I’ve Lost 8 Stone. EIGHT STONE. Also, Apparently I’m Menopausal Now. 🤦‍♀️

Current weight: 11 stone 13.2 lbs
Weight lost: 8 stone 0.4 lbs
Percentage of my starting body weight lost: just over 40%
BMI: 45.1 → 27.2
Number of functioning hormones: unclear😂

Well.

This is slightly bonkers.

When I started Mounjaro in October 2024, I weighed 19 stone 13.6 lbs.

I was so close to 20 stone that frankly we might as well call it 20. Nobody needs us splitting hairs over 0.4 of a pound at this point.

And now?

11 stone 13.2 lbs.

ELEVEN STONE SOMETHING.

I have lost eight stone.

More than 112 pounds.

And, perhaps the statistic that has made me stare at my calculator most suspiciously:

I have lost more than 40% of my starting body weight.

Forty. Per. Cent.

I appear to have misplaced almost half a Helen. 😳

Fortunately, I have checked behind the sofa and have absolutely no intention of finding her again.

Before and after: well, bloody hell

I know photographs aren't everything.

I know health isn't determined by how you look.

And I know there is an enormous temptation when you've lost a lot of weight to scrutinise photographs and immediately identify the next seventeen things you'd like to change.

But sometimes you need to look.

Really look.

Because I see that woman in the before photograph and I remember exactly how she felt.

I remember the lymphoedema.

I remember how enormous my legs and ankles became.

I remember the pain.

I remember thinking about how far I'd have to walk before agreeing to do something.

I remember stairs being something that required actual strategic planning.

And most frighteningly, I remember wondering what my mobility was going to look like as I got older.

That's why this has never really been about becoming thin.

I wanted my life back.

That was the thing that finally made you try Mounjaro in the first place: not simply wanting to weigh less, but fearing a future where pain and poor mobility increasingly restricted your life.

And then my hormones entered the chat 🔥

Now, you might imagine that having successfully lost seven stone, the eighth would simply follow in an orderly fashion.

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

No.

Because I am a woman in my 50s.

And apparently my ovaries looked at everything else I had going on and thought:

You know what Helen needs? A subplot.

Enter menopause.

🔥 Hot flushes.
🥵 Night sweats.
😴 Sleep apparently becoming optional.
🧠 Brain fog.
🍫 Random changes in appetite.
😭 Occasional desire to cry because somebody has breathed incorrectly in my general vicinity.

Marvellous.

I'd already spent years believing that losing weight in my 50s was going to be harder, and hormonal changes were part of the reason life had felt so difficult in the first place. That's also something I know many of the women who find my little corner of the internet will recognise.

So I started exploring HRT.

Which turns out not to be:

Take HRT → immediately become serene goddess with magnificent hair who sleeps eight hours and drinks herbal tea.

Disappointing.

It's been much more of a process of trying things, noticing what's happening, adjusting, wondering whetherthatsymptom is menopause, HRT, Mounjaro, stress, lack of sleep, being 52, Mercury being in retrograde or simply the fact that somebody has annoyed me.

My night sweats have improved enormously.

Other things have taken longer.

And through all of this, my weight loss slowed.

The eighth stone was different

This is probably the biggest difference between my seven-stone update and this one.

The journey stopped being neat.

There have been weeks where the scales haven't really done very much.

There have been times when I've been hungry.

There have been times when I've been tired.

There have been times when losing weight quite frankly hasn't been the most important thing happening in my life.

Old Helen would have interpreted this as:

IT HAS STOPPED WORKING. I HAVE FAILED. ABORT MISSION. FIND BISCUITS.

New Helen?

Carried on.

That's it.

Nothing inspirational.

No 5am meditation.

No 75-step morning routine involving lemon water and gratitude.

I just...

carried on.

And I think that might be one of the most important things I've learned during this entire journey.

I don't need to be perfect anymore

For most of my adult life, weight loss went something like this:

Monday: New life begins. 💪
Tuesday: Extremely virtuous.
Wednesday: Still smug.
Thursday: Slight wobble.
Friday: Ate something "bad."
Saturday: Well, I've ruined it now.
Sunday: Eat everything because DIET STARTS MONDAY.

Repeat for approximately 30 years.

