What I Eat Since I Started Taking Mounjaro
Key takeaways:
Kim Jackson-Farmer has changed the way she eats since starting the diabetes medication Mounjaro about a year ago.
She’s much more aware of the amount of protein, fiber, and water she consumes each day.
Kim frequently posts “what I eat in a day” videos on social media to keep herself accountable.
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Kim Jackson-Farmer has kept video food diaries since starting weekly Mounjaro injections about a year ago.
The 42-year-old librarian from Richmond, Virginia, has gained an online following who watch for her “Mounjaro Weekly Update” and “What I Eat in a Day … on Mounjaro” posts on TikTok.
Mounjaro (tirzepatide) is a prescription medication that’s used together with diet and exercise to improve blood sugar management in people with Type 2 diabetes. It also can help people lose weight and is FDA approved under the brand name Zepbound for chronic weight management.
Kim has adopted a routine of taking Mounjaro and focusing on her health. She says it has upended the way she eats. Now, she monitors calories and puts an emphasis on her daily intake of protein, fiber, and water. She recently hired a nutritionist and hopes the support of a professional will make things easier.
“I’ve found myself struggling lately, white-knuckling it trying to do it myself with the free resources online,” Kim says. “I’m not just trying to lose weight as quickly as possible. I’m trying to retrain myself how to eat.”
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Switching from Ozempic to Mounjaro
Kim began making big changes to her medication and diet soon after the pandemic.
“My A1C [blood sugar level] was trending too high, and my doctor had told me I [had prediabetes],” Kim says. “Diabetes runs in my family.”
Her doctor prescribed Ozempic (semaglutide), an injection somewhat similar to Mounjaro for people with Type 2 diabetes. Kim says her doctor told her it could tackle both her prediabetes problem and her weight issue. Both Mounjaro and Ozempic work by slowing the digestion of food and making you feel fuller faster.
Kim took Ozempic for almost 2 years and lost 40 lbs.
But one thing she didn’t like about Ozempic was that “within an hour of me taking it, I could feel my blood sugar crash, and I would need something to eat or drink to not feel terrible,” she says.
She worked with her doctor to switch to Mounjaro, which works in a similar way. But Kim says she felt better taking Mounjaro. “Within an hour after taking [Mounjaro], I feel that huge appetite suppression and fullness.”
Kim has lost 30 lbs since she began weekly Mounjaro injections almost a ago. She’s thrilled with her progress and with the supportive comments she’s received since posting her videos online. The critics who comment that medications are a way of “cheating” weight loss just make Kim want to change the narrative.
“We have that old-school mentality that weight loss is supposed to be like you’re on ‘The Biggest Loser.’ You’re supposed to starve yourself. You’re supposed to be in the gym, crying and sweating,” she says.
But that’s not realistic, she says. Food is always a part of life, and for most people, it’s meant to be enjoyable as well as sustaining. Kim responded to one critic in a December 2023 video that’s been viewed more than 35,000 times: “Any weight loss journey that involves extreme deprivation, not learning to eat in moderation … will fail. Even if you lose the weight you will gain it back. Because it’s not just about losing the weight, it’s about changing habits and eating the fun stuff in moderation.”
Eating issues surfaced in adolescence
Kim’s issues with food and obesity began in childhood. As a teenager in the 1990s, she remembers watching a teen-focused movie meant to warn against eating disorders and seeing it as a how-to guide for staying thin.
“As an adolescent girl, I was taking notes,” she says. “You can eat whatever you want and not gain weight? That was amazing to me.”
She developed bulimia, a condition marked by binge eating followed by purging the food from the body, often by forced vomiting or overuse of laxatives. She lived with the disorder throughout high school and into college, where her weight hit 250 lbs.
But while the number on the scale affected her mental health, she felt physically fine.
“I used to be one of those people who said, ‘No matter how fat I am, I’m healthy.’ That was called youth. That was called being 22 years old,” Kim says. “Those girls who say ‘I’m fat, but I’m fine’? Wait until you hit your 40s and your knees start creaking when you climb up stairs.”
