Losing Weight With ZAVA: Our Patients’ Experiences

The first and most important reason for me is my health. I’ve been overweight for a long time, with aching knees, joints, and back. My cholesterol levels were also elevated. The second reason is my appearance.

I took a two-pronged approach, using weight loss injections alongside a diet programme. I carefully watched what I ate and made changes to my diet.

In May, we got a dog, and now I always take him out for walks. This made me much more conscious of my activity levels, and I’ve been spending a lot more time outdoors.

I feel great! After years of being overweight, I’ve finally reached my target weight and now have a normal BMI. Throughout the entire process, I didn’t experience any side effects at all.

For a long time, I had three different clothing sizes in my wardrobe because I’ve tried dieting many times, only for the weight to come back due to the yo-yo effect. Now, I can wear the smaller sizes, which feels fantastic.

I can walk up endless flights of stairs today and feel increasingly mobile. I can cover longer distances.

It’s not a miracle injection that does everything for you. You can’t just sit back and continue eating in fast food restaurants. That’s not how it works. You need to push yourself and put in the effort. You have to make long-term changes to your diet and stay active. Without the injection, though, I would never have lost this much weight or had the strength to stick with it.

My BMI made it necessary for me to lose weight. I had the usual complaints that overweight people suffer from: hip and knee problems, and my mobility was affected. I work in a nursery, so I’m often with children. The job requires mobility if you want to help or play with the children, and that wasn’t going well anymore.

I kept a diary, or rather a weekly log, where I recorded my journey, including any side effects. That really helped me.

It feels fantastic! I feel transformed, much more agile and mobile.

I can now play with the children more easily, lift them up, and things like that. My mobility has improved tremendously. I’m far less restricted and, more importantly, far less exhausted. And the clothes that had been pushed to the back of the wardrobe? They fit again! That’s amazing!

I have been overweight for many years, but still very active (20,000+ steps a day walking) and not too discontented about my size. A few years ago, and although I still walked a lot, changes in my lifestyle meant that I gained an extra several stone and despite multiple attempts at diets, I couldn't shift it. Then during lockdown, my knee gave out and I was told that I had osteoarthritis, was given a few exercises and told to get on with it. I could no longer walk for more than about 10 minutes and that was really painful. It seemed that my only prospect of regaining my ability to walk distance was to lose weight. In addition to the mobility issues, weight was affecting badly my flexibility, stamina and general wellbeing.

I had been following the development of Wegovy in the US as I read the New York Times. Mourjaro then came along and seemed to offer even more hope. Around the end of 2023 Mounjaro became more available here, but on hearing stories about how it put you off all food I waited until after Christmas to start it.

I do not think that the coverage given to Wegovy/Mounjaro in the UK is helpful. The BBC always precedes stories by saying "... commonly called the skinny jab" - the BBC is the only place I have heard that expression. And stories tend to be about people buying some random solution off someone they don't know on Facebook to "lose a few pounds before a holiday", which is then conflated with buying an approved medicine, approved by a doctor, dispensed by a qualified pharmacist, in order to not die at 60.

Apparently weight is starting to be acknowledged in certain research circles as a chronic health condition, but I don't get the feeling any of that is filtering down to the general NHS. Most nurses or doctors I have talked to have never even heard of Mounjaro. All a bit shocking as it must be up there with blood pressure medication and statins as the most important drug in the last several decades.

I use the phrase genuinely life-changing. I still have an arthritic knee and can't walk like I used to, but I can do so much more. I can now go into a High Street shop and buy a size of jeans off the peg, without being told that "we can order that size in" or "it's only available on the website", or more likely only from some awful shop. I feel normal again and not embarrassed about my size, or how there really isn't a good place to belt your trousers to minimise the belly. I am certainly not skinny, and don't really want to be, but (again) I feel normal.

Not sure if proud is the right word, as science is doing the hard work. I eat normally and still enjoy a glass or two of wine. You maybe don't want to go there, but Mounjaro seems to have a very immediate, from-Day-1 effect on stopping one drinking too much; it doesn't do anything bad to you, just stops the urge/need. I understand research on this is ongoing, but it has made a huge difference for me.

Walking further, with less pain. More stamina. Less worried about social situations. Enjoy food and drink more. And very positive effects on the (TMI) stuff like bowels and sex!

This is not a quick fix (although I did have very fast initial weight loss). You will be on this drug for a fair old time and according to many, you may need to take it indefinitely. It is a very powerful drug that will pretty much rewire many aspects of how your body works – it will definitely have effects on your gut, and for me anyway, effects on blood pressure and pulse rate. I have also have had sleep patterns interrupted a little. It is quite new and the long term effects are not known, so don't take it if you do not really need to I guess.

When I went above 10mg (Mounjaro) I was off blood pressure tablets, but still feeling periodically woozy. By the time I had got towards the end of my 12.5mg then 15mg doses that was becoming a problem and I noticed my pulse was dropping really low sometimes. I also had an incidence of vertigo that I had never had before (I do not think vertigo and low BP are listed as side effects of Mounjaro, but I am fairly convinced they were for me). I have gone back to 10mg and it seems to have resolved. So, maybe don't make it a race up to maximum dose. I actually plateaued in weight for most of the 12.5/15mg dose and have just lost 5lbs in the first week of going back to 10mg. Maybe coincidence, but maybe a lower dose suits some people? But also, stick with it, where I plateaued was oddly a weight I was at for a long time before putting on the extra stones.