To think it will be revealed WLI cause physical aging

As far as I’m concerned I’m taking a legitimately prescribed drug, from a legitimate medical practitioner, for its legitimate purpose. No different to any other drug. I’ve had no side effects since the first couple of weeks, I’m eating healthily and I look and feel fantastic. End of story.

Other people’s health is no-one else’s business. So no need to be concerned about me.

I’m sure others will feel the same.

I haven't ever said people are jealous. If you want them, you can get them, so it's not envy in that sense. My issue is that people seem to think fat people shouldn't use them as they should suffer for thinness.

Regaining weight if you return to your initial state is obvious, surely. And a reminder to all that they aren't a magic cure. If you take blood pressure medication and come off it and your blood pressure rockets, no one (sane) is surprised, are they? I know that I need the medication to suppress my overwhelming urge to eat. Without it, I will return to bingeing, which is what got me here.

It's not a substitute for healthy eating is it? If you don't eat healthily, you won't lose weight. You can't override the suppression, gorge on cake and then expect to lose weight. Perhaps that's where the misunderstanding comes from? I don't know.

Personally, I lost 7 stone in 2020/21 and developed an incredibly unhealthy relationship with food from being so afraid to eat anything if I couldn't know the exact calories. I regained all the weight (and more) over the following few years before starting WLI's in 2025. This time, I can eat until I'm full, I crave healthy foods and water and have no desire to eat junk. I don't have to spend all day obsessing over what I eat (or what I can't eat), so yes it's 'easy' in that sense, but that doesn't mean my diet isn't better.

Smokers and drug addicts could both overcome their addictions without medication, but you'll be hard pushed to find a Mumsnet thread on the dangers of varenicline or methodone.

Perhaps you could clarify then.

Do you think that diet and exercise constitute a drug free alternative for most people and if so, do you understand that in the majority of cases this eventually fails so they'll become obese again?

Yes, and also of keeping it off. Which for some obese people is the bigger problem!

That isn't ridiculous and it isn't what you said that caused me to call it ridiculous.

I do, however, attend a gym where two of the instructors "before" pictures show that they have made the change, sustained it and also been able to turn that into a career.

I don't understand you making a huge point about how few recovered obese peple there are, because people are putting the weight back on even faster when they stop using GLPs than when they stop dieting.

@Calliopepsa the discussion I'm having with Imdumfer here is a good example of what I was talking about before. Someone who may well know the risks of obesity, but doesn't know that diet and exercise do not actually keep obese people as a cohort a healthy BMI and so it's a choice between two potentially risky options.

They are in the significant minority. Research says they dont stay that weight for life

There is not one weight loss system (and certainly not the hackneyed 'diet and exercise naturally' route) that guarantees life long absence of overweight or obesity

Ive had WLS, its a lifelong battle, it doesnt 'solve' the problem of humans wanting to eat more than they need, its very very much a physical support for that though just like WLI are. I still have to work hard at it and will need to do so for the rest of my life.

I think people also minimise the difficulty of losing the weight.

Well, I'd rather that than be muffled by the apparently pressing need to make other people feel comfortable about my personal medical choices. 🙂

'Plenty of people' is a vague and scientifically meaningless term. The majority of obese people who lose weight through traditional means regain it.

You are of course free to find that ridiculous, but it will not become less true because you wish it wasn't.

Its because people put fat people into a category of morality rather than a medical need

You're fat = greedy, lazy, ugly

rather than

You're fat = metabolic issues, joint issues, heart issues, hormone issues which all need treatment

So when they're apparently weighing up the huge risk of the medication, they simply do not understand the risk of obesity and being overweight, they have no real understanding of it. I think most of the population minimises the harm that being fat does, its often seen as a joke thing rather than something like a heroin addiction for example.

Well I guess you'll continue to get pushback from people then.

Hard to accept?

It's not "hard to accept", it's a ridiculous claim that the only alternative to GLPs is ongoing obesity.

There are plenty of people who have changed from being obese to being a healthy weight and stayed there.

Nobody is saying that it is easy.

That's not what I meant. I'm well aware I slung zero insults.

