Risking a flaming but jealous of those on weight loss injections

[Notmyfinesthours]

I’ve specifically not put this in the weight loss section as I’d rather hear from those who aren’t dieting or thinking about it. Might help me find perspective better.

I am not overweight. I never have been.
I have however had what feels like a lifetime of making sure this is the case.

I suspect many women feel like me. Brought up to fear being fat or greedy or ‘let myself go’ as if it were the worst sin.

Ive skirted close to or actually been in the midst of orthorexia for most of my adult life. Always saying no to pudding, finding the latest food that will fill me up but not have too many calories and fixating on it before I find the next one. Exercising most days, fitting it in by missing lie ins or nights in front of the fire.

Fretting in pregnancy, menopause and any ill health leading to immobility that it might trigger weight gain.

you get the picture? Self flagellation is big driven by an instilled fear of being fat given to many in my generation (I’m 58) (and yes I know I should address this first- I am trying but the media doesn’t help)

Several of my friends and family are big eaters, always seem to have the toastie and cake when we are out and by their own admissions do little exercise. They have often jokingly talked about being slimmer but say they like food too much and ‘have no willpower’ and can’t be bothered to deny themselves for the sake of a few dress sizes.

I know it’s more complex than that but they basically enjoy life in the way it should be enjoyed to my mind and accept they will be a bit larger bodied. I’ve actually always really admired this as an attitude or at least been a bit jealous of it.

But with the new weight loss injections several of them have dropped weight significantly and are so slim and delighted.

I just feel so cheated. Like I’ve been so careful for so long and they haven’t but they get to be slim just with an injection.

I know it’s more complicated, I know it costs them money, might have risks etc but it’s clear so many celebs are doing the same and it feels like it’s not going to be more commonplace.

Why is this making me feel cheated and am I just an awful person?

I think hunger spikes for some & not others, one doughnut lets to two & having one biscuit or one piece of chocolate leads to two. For some only way to control appetite is to deny yourself all choc & biscuits.

It's miserable being fat, I get that.
But it's miserable living your whole life on a diet as well, if it wasn't, they wouldn't fail at the rate they do. Why can't people also get that?
Edited to say, lots of life happens along the way as well, my relative had a happy life, her weight was just one part. I have a happy life, food denial is just one part.

Totally this. This thread has been quite the eye opener - never realised there were so many miserable hungry people around.

But @Kendodd I thought you said your overweight friend was happy?

Every overweight person knows how difficult it is to diet. Go to the weightloss threads. No one on them is in denial. What is astonishing is that some slim people have kept that quiet and pretended that it was a piece of piss.

Yeah - I think we all agree that everyone seems to get a rough deal one way or another. Weight and food psychology seems to be messed up in so many of us, even if it has different results.

Anyone else wonder what life would be like if we didn't all carry the baggage to be 'acceptable' around with us, all the time?

I don’t think people don’t ‘get that’. As I said, I’ve been in both situations. But that’s a choice you’ve made. You decided you’d be happier denying yourself those foods and being slim. I do find it hard to understand anyone thinking ‘oh if I’d known about weight loss injections I’d just have been fat for 30 years then spent a load of money on fixing it’ because 1) being slim for those 30 years was obviously important to you, hence the choices you made, 2) you have no idea that you’d actually have been happier overweight, because you’ve not been in that situation, 3) people taking weight loss injections are doing so because they’re medically obese, or have weight related medical issues, and mainly at great expense to themselves, not just because they’re a couple of lbs overweight from the odd extra doughnut.

I think some (maybe most?) are natually slim so it is easy for them. Not all though.

Every one gets that, no one has even indicated otherwise. What’s been said is people are shocked at your statement if you’d known weight loss medication would come out, you’d have chosen to live for decades obese with medical issues,

can you not see how bizzare this is, but you can get fat now, gain however many stone, develop medical complications, come off the diet,. Then start spending a couple a hundred a month on medication to try to get back down once you hit obesity, no one is stopping you. If that floats your boat, go for it. Is it advisable, hell no, but that’s a different story.

Why would you think this, when you yourself say you’ve been miserable your whole life trying to be slim?

Yes this seems to be coming out now. People admitting it’s been miserable and hard, hence some of the resentment. But when there was no cure, no one was fronting up to their fat friends and family and saying it’s fucking miserable. They were feeling the smugness of being slim.

@WiserOlderElf to your point 3, increasingly the in some cases & in some areas the marginally overweight are going on jab. In expat communities I know the slim wanting to be model thin are also on it.

Well maybe I'm wrong and it is super hard work. I haven't head many people say it is though. I have made no sercret of it in my life.

