a mission that I had to force myself to put my wellies on and move.

I spent part of the day looking forward to bedtime, desperately grateful to slip under the duvet each night, asleep within seconds. I struggled to take my Pilates classes and was so wiped out. I felt pathetic. The dial on the scales was dropping, and on most days so was I.

The nausea would begin within a few hours after I took my injection. Think pregnancy and morning sickness and you are almost there.

Thursday was the day I took the injection and I would immediately look forward to Sunday when the effects would begin to wear off and I could feel remotely normal again.

For a few days, I would be more or less symptom-free, but all too soon Thursday arrived with a thudding regularity, and I have to be honest, I did kind of dread it.

But at least I appeared to respond to the drug well and achieved significant results. I know people (who admittedly had a lot more to lose than I did) who motored up the dosage scale and were on the top-level one, which is 15 mg weekly, built up over a few months.

As symptoms lessen, and you become used to the drug, you move up to the next level. I never got past 5 mg, the second dosage level and the results are plain to see. It worked.

I had made a vow to myself that whilst I was on the jab, I would eat only healthy food. How I laugh now as I write this and think back to that first week and my laudable intentions.

The reality was that as time went on, all my brain was telling me to eat was chips and chocolate. If I ate out, I would order superfood salad, pick at it with a fork, abandon it and then eat the bread and butter.

It was as if my brain was objecting to the weight loss and trying to make me keep the weight on by tricking me into eating high-fat, high-carb food, which I don’t even like.

I worried about my gut biome and kept making healthy vegetable soups, but couldn’t eat them every day. The smell of Kimchi, which I normally love, made me heave when I opened a jar. I would make avocado on sourdough toast then abandon it and open a packet of digestives instead. But, having eaten two biscuits, I was done for the rest of the day.

The ‘food noise’ inside my head was silenced. Mostly, I forgot food existed. Breakfast was a thing of the past, but the one healthy meal I did eat with some regularity was a bowl of granola mid-morning with natural yoghurt and honey. It was the only food I ever felt like I enjoyed.

In truth, 90 per cent of the time, there was nothing I ever actually wanted to eat.

Meals out were torture as I couldn’t decide on anything I wanted from the menu, and then left most of what I ordered anyway. The dogs did well as I arrived home time after time clutching tinfoil doggie bags.

I spent three months like this — until another call came from the doctor.

Rather than falling, my cholesterol level had gone up. They wanted to increase my dose of statins even further.

The scales told me I could pat myself on the back, that I had done incredibly well. I had lost enough weight to banish the pre-diabetes — but how could it be healthy for me to continue long-term at my age on so little food and such an unhealthy diet?

So, I stopped the jabs in order to get back to a healthy lifestyle, filling myself with nutritious food, the benefits of which would be enhanced because now I was no longer clinically obese.

A month later, I admit it has been a bit of a struggle. The hunger cravings as you stop the injections and your body screams out for food are pretty intense, and I did put a couple of pounds back on in the first week.

I had completely lost my level of fitness, but I’m now back into my Pilates classes and dog-walking and I am slowly weaning myself back onto a wholly healthy diet, but it has been done with conscious thought and effort.

I was as vain as the next person and I watched carefully what happened to my face.

Yes, I have been left with what is known as ‘Ozempic face’. It’s skeletal. You could carve a Sunday joint on my cheekbones and there is so little fat elsewhere on my face that where there are bumps in my cheeks they resemble little volcanoes when I smile, which frankly just looks weird.

Despite this, everyone tells me – even people who haven’t noticed the weight loss — that I look well.

Some friends have told me to get fillers put in my cheeks to give me some ‘plump and volume’ back.

I’m not so sure. Once you start, where do you stop? And wouldn’t that just look ridiculous at my age of 67?

The next year is going to take effort, but my plan is in place. It includes an exercise routine, little alcohol and conscious eating. Not dieting, just consuming healthy food, organic where possible, small amounts of red meat and lots of healthy soups made with bone broth.

If those who sign up for the Manchester trial turn up every week and take the jab, there is no doubt in my mind they will lose a considerable amount of weight.

The big question is, will they be educated in what to do to maintain the loss once the trial is over, which is just as important as the weight loss itself?

I hope so. If the NHS gets this right, it could be the turning point for so many people.