What foods would you like to make?
Let’s not talk about food. Over the past year and a half, my whole attitude about food has changed. My husband is a foodie. He makes amazing food and for many years, I cooked dinner every night because I always got home from work first. On the weekends, he would cook because that’s his jam and he enjoys doing it. Plus there’s more time for him to do it then.
I used to look forward to food. I’d think about what I had a taste for and then I’d make it. I had my go-to dishes that were easy to make that we both enjoyed. I particularly always liked my chicken fajita bowls. Those were basically just white rice in a little pile, seasoned black beans, and some chunks of chicken with peppers and onions on top. Of course, there’d be some shredded cheese, sour cream, avocado or salsa, and hot sauce on top. Or even shepherd’s pie was a favorite. Technically, cottage pie since I always made it with beef instead of lamb.
But food has a way of losing it’s appeal when you take Mounjaro. You know that medicine. It’s the first cousin of Ozempic. Pretty much the same stuff. My husband and I both take it. I started taking it last February…well, last as in 2024. My job as a principal caused so much stress and anxiety that my already high a1C shot up to over 9. The medicine was necessary. And it still is. I’m on the highest dose the Mounjaro company makes. I’m used to it by now. It doesn’t cause my stomach to be as upset as it was when I was continually increasing dosages.
What it does do though, is make me not want to eat. And when I do have a taste for something and am actually hungry (usually the day before and the day of my weekly dose when last week’s dose has worn out of my system), I can’t eat very much. I also have to be careful what I eat. Some foods I used to enjoy really upset my stomach. I can eat hot dogs, but not from the local chain restaurant that we used to go to all the time. I will almost immediately regret my decision if I eat from there. Other hot dog places are fine, not that one though.
Not that eating is supposed to be fun, I mean, really we’re just fueling our bodies, but on this medicine, eating really isn’t fun anymore. My husband and I take our doses on the same day (Sunday evening) so we can 1) enjoy having a somewhat appetite over the weekend and 2) so we can be miserable together during the week. I won’t get into the TMI side effects, not really stomach upset, but it kind of is. Because of that, we don’t really eat dinner anymore during the week. If we do, we eat simple things. He’ll eat the cheap 25 cents a pack Ramen noodles because he can digest it well. I might eat a sandwich or some leftovers, because our leftovers last for days now. If we cook a big meal, it takes us that long to finish off the leftovers because we can’t eat very much.
That’s the long winded way of saying, I don’t want to make any foods because I’m not hungry. Not now, and not very often at any other time. To be fair, the medicine does what it’s supposed to. It has lowered our a1C because it makes us not want to put food in our bodies that could raise it! The weight loss is nice too. But sometimes, we kind of miss food. I don’t know what the long-term effects are of this medicine. I don’t think anybody knows yet, it’s still very new. Maybe one day when we’re not on it anymore we’ll want to eat again. But until then, ew! I’m not hungry. Don’t make me cook anything.
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