No brain fog. I walk at a very brisk pace ~6 miles a day. My calories are far less than before I started. I have to be very careful to have enough protein. When I exert myself, the recovery period is the same time as before.
Do you have any idea of how many calories you eat per day?
I get so confused because the small amounts of food that people talk about eating on GLP, don't seem like enough to sustain themselves long-term.
Are they exaggerating? Or do they talk about not eating dinner, but that's because they had 1,700 calorie lunch at the burger place? Or is that just during weight loss, and then once a target weight is hit, they're eating like a normal (healthy-weight) person again?
I just genuinely don't understand how people are surviving with the diets they describe.
> I just genuinely don't understand how people are surviving with the diets they describe.
Because obese folks have stored energy reserves. The body is really good at adapting and using them.
I was attempting to be at a 1k/day calorie deficit during my peak weight loss phase. I typically met or beat this target, usually eating around 1200-1600 calories/day plus a lot of walking - 25k steps/day minimum as an absolute non-negotiable. I'd check my step counter before bed, and put pants back on and go for a "midnight" walk if I was under my count for the day.
The first few weeks were quite hard, but it was pretty smooth sailing after that. Lots of naps. After that I was tired some days, but not overly so. I peaked at about 30lbs/mo weight loss for ~3 months, then tapered off to 5-10lbs/mo for my final 30ish I had to lose.
I don't really suggest anyone else attempt to "crash" their program like I did - but it's how my brain operates. I need immediate and obvious results, and those turn into a feedback loop for me. Being a bit more tired each day was perfectly acceptable for the goals being achieved.
That said - I wish I had started resistance training when I started my dieting program. I took it up at the very end of my weight loss, and it took me about 9mo to get back to roughly the same lean muscle mass as I had before I lost weight. I'm still working on min/maxing body comp about 18mo later.
The best weight loss program is the one that works for you. Pretty much full stop. It's going to be highly individualized. Some folks will do much better with a small deficit for a few years, but I know from experience that would never work for me.
I think a lot of the stuff you see on-line about "forgetting to eat dinner" is exaggerated and folks starting off on the drugs being amazed at it. Very few people will post a "well, I'm a bit less hungry" type of result. Everyone I know on them eventually became somewhat habituated to this sort of effect, but everyone is highly different. For me, I considered Tirzepatide a performance enhancing drug for my diet. I still went to bed hungry most nights - it was just far easier to chain together days and weeks of doing so on the drug vs. off. It still took a lot of willpower and habit building for me to pull it off at that level.
> Do you have any idea of how many calories you eat per day?
My baseline was in the ballpark of 3000-4000 cal/day. I'm losing about 5 lb/month, or 1.25 lb/week; assuming it's all fat, that's a 4400 cal/week deficit or ~625/day. 600 cal a day less is kind of a lot! Some people starting fatter than I was take bigger doses and have bigger deficits.
> Are they exaggerating?
In my experience: I'm not hungry for breakfast at all. Lunch: I try to have it, definitely have it if I exercised. (But if I didn't exercise it's pretty easy to just ignore hunger signals and eat my first meal at dinner.) Dinner is like, smaller than it was when I wasn't on the drugs. And then some post-dinner snacking.
I'm on the low end of the Rx dose range (2.5-15mg/week); on a higher dose, eating even less is plausible.
> Or do they talk about not eating dinner, but that's because they had 1,700 calorie lunch at the burger place?
1700 cal meals are mostly out of the question for me on these drugs. Your gastric emptying is slowed down, so you just can't house big meals in the same way.
> Or is that just during weight loss, and then once a target weight is hit, they're eating like a normal (healthy-weight) person again?
Yes, I think this is a big piece of it. To actually lose weight, you need to eat less than the sustainable steady state.
Oh, OK. So depending on your height, that sounds fine.
So you're still eating plenty, but the point is that you no longer have any desire to over-eat?
And so at a restaurant you still order and eat, but the food just doesn't mean "enjoyment" the way it used to?
That makes a lot more sense then. If food becomes more about removing a negative feeling of discomfort, than a positive feeling of deliciousness, right then overeating would never make any sense.
Yeah, I am 6’2 and broad chested etc - I am consistently losing like 2 pounds a week, give or take. If I am less active like due to illness, that slows down. I think any faster than that, and I’d be worried about crashing back to my old weight or other side effects.
I went out to eat today, and enjoyed my food. I didn’t order a big burger, but a smaller sandwich. I had a bite of an appetizer, but not more than a bite. Still super enjoyable, but it might be even better now because I don’t feel like a fat pig afterwards due to reasonable portion size.
I am food motivated like a dog, for whatever that’s worth.