Over the next decade, Kimberly’s weight gradually increased, and she began limiting her activities. But she didn’t notice as her weight crept up. And she failed to make a connection between her size and the loss of interest in being active.
She remembers an argument with a relative over a reality show featuring larger people. The relative dismissed it, noting “They did that to themselves.
“I said, ‘Yeah, but they didn’t get like that overnight. Look at me. It creeps up on you,’” she says. “It took years to get to this point. I just went, ‘Oh, I can’t walk right now.’ ‘Oh, I can’t do this.’”
Three years ago, Kim and her husband began talking about a trip to Europe. Then she thought back to an Outer Banks vacation where the main level of their rented four-story home was at the very top. After struggling to climb the stairs, Kim looked out at the beach and realized there was no way she could make that climb again. That meant it was unlikely she’d visit the beach only yards away. The same walk would have been manageable 10 years earlier.
“I said, ‘I can’t go to Europe, walk around Paris … I can’t even handle the walk around Costco,’” she says.
Medications helped her stop obsessing about food and change her eating patterns
Kim weighed 426 lbs when she began taking Ozempic in April 2021. When she stopped taking the medication in March 2023, her weight stood at 386 lbs.
After switching to Mounjaro, she gradually increased her dose to its current 7.5 mg level. (Mounjaro’s highest dose is 15 mg.) She noticed when the 5 mg dose began to be less effective and she could consume more food. She initially had nausea when the dose increased to 7.5 mg.
“It actually lowers the food noise. For the first time in my life, I’m not obsessed with food,” she says.
Kim has changed the way she approaches meals, focusing first on “the things that are going to benefit me more,” such as protein and fiber. She doesn’t eat and drink beverages at the same time for fear the liquid will fill her up before she’s taken in enough protein and fiber.
She recommends recipes and products she likes on her TikTok channel. She’s a big fan of Fairlife protein shakes, often adding them to her coffee. She also found a recipe for nachos that replaced the chips with zucchini. And she has swapped regular rice with riced cauliflower. One night she had a Trader Joe’s Teeny Tiny Apple Pie for dessert and “only 200 calories!”
She’s also noticed that her taste buds have changed. U.S.-made milk chocolate now tastes sour. Her love of bacon cheeseburgers has diminished, too. She notes the sandwich isn’t “hitting the same dopamine receptors in my brain.”
She still gives in to cravings every once and awhile. One November day, after having yogurt with granola and honey for breakfast and bacon and gruyere egg bites for dinner, she wanted Indian cuisine. So she ate a samosa and some butter chicken. “It hit the spot and I had a ton of leftovers,” she says.
In October, after enjoying three hard boiled eggs and a plate of hummus with pretzel chips and apples, she and her husband went to a steakhouse to celebrate their wedding anniversary. She ordered an 11-ounce filet with a crab leg, notching more than 160 g of protein.
Once a social drinker, Kim says she’ll now have a glass of wine “and I’m one and done.”
Non-scale milestones are about her health
Kim is not only seeing results on the scale. Her blood pressure and cholesterol are lower. Her pulmonologist was pleased with her progress during a recent visit.
She’s marking non-scale milestones. One weekend, her husband announced he was going to Costco. Her husband was surprised she wanted to go because she usually passed on outings with a lot of walking. In the store, her husband frequently asked her if she needed to lean on the basket or if she was out of breath. She didn’t and she wasn’t.
After Costco, her husband wanted to stop at a grocery store. “You wait in the car. I’ll pop in,” he said. “No, I’ll join you,” she replied.
Talking to a friend that night, Kim said, “Girl, if I can do this now, where am I going to be a year from now?”
Then she started crying.
“Because I realized I can sort of see my life coming back to where it was a few years ago,” she says. “Before I had the massive weight gain. Before I started losing mobility … I felt free.”
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