Weight Loss and Exercise #5

I had two consecutive injuries: left ankle in Sept and left hamstring in October. So I did much less exercise, due to that. I have now recovered from the ankle injury and am slowly recovering from the badly pulled hamstring. Have been doing strength training, mostly of the upper body, and went to yoga once last week, for the first time since all of that happened in the fall, and ever so slowly am getting back on the treadmill. Very slow speed, medium incline. I feel like in Chutes and Ladders, having fallen all the way back to the start and needing to slowly climb back again.

But I have very good news to report: the non-alcoholic fatty liver disease which was caught on ultrasound in February 2021 has completely resolved per my latest (second) ultrasound. And learning it was like a gift due to an accidental discovery:

Last Saturday, I started on a low dose Naltrexone, hoping it would reduce my hunger. On Sunday, I had acute pain the upper right quadrant of the stomach. On Monday, the pain was still there but less acute and more spread out throughout the abdomen. On the phone with the advice nurse, she and I discussed that all of that could be a side effect of Naltrexone (actually quite common) but also could be something serious. So I went to be seen, was sent for an ultrasound and it came back completely normal. I could not believe my luck and sent both ultrasound reports, this one and the one from Feb 2021 when I was done in ER, to the GI Nurse Practitioner who saw me in 2021 for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. The confirmed that the liver is now completely normal. She warned me that NAFLD can recur and advised to continue with exercise, eating well etc. One has to be vigilant and never rest on one's laurels.

Naltrexone is not working for hunger reduction, alas. Initially it did but it was all due to abdominal pain. Once I accommodated to it and the pain went away, hunger came back. But there are some options experimenting with dosages, so who knows.

I am afraid Naltrexone is not helping because it has demonstrated effectiveness helping with cravings and I have none. I do not want to eat and would much rather do something else, but I get that frequent painful hunger that needs to be satiated to make the pain go away. And I usually wake up in the middle of the night from it, too. It is discouraging that nobody knows why this is happening, and all my labs are normal. I mean, I am, of course, happy that all the labs are normal, but I wish there were some clue as to why this painful hunger, again and again.

This is just anecdotal, but back in 2000, when i started on Topamax for appetite reduction, i was also experiencing stomach pain that i ate something to relieve. Which of course was antithetical to the purpise of the topamax. So my pdoc flippantly responded, "So take Tagamet! Doesnt everybody?" He said the pain was acid.

So i did, and Tagamet, generic name cimetidine, have had a happy relationship ever since. It is my go-to when i have eaten too much or too greasy. My previous gp okayed taking 2 tablets if the upset is very bad. It has not had a recall or warning in these past 20 years as many other stomach acid meds have had.

I had to stop my attempt at Ozempic because of abdominal pains, but i no longer experience stomach pains or that overwhelming feeling of hunger. Metformin might be helping that, idk. Also, i am much better about not going too long between meals.

My mother used to push me to extend the time as long as possible, but that makes one ravenous and more prone to overeat - there is no savings of calories in that scenario.

Better to eat a salad than curse the darkness, as my facebook group on "malaphors" would say!

That’s terrific news TartCherry! Well done getting the NAFD under control, hoping you enjoy getting back into your exercise groove.

Awesome on getting the NAFD under control, Cherry!

I took a long power walk this morning, stopped at the park and did ab and arm and leg weight machines. That machine for the obliques is a killer!

I ate half a cheesecake and now its been several hours later and I'm still not hungry. I need to work on not eating every 90 minutes or less. The longest I can go is like 7 hours.

Thank you, my dear friends! It feels so great to be back on this thread and I know that with you, climbing back up the Chutes and Ladders will feel like fun.

I'm not hungry today. I had 12 crackers and some juice. I just want to sleep. I have a walmart order coming in a bit with tuna and apples and other healthy shyt.

I did not realize before Thanksgiving that I was about to run out of Mounjaro (Mounjaro is Ozempic plus another ingredient). So I was supposed to inject on Thanksgiving and discovered that I had no more pens. I have only picked up new pens just now.

It was an eye opening experience. My hunger was not worse. That was not affected at all. But postprandial glucose started spiking and coming back down soon after almost each meal with carbs (I wear a CGM and use an app to track meals the the glucose response to them). Up and down, up and down, those sharp pointed spikes, several times a day. On Mounjaro I would have one of those a day and off Mounjaro, many. And also, the glucose would rise much higher than on Mounjaro, even though I was not eating worse foods. So now I can see that Mounjaro is not a placebo for me at all.

Today: personal training and 15 minutes on the treadmill plus 5 minutes cool down. Just to slowly get back into my old routine. Speed only 3 mph, incline only 3%. Not setting personal records but just getting reaccustomed.

That’s the right way to get gradually back into fitness TartCherry, you’ll soon be there as once you’ve built a good stamina it doesn’t take long to tap into that.

I got a nice 5k in this morning, I’ve got decorating jobs to do so will be home all day so my incentive was to get exercise in early. It was pitch dark at 7.15am and I felt disoriented by the darkness at first but the sun began to rise while I was out, it was a beautiful pink glow with the outline of the bare trees against it. Quite a few Christmas trees appearing in windows too. Good to be out there and my heart rate was definitely up.