Mounjaro has obviously changed my appetite enormously.

But something else has changed too.

I've stopped treating one imperfect day as evidence that I'm incapable of changing.

That's a much bigger deal than I realised.

Because sustainable change was never going to mean behaving perfectly forever. It had to mean being able to have difficult weeks without throwing everything away — exactly the sort of persistence-over-perfection approach I want this website to be about.

Meanwhile, the numbers are doing some frankly ridiculous things

My BMI has gone from:

45.1 → 27.2

Body fat according to my scales:

60.9% → 33.4%

Visceral fat:

26 → 9

That last one makes me particularly happy.

My clever-but-obviously-not-a-medical-scanner bathroom scales also claim that my muscle mass has actually increased slightly.

Do I believe every decimal point they produce?

Absolutely not.

They're bathroom scales, not NASA.

But I do find the trends fascinating.

And the overall trend is fairly difficult to argue with:

there is considerably less of me.

😂

But here's the weird bit nobody really talks about

I'm getting close.

Not finished. I'm not even entirely sure what finished means anymore.

But close.

A BMI of 25 no longer looks like some imaginary destination on another continent.

And that's creating a question I didn't expect to be asking:

What happens when losing weight isn't my project anymore?

I've been overweight for most of my adult life.

I've been on diets.

I've been about to start diets.

I've been failing diets.

I've been planning diets.

I've been thinking about food while on diets.

I've been thinking about all the food I would eat once I was no longer on the diet.

😂

Being "someone trying to lose weight" has occupied an extraordinary amount of mental space.

And now I'm beginning to think about maintenance.

That scares me slightly.

Because losing weight has rules.

Maintenance feels much more like...

Right then, off you go. Live your life.

And I haven't quite worked out what that looks like yet.

The fear of “What happens if I actually succeed?” Is one you've identified as a huge part of the emotional side of significant weight loss — including the fear that maintaining it will somehow be even harder.

So I think I'm going to talk about that honestly as I get there.

Eight stone later, what am I actually celebrating?

Of course I'm celebrating the number.

EIGHT STONE! 🎉

I'm not going to pretend I'm too spiritually evolved to care about that.

I'm delighted.

But I'm celebrating other things more.

I'm celebrating moving more easily.

I'm celebrating having choices about clothes that I haven't had for years.

I'm celebrating feeling more confident.

I'm celebrating my body not feeling like the enemy anymore.

I'm celebrating looking towards my 50s and 60s and feeling excited rather than frightened about what my health might become.

And — SPOILER ALERT FOR AN UPCOMING POST/VIDEO —

I CAN WEAR BOOTS. 🥾🥾🥾

If you don't have lymphoedema, this may not seem worthy of capital letters.

Trust me.

IT IS WORTHY OF CAPITAL LETTERS.

There will be more on that particular miracle very soon. 😂

If you're at the beginning...

There's one thing I really want to say.

If you've got a significant amount of weight to lose, please don't look at my after photograph and compare it with your beginning.

Look at my beginning.

I was nearly 20 stone.

My BMI was over 45.

I was in my 50s.

I had spent decades dieting.

I had health and mobility problems.

I didn't secretly possess some extraordinary reserve of willpower that you don't have.

In fact, when I started, a large part of me genuinely wondered whether it was simply too late.

It wasn't.

I can't promise anyone else what their experience with Mounjaro or any other GLP-1 medication will be. This is simply mine.

But if you're sitting there thinking:

I've tried everything.

I'm too old.

My hormones are a disaster.

I've got too much weight to lose.

What's the point?

I understand.

That's exactly the woman I created this space for — the woman who feels as though she's spent a lifetime fighting her body and desperately wants to believe that lasting change might still be possible.

At 52, I'm eight stone lighter.

I've lost 40% of my starting body weight.

My hormones are still occasionally staging a coup.

I'm still figuring things out.

I'm not perfect.

But my life is immeasurably better.

And perhaps that's the biggest thing eight stone has taught me.

It was never really about making my body smaller.

It was about making my life bigger. ❤️

I'm sharing my own experience of Mounjaro, weight loss, menopause and HRT. Nothing on this website is intended as medical advice. Please speak to an appropriate healthcare professional about your own health and treatment.