Life is good. At last, I’m well over my divorce. My children are pretty much grown-up and at university. I’m dating the loveliest man. I’m lucky to be defying the threat of ageism by having a job that challenges me and makes me financially independent. But I weigh too much to be considered healthy and am tired of trying to live my life with the equivalent of a hefty three-year-old strapped to my back. Time to tackle it head-on.
When I last set my mind to getting healthier, it was nearly a decade ago. The combination of a supervised low-carb/high-protein diet and plenty of vigorous exercise led me to lose three stone within a year. So I blew the dust off the same diet plan and started it again. But nothing. Somehow, my postmenopausal metabolism refused to play ball. What had worked before wasn’t working now. And the intense exercise left me feeling more tired than energised. The cortisol it produces is not necessarily a friend to middle-aged women.
So, I took the plunge. I logged on to the Boots online doctor service and applied to join its medicated weight-loss programme. I was prescribed Mounjaro † and started injecting myself once a week. It was amazing. The needle was tiny and barely the thickness of a shaft of hair. The side-effects were minimal – I was little burpy, but that was it. But the miracle was that as someone who woke up thinking about breakfast and carried on thinking about food all day, the ‘noise’ around food just disappeared.
I became one of those people I thought only existed in films who ‘forgot to eat’. I had never forgotten to eat.
The weight began to fall off. Cankles turned into ankles. Cheekbones long buried under soft folds of fat began to emerge. Within a couple of months, I had lost 25lb. My poor, overworked joints breathed a sigh of relief. Running up the escalators at Tube stations was a breeze. Half of my wardrobe was available to me again. I proselytised about Mounjaro as if I were on commission for its manufacturer, Eli Lilly.