I mean, in your post, in the bit that I quoted, you're not addressing insult-slinging you're giving instructions on how WLI should frame their feelings about WLIs. You're proscribing the use of certain descriptors or too much positivity. Which, frankly, nope.

Oh dear. I got the medication for facial hair and acne.

Very much needed it to look better

Neither of those things would kill me, neither are they strictly 'medical contexts' as people like to call it, my acne was not severe.

What warped cultural norms are you on about in terms of obesity, which is a medical condition?

And hard as it may be, there is a drug free alternative for most people.

Yes, but that alternative is ongoing obesity. And it probably won't be drug free either. Because actually, nothing has been proven to make and keep an already obese person a healthy BMI apart from ongoing WLI use. Hard as that may be to accept!

No I didn't see anything insult-slinging in your post, but there is plenty of it: people who raise concerns are jealous, need therapy etc

What people are saying is...why is there such concern for the supposed side effects of these particular drugs and no others. And no one seems to be able to answer.

First, I have never needed to lose weight in my life so jealousy doesn't come in to this.

These drugs and no others is because the people taking them when they are not diabetic are paying for the privilege of being a test volunteer, taking a drug which has never been tested for that purpose, many without any medical supervision. And hard as it may be, there is a drug free alternative for most people.

The long term effects are not known and potentially may include epigenetic effects (which is what peptides do) that continue down the generations long after the original users stopped using them.

The results coming in now, in the papers again today, are that most of the weight is regained within 14 months of stopping, and what risks there are will have been taken for no long term gain. Worse, they leave the person who took them in worse shape, body composition wise, than they were before.

The concern among many of us is genuine, perhaps not for individuals who we don't know, but for what widespread use of a drug to suppress appetite as a substitute for healthy eating says about where we are as a society already full of people with eating disorders (I was one.)

The sheer level of defensive reactions from people who profess to be perfectly happy taking them suggests that claim of perfect happiness with the use of GLPs is not actually true for everyone.

Your post explicitly said how WLI should talk about being on them. Not too enthusiastic. A shade of shame and regret. Which is hardly a frank discussion if we're being told what to say and how to frame it.

I can't see what any of what I quoted has to do with insult slinging which it's pretty much a given is unproductive on any thread about anything, anyway.

Its a shameful lack of care from the MN community.

Well it isn't pretty obvious to me that people who aren't overweight would want to lose weight, no. People taking the drugs as otherwise directed, do so at their own risk, the same as any drug. Codeine has a place if you're in pain, it doesn't if you aren't. Doesn't mean people don't abuse it.

How that translates to people having concern over people taking them who have a need for it, still isn't clear.

And yet there are posts on this thread, as on all of them, from people who make no mention of it and whose analysis shows no sign of understanding that an obese person is balancing the risks of likely long term obesity with those of WLI use.

My guess is you're probably right that most of them do know obesity is risky in itself, but for whatever reason they haven't considered them. In some threads people will explicitly say people should diet and exercise instead, evidently not knowing that on a population level it doesn't work. But they don't always.

It's not tone-policing so much as thinking frank discussion is healthier than insult-slinging.
ETA and it's only anyone's "problem" insofar as they are complaining that people raise concerns and they don't like them being aired.

that an already obese person doesn't have a zero downsides course of action available to them.

These words are bang on - and key.

@Calliopespa But I think where people would feel more comfortable is if the discussion was more "I needed the WLIs and the risks were worth it for me, but, of course, I would rather not have had to." It is just far more balanced - and I suspect actually a reflection of reality - than this vehement insistence they are simply a brilliant and unmitigated panacea, no worries, no doubts.

So...you're tone policing how WLI users should describe their feelings about being on WLI so that others, not on them, who it has nothing to do with, can feel more "comfortable"? Comfortable about what exactly? Why is it my problem to make complete strangers feel 'comfortable' about the immense positive impact these drugs have had on my life over the past year?

Oh, and by way if you really don't think most formerly obese people who have lost weight via WLI would rather not have had to, ie would rather not have been obese in the first place, then....yeah. OK. But what's important is that we should self-flagellate about it publicly for the comfort of others?