Mounjaro Is Not A Miracle. It’s A Tool That Helps Me Survive

Managing My Compulsive Eating With Medication

There’s a particular kind of mental weariness that comes with compulsive eating. Planning, non-stop food shopping, negotiating with yourself about food only to throw all the complex excuse making out the window in an instant of random overeating.

It is exhausting.

Most days, before I was administering Mounjaro, it felt as though I lived inside a constant roar of hunger. Not physical hunger, but an emotional hunger that refused to dissipate no matter how full I was. People refer to this as food noise, but noise doesn’t come close to describing the sensation in my brain.

I lived with a white noise in my head, or what I have come to understand as post-traumatic stress disorder, for as long as I can remember. It is best described as simultaneously the loudest AND the most terrifyingly-quiet internal noise imaginable.

Imagine you were inside the barrel of a violent wave but there wasn’t a single sound being produced. That was my brain before Mounjaro. Nobody else could hear this noise including me, but it was somehow deafening.

The list of traumatic reasons why I experience this mental response is too long for today’s post, but I will briefly explain that my coping mechanisms throughout my life have been deeply chaotic and have included excessive alcohol consumption, unhealthy interpersonal codependencies (ahem… yes, we are including sex in this descriptor), and compulsive overeating. All to try and make this silent roar manageable.

What does my compulsive eating look like?

I’ve lived with compulsive eating disorder for most of my adult life. I don’t mean sporadic binge eating that would come and go in stressful times. I’m referring to eating more food than I needed, all the time.

Before I was self-medicating with Mounjaro, what would an average day of eating look like for me? Let me break it down for you:

• As I was pouring granola into a bowl, I would eat a handful of cookies. Usually something like Bourbon Creams (shout out to my UK readers) or Oreos. I might have eaten about four or five cookies before my bowl of granola or cereal
• If I was heading out for work, I would go via the supermarket and buy a packet of cookies, some vegan candy or sweets, and a protein bar or flapjack. These snacks were for my commute on the bus
• I might have some fruit such as a clementine or banana, as well as more of my sweet snacks, between the bus ride and lunch time
• Lunch would be whatever I could get my hands on. Sometimes it would be leftovers from the previous night’s meal. Sometimes it would be a vegan sandwich from the supermarket
• The afternoon would find me finishing off whatever snacks I had left including chocolate, cookies, and crisps/potato chips
• On the way home, I’d stop by the supermarket to get my travelling snacks of chocolate and/or sweets plus more cheap cookies for home that evening. I would eat all the sweets during my journey and often break into the evening’s cookies early
• Dinner at night would be a massive portion of whatever we were having which could be a roast dinner or pasta. My serving was always enough for four people and I would then have seconds. If I was in a restaurant, it was a very costly experience with two mains and a couple of sides
• After dinner, I would eat more cookies or a tub of vegan Ben & Jerry’s. If a tub was opened, the entire tub would be consumed
• Add drinks on top of this, scattered throughout the day. That line up might include chocolate oat milk, fizzy energy drinks, and carbonated fruit waters
• Snacks is a term I use very loosely and would sometimes mean a jumbo packet of vegan marshmallows, a sharing bag of crisps, or even an entire tub of cake frosting

Finding my way to Mounjaro

A year ago I was the heaviest I had been in my life and my physical health was at risk. I had become pre-diabetic and I experienced excruciating back and joint pain.

At this point I had already been in therapy for six years and was on a waiting list for support from the NHS Eating Disorder team. I was visiting with a lifestyle coach monthly but the underlying mental health issues powering my eating disorder were not being addressed.

The only help I was able to access was a nutritionist explaining to me that eating upwards of two packets of Oreos a day was not good for me. Groundbreaking! I found myself having frank and brutally-honest conversations with strangers about my private life. Yes, I understand how nutrition and calories work. No, I don’t need a list of smoothie recipes.

I explained to my GP. I explained to my lifestyle coach. I explained to the NHS appointed nutritionist. I explained to anyone who would listen that I wasn’t afflicted with a low IQ or lack of understanding about healthy eating. I was living with mental health issues that manifested as compulsive eating.

After years of living with this eating disorder and not being able to get help, a pre-diabetic diagnosis was what forced me to take a different route.

I kept hearing quiet stories about Mounjaro from people like me, even some friends who were in similar situations. Not the loud, glossy magazine-type stories, but people speaking honestly about how the drug (tirzepatide) changed their daily life.

My doctor agreed that taking the drug could be beneficial for me, however she was unable to prescribe it as the cost was not covered by the NHS when it comes to people in my position. This meant that I had to buy Mounjaro privately at the cost of approximately £200 a month, which I have been doing for almost a year now.

It is incredibly costly but the change to my life has been transformational.

What changed?

Something shifted. Instantly. The white noise, the background dull roar that used to follow me from morning until night, became quieter. I could eat and then get on with my day. That might sound simple, but if you know, you know. It’s not simple at all.

I stopped fixating. I wasn’t possessed by the thought of the next morsel. I could be present in conversations again. And yes, my body started to change too. But for me, that was the side note. The real shift was in my brain. In my peace.

I could sit down and read. I read two entire books in the first week of being on the drug. My husband noticed a change in my demeanour. He said I appeared happier in the first few weeks. I had a lot more spare time which sounds ridiculous but I had been spending hours either sourcing food or eating and that had dramatically ceased.

There were side effects. I felt a bit off in the first few weeks. Sometimes nauseous, sometimes there were toilet emergencies, sometimes I couldn’t sleep due to cramps brought on by eating hard-to-digest food. But this eased after a few months.

I finally had a bit of space between me and my compulsions. Just enough breathing room to rest. I don’t understand how the drug works to change my brain chemistry, but it feels like it has. Drastically. I am not compelled to eat every second of the day as I had been for decades.

It’s not a miracle

Mounjaro is not a miracle. It didn’t fix me. I’m still a person with a long history of disordered eating and a complicated relationship with food. I still go to therapy. I still live with PTSD, anxiety, and depression. I still struggle with a sugar addiction that I’ve had for many decades. I worry about ever having to come off the drug.

Me taking Mounjaro/tirzepatide is not about perfection or being thin. It’s about finally having a bit of support that actually works with my brain chemistry. For once, something made the gruelling climb feel a little less steep. I eat a fraction of what I used to eat in a day, which affords me time and emotional energy to live my life outside of compulsive eating.

What life looks like now

I’ve started thinking differently about my happiness. My future isn’t about a number or a goal weight or fitting into smaller clothes. It’s about feeling calm. Eating when I need nutrients. Eating portions that make sense to my body. Not food shopping and eating compulsively all day, every day. Not getting sick.

My compulsive eating is an extension of my mental health issues. I wasn’t eating that much food every single day because I was uneducated or lazy or greedy or stupid. My eating was powered by compulsive tendencies that were impossible for me to control without a medical intervention.

I am still advocating for mental health support from the NHS, although the wait times are diabolical and months are turning into years. The Eating Disorder team discharged me before I even got offered any mental health support from them because the Mounjaro worked so well. Hahahaha! You couldn’t make it up. My support worker said that if I could no longer afford the medication and my compulsive eating came back, let her know so she can put me back on the waiting list. It’s tough not to lose hope in a system so underfunded.

This is not advice. It’s not an advertisement. It’s just my story. But if it helps you feel a bit less alone, then it was worth writing. It helps me to share. I feel heard by you reading this.

Thanks for being here. If you have questions or want to share your own story, I’m always up for a chat. We’re all just doing our best with what we’ve got.

Let’s be kind with ourselves and each other.