Is this going to open a floodgate - weight loss jabs for unemployed

I’d put cheap sausages in a ready meal category. Serve with an easy carb and a veg or two. Feed four for a fiver. It’s not terribly good for you though. My dog isn’t a fan Richmond sausages which probably tells you that the meat is questionable at best. Not really a fan myself the casing has a really odd texture. I don’t buy them even when they are 50p with a yellow sticker and I buy a lot of yellow sticker stuff!

I've lost over 40kg on Ozempic over about 18 months. Weight loss has slowed down now though. I was never overweight until my thyroid stopped working. Levothyroxine does not work well for me but it's all there is. My GP took almost 18 over months to get me on the correct dose. They prescribe 25mg at a time then you have to wait 4 months before they redo blood test and decide you need 50mg repeat, repeat, repeat until you are up to 225mg a day. In those 18 months I put on almost 5 stone yet was only eating normally. Not everyone who is obese eats donuts all day. Ozempic has been wonderful for me.

I’m not determined to see it as a big fat failure but surely you can see that just giving someone an injection without addressing why they need it in the first place is setting them up for potential failure in the long term? Sure it’s a short term fix but it’s not addressing how they got in that state in the first place.

I'm willing to bet the few muppets on thread spouting ignorance and prejudice have never been affected by obesity.

They don't want to work they will try and find another issue. People with all sorts of disabilities and health conditions go to work because being at home is depressing and boring.

The peas and potatoes though? The cost of those need to be factored in. You can get a ready meal from Aldi or Lidl for less than £2. Sure, the sausage, mash and peas is probably better value because you can make more than one meal from them, but some people don’t actually see that. they just see they can get X number of ready meals for the same price or less and it requires less effort to make.

We're out of Europe if there's no money then something has to give. The benefits before we joined Europe was abysmal you couldn't live on it. There is a 22 billion black hole where is it coming from. We are broke.

@loveydoveyloon

They do not stop the treatment until you are in a healthy BMI

That is a good thing. 👆

Why should this treatment only be available to those who can afford to pay for?

I’m not sure there’s any decent science to say that that list of ingredients is unhealthy.

But in any case the point was about cost, not metabolic chemistry.

Wouldn't it be fantastic if it opened up a floodgate to actually treating people's medical and psychological conditions so that they are able to work? I feel that I'm potentially missing your point but can't figure out how that would be anything other than a good thing.

Actually helping people, making them more physically and mentally healthy seems like a good thing to me.

No its not an underlying reason! But you seem to be determined to see it all as a big old fat failure so thats fine

And unfortunately theres tons and tons of 'experts' out there who dont agree with CICO, so who is going to give the education?

Even dinner plates need to be smaller, they're much bigger than they were in the 50s for example.

I would say that this is pretty much common knowledge. I see regularly a bunch of young overweight women and I'm sure there are many reasons for them being so - no idea of how to cook from scratch, inability to afford certain foodstuffs, having baby after baby without shifting the previous weight, not much activity other than walking the kids to school/nursery, boredom to name only a few. Will an injection solve this? It still requires a degree of self control and what happens once they come off it? Sadly there are whole sections of the population who seem to think some eyebrows, tattoos and false lashes are more important than eating healthily. There are areas with generational unemployment and bad health. It's a very complex situation.

That’s a very simplistic and outdated view. I suggest you do some research.

I am not sure Richmond sausages are any better in terms of health than a Ready Meal, in fact they may be worse than many ready meals given the poor ingredients.

Pork (42%), Water, Rusk (WHEAT), Pork Fat, Starch (WHEAT), SOYA Protein, Salt, Stabilisers: Diphosphates, Guar Gum; Flavourings, Preservative: Sodium MetabiSULPHITE*; Antioxidants: Ascorbic Acid, Alpha Tocopherol; Colour: Carmine. Casing: Beef Collagen.

That’s still technically an underlying reason isn’t it - lack of education. Just giving someone a weight loss injection doesn’t actually address why they are overweight, and without addressing the why then long term the injection isn’t going to work if people will just go back to doing what they did before.

Floodgate to better health - physical and mental health, less diabetes, less high blood pressure, less heart attacks and strokes?

And getting people into employment?

Sounds bloody brilliant!

Obesity is known as a risk factor for many illnesses. However you can’t say categorically that someone has had a heart attack because they are obese. What about all the people who are obese and don’t have heart attacks?

And this is a massive problem in our country. Policies are planned around short-termism and election cycles rather than taking the time to do proper research and implement well thought through policies.

I agree and this is what it means to tackle the societal issue, the root cause. I don't see all the naysayers here going out there and talking about this, protesting for it. They don't care until injections are mentioned then they'd rather bother people who're doing what they can to help themselves.

Pathetic. You have clearly never been obese. I can't imagine there are many obese people who can't work because of just obesity. They have other health issues too.

Agreed. Unless there's also upskilling and training on offer, I am unclear how this is going to help people back into work.

Reducing obesity will likely lead to a reduction in the number of operations required each year which in turn will reduce waiting lists. According to diabetes UK there are more than 180 amputations in the UK each week being carried out due to complications from type 2 diabetes. That's over 9,000 surgeries a year. Add onto that reducing the instances of cancer, heart attacks and many other illnesses. It makes sense to throw a lot of resources at tackling obesity because the pay off for the health service could be immense.

That’s quite an imagination you have there!

A 5 years clinical will not be up before the next GE. I can't see Labour getting reelected. Their popularity has plummeted.

Not always, I think that is a convenient myth. Other countries where obesity hasnt been as prevalent dont have higher levels of people with trauma do they?

Countries that didnt have bad obesity rates but are now increasing in overweight and obesity have something in common, a changing food culture, growing more like the UK and more like the USA

It really doesnt take much overeating at all actually to put on a stone a year, I think someone calculated it on another thread as a few biscuits a day (the calorific equivalent of)

And thats another thing that is quite difficult because there is so much investment it seems to 'disprove' CICO, that people really dont understand that you cannot eat more than your calorie requirement and not put on weight, no matter how wholesome and healthy the food is. Believe me Ive been there and done that!