I don’t think that is true. If you’ve had to work hard at being slim, and many people on here have said they had to work hard at being slim, why would you think that it’s easy for most?

Then if you e been running round telling everyone you’re an anomaly, as you yourself know no one else is, hence why you’ve not heard it,

@Kendodd so you have told everyone all your life that it is have been one long miserable grind and you have gone without and been hungry and in denial for all these years, just to be slim but also miserable for your entire adult life.

Now the weight loss injections are here, you have suddenly thought that you have been made a fool of and that you should have eaten enough KFC, biscuits and donuts to get overweight and then you could have used the injections to be slim. This was despite having a good friend who was overweight and happy. Howcome you didn't think that you could have eaten a few of the same things and been overweight and happy?

You do know that people on weight loss injections are dieting? You can't chow down on donuts, KFC and cake and just jab away and be slim. You are not making logical sense here.

Some baffling thought processes going on here

@TheBoldHelper about 20% of women are competitive (only one study but sounds about right) - ie tend to view their lives as aiming to surpass others. Society tells us 'slim is better' so it's not a huge surprise to me that for those women who see an optimised life as doing 'better' than others they see being slimmer than other women as one way to do that.

It's then also not a big surprise that for them WLJ are 'cheating' because it makes the competition 'easier' for women you were previously 'beating'.

Ignoring the fact that there were probably many reasons someone struggled more with their weight.

I suspect people who are competitive assume everyone else is competing and don't understand other people have different motivations.

Totally screwed up and not something I feel but I can sort of see how it comes about.

As they’re obtaining it illegally and dangerously I usually find it’s best to avoid discussing those people on these threads, as the vast majority in this country at least are obtaining it legally, through a private prescription.
Those people are a separate issue.

I've been anorexic in my teens. I easily maintained a healthy weight through to my 40s. I've exercised obsessively in my 40s. In my 50s I suffered 3 traumatic bereavements, obsessive eating, health issues, the menopause and put on a lot of weight rapidly. The biggest factor was the bereavements. I then started ALL the diets.... nothing worked and nothing changed my mental attitude to food.

MJ has changed all of that and I've also come off the antidepressants that I started 2 yrs after the deaths.

I don't fear cancer or kidney damage because I've read the research (not a risk) and am not nastily willing bad things on myself. 🙄 I'm eating pretty healthily but a lot less that everyone around me to enable weight loss. It hasn't been easy but it has been possible.

I hear you OP but as you know yourself, it's complex.

If people ask me why I'm slim, I tell them that I've been on a diet my whole life and it fucking miserable. Are you happier when you're on a diet or when you're not? I know there's a lot of sensitivity around weight, so if I'm out, and everyone is having cake, if they're all heavier than me ill just say I don't want any, I don't want to imply anything on them if they are.
I have to admit, I have put on weight since my relative died, with a 'life's too short' attitude and every mouthful has been a bit of heaven. Her weight didn't stop her doing anything, her body was perfect (until it wasn't) and did everything she needed it to do.
I wish these weight loss jabs were around 30 years ago though, they would have made mine and my relatives life a lot easier.

But @Kendodd you would never have been eligible to be prescribed them, unless you got to the point where you were obese! So they wouldn't have helped you in any way, just like they don't now, because you have no need of them and have benefited from being a healthy weight for all your life.

But that makes no sense. The drug is only available for the obese. You’d not have got it.

im really struggling with the mentality that only you’ve had it miserable. Everyone else is naturally slim or revelling in being fat and enjoying their food.

there is no medicine for thin people to take to stay thin. Have you misunderstood? This is a medicine for the obese.

So @Kendodd are you saying that you would have eaten enough to get to a BMI of over 30, so that you could have taken weightloss injections and then dieted to lose weight?

Or are you saying that you wish you had eaten a little bit more of what you wanted and not been quite so slim?

Not just that but the implication that the poster could eat all that tasty cake while on the meds and stay slim. It doesnt work like that.

God, it’s still not sinking in is it? Horrible, nasty people coming and spouting their nonsense. Jealous that fat people can just be fat for years/decades and then just jab it all away? Don’t be so bloody simple. We still have the MH issues, the physical issues. Don’t suppose anyone is jealous of my HBP and Diabetes are they? Oh and don’t worry, we will still be hideously unattractive with our turkey necks and baggy skin so you can maintain your precious superiority.

If any thread was ever ‘not in the spirit of Mumsnet’, this is it.

When I started Mounjaro I wondered why do so many women on the boards not tell anyone; not even their husbands! Now I understand why. They know how mean-spirited people can be, how judgemental, and finally, how totally, totally ignorant.