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?

Rubbish.

Women also want slim, attractive partners too, but that's never given a second thought.

Yes it is perpetuated by women.

After generation upon generation of a patriarchy. Where women’s value has always been placed upon their looks and how well they conform to the behaviour desired by men of that time.

Pretending that the patriarchal society we live in doesn’t impact behaviours is naive at best.

@itwasnevermine evolutionary drive works both ways.

as the pp said, women also want slim attractive partners. You don’t see men behaving as women do.

it’s on us. Not men, we are responsible for ourselves. We cannot behave badly and say he made me do it. That’s the abusers line.

Spot on!

But you can’t solve a problem by pretending it’s occurred in a vacuum. ignoring that women in years past have been in competition with men because they realised on men for the financial and family security, isn’t helpful. pretending that looks don’t impact women, even in the work place isn’t helpful.

What’s helpful is for women to really discuss why they have these feeling, recognise them and then they have to put in the work to change the way they feel. Because they have been of the society they have been brought up in. Pretending it doesn’t exist does not help.

Do women want slim and attractive partners? It’s actually well studied that women don’t concentrate on looks as much as men do. The obsession that women (on the whole) only want partners who are super attractive and only bother by looks and/or money is quite the incel trope. Which is often proved wrong again and again.

and also depends on how you see ‘slim’. All the women I know like their partners to be healthy. But slim doesn’t always equal healthy.

I think it shows what a complicated relationship we all have with weight and eating. If scientists had said "Oh hey guys. We've invented this jab that stops alcoholics wanting to drink/ addicts wanting to use/ gamblers wanting to gamble/ sex addicts undertaking v risky behaviours" everyone would be like " oh yay, dish it out to everyone who needs it. I'm happy for them and it's going to improve public health". No-one would be saying " not fair- I have to sit on my hands every night to not have a second glass of wine- why do they get a free pass?" because we recognise that certain behaviours become addictive in some people and not others due to factors that we don't still fully understand.

We've made eating and weight into some huge moral issue, with judgements about self-discipline and laziness that we don't apply to other behaviours which are arguably far more harmful/ create a lot more collateral damage at society level.

Excellent post, and really sums up the whole issue for me.

@TheBoldHelper agree but it’s biology unfortunately. Look at the natural world/animal kingdom.

I’ve seen a couple of quotes that resonate with some of the attitudes expressed on this thread, advice for a happy life to those who need it….

”Dimming someone else’s light doesn’t make yours shine brighter”

and the classic “comparison is the thief of joy”

Just sharing in case anyone reading needs to hear this wisdom x

I am slim and a lot of bigger people assume that I can eat what I want, I assume that's because that's easier to accept than hearing me say nope I watch what i eat all the time and do a lot of exercise. You're so lucky - am I, why? Now I do not have the constant food noise that people have talked about on here but when I am in a cafe would I really like a cake with my brew , crikey yes I would.

Congratulations…

It's not rubbish, is it?
I personally am not looking for a particularly slim man and I know a lot of women like me.
In general, height and muscle is more of an issue for men, along with being wealthy or accomplished.

You've nailed it, exactly. That is the daily life of someone who has been conditioned to fear being overweight, and whose mind is therefore consumed by the opposing forces of desire for fattening food and the need to reject it. Always weighing the options - it takes a good deal of time and energy.
Imagine a drug that can clear your mind of this crap and enable you to spend hours thinking about the Roman empire instead? But you can't have it because you've been reasonably successful at the constant self-denial. So you stay on the treadmill...
I'm not saying that Wegovy / Mounjaro /Ozempic are a walk in the park. Doubtless there are significant risks and side effects, but I can see why the OP feels as she does.

What percentage of women over 55 (I wonder) are bang in the middle of a healthy BMI who eat only when hungry, with no real thought about food don’t deny themselves & have little to no ‘food noise’?

I get wanting the medication for yourself. What I don’t get is not wanting other people to have it, because you can’t.
Would it have been a hell of a lot easier for me to lose 3 stone and keep it off for 3 years with weight loss medication? Absolutely. Does that mean I don’t want other people to be able to access it, and therefore have an easier ride than me? Absolutely not. It doesn’t affect me.

I reckon about 25% (completely random guess)
As people enter old age I think appetite diminishes and more people would fall into that category.

I think it would be a very evolved and healed human who wouldn't feel the tiniest amount of despondence & frustration at plugging away at a 'job' like maintaining a low weight and constantly saying no and then seeing others who didn't do the plugging away but end up at the same result size wise (& probably psychologically a bit happier because they've not had decades of internal conflict over a fucking twix).

I'm not saying it's right to be despondent and frustrated. It's just understandable. I know it's ridiculous to make being thin your life's work too btw, I'm under no illusion how pathetic worrying about 5mm of subcutaneous fat is when we are all headed the same way. But the OP did state she knew on some level she's not being benevolent enough as she braced herself for a flaming in the title!

Does appetite generally diminish with age (?) interesting, not so in my case.

I think the problem with food is that you have to eat it. Hunger is a powerful driver of behaviour and struggling against it voluntarily is exhausting and can lead to eating disorders and mental health issues.

Honestly I think part of the problem is that food is so abundant, appealing and varied nowadays. I remember that 1980s school dinners were so utterly disgusting that most of the time I just pushed the food around my plate.

I've read this entire thread and have been pretty shocked at the attitude of the OP and others.

To me, it's like saying "how come all these people are on anti anxiety / anti depressant medication when I've just managed my issues my whole life?"

That would be unacceptable, right?

But it has always and will always be OK to ridicule, berate and feel superior to overweight and obese women people.

Think about this: some brains are wired differently. Autism, ADHD, Mental health conditions etc all play a part in lack of impulse control. It is only being discovered now how much Neurodivergence there is within the population.

All I see is a total lack of understanding, respect and awareness for anyone who is different to the perceived 'norm' and societies expectations of how we should look. There are many fucked up reasons for this, including the deep rooted internalised misogyny / patriarchy issues that we should long ago have gotten rid of.

Yes, I'm obese and I'm Autistic and have ADHD. It's always enlightening to see others opinions of those who don't fit neatly into society.

I think one issue with this analysis is that most of the overweight and obese people have been constantly struggling to maintain / not gain or lose weight too.

They just haven't been as successful. in most cases probably because they have a naturally bigger appetite which could often be genetic.

People say it's bypassing the hard work using meds, but it isn't supposed to be. I had prediabetes and was told in no uncertain terms that I couldn't just rely on them - I also had to change my diet, because if I don't it'll come back. There's no way to really avoid "plugging away" and there's evidence that if you've been overweight it's much harder to maintain weight that's been lost than it is for slimmer people to maintain their weight when they have never gained and lost a significant amount of weight, especially several times in their lifetime.

I get what you're saying about it being understandable and to a point agree with that - but people feel like this because of the perception that it's an easy way out, or because they think people got to the size they are because they were never conflicted about eating that Twix. It's not the reality. In the same way as it's also a distortion of reality to suggest slim people never feel conflicted about food, or don't have to do anything to maintain slimness.

wtf seriously? I’m mystified. You want other women to be fat so you can feel better about yourself? You think people should only be allowed to be thin if they are morally worthy of it? And they obviously aren’t otherwise they wouldn’t be fat in the first place ?

Absolutely. Over the decades, I have done more agonising over food than most people could imagine without the rewards most of the time) of a slim, socially acceptable body.

I didn't sit there showing food into my face, clapping my hands with glee over what a great time I was having. Most of the time I was in a state of turmoil and pain whatever the scale was saying. Wegovy cleared my mind and gave me the tools to make the changes that I needed to make.