Mounjaro offending close "friends"

[Hope78]

I have bitten the bullet and started using Mounjaro. I pay for it privately through a reputable private clinic , and in a nutshell its been incredible.

Long story as short as poss.... I'm a well built 5ft7 woman who has been anything from 10st to 13.7st over years , ideal weight 11st happy and feel good, have gone into perimenopause , started HRT and basically CANNOT shift stubborn 2st. I told my GP my plans and he agreed as BMI verging on obese (13st4) .....decision was 6 months in making with a LOT of research before starting it ....anyway ....

I have lost my first half stone ( in 10 days ) and with close friends at the weekend told them i was on the injection and how great i feel ( not just food noise but ADHD symptoms better too ) my friends were so happy for me bar one who could not hide her disgust. This person has a stunning figure, always been a petite size 8, always attracted a lot of male attention, and has been known to be quite fattest over the years to anyone chubby. She basically said it was cheating, said i would be fatter long term and i know that behind my back is slagging me off ..
I've always been confident despite my different weights but i did get a lot of compliments especially from other husbands of how well i looked , and it seemed to REALLY annoy her she has stopped messaging me as much and has declined Xmas invites for drinks at mine.
Its got me thinking that this injection is a real shift long term for men and women , but psychologically its maybe pissing off people that don't struggle????
Another friend was shocked i even told people but im not that sort of person , I'm an open book and chatty and don't see the point ? maybe i should have just kept my mouth shut ? AIBU to feel shocked and disappointed by this ?

It's jealousy. Your "friend" wants you to stay fat. I feel a lot of slightly overweight people who don't qualify for Mounjaro are also struggling to lose weight. I can understand why they woukd feel jealous

This is excellent!

I’d like to see on there ‘it will give you pancreatic cancer’ and ‘it will make all your hair fall out’ as I’ve had both said to me.

You don't enjoy food when you have disordered eating that puts you in a binge-restrict cycle. The amount of hard work a person puts in doesn't always equate to results. Some people can work and work and work at a particular thing and never achieve as good results as another person - I was always very academically gifted and while I worked at school/college/university/post-grad, I don't tell myself that my results were better than someone else's just because I worked harder than them. I have seen kids who work incredibly hard just to scrape a pass; they have other barriers to overcome. So looking at results alone won't tell you exactly how much more one person has tried than another.

I didn't have a good time becoming obese; I battled with disordered eating for more than three decades, from childhood to my forties. I suffered all kinds of shame and pain and sadness, I endured a lot of restriction and punishment along the way and all I had to show for it, along with my misery, was a body I could never find peace with and one that didn't fit the standards of what's considered acceptable.

Taking Mounjaro enables me to find that kind of peace. I still think about what to eat, how to eat, how much to eat and I work very hard at the gym to maintain and build muscle while I lose weight. But my suffering is reduced and I can finally work on the mental health aspect now I have some peace to do so effectively after a long time trying and failing.

You wouldn't have enjoyed eating more and gaining weight over the past few years - if you think you would, do it now! After all, the injections are available right? So go for it, put on weight knowing that you can lose it down the line! Why not? Because you don't actually want to, and you know it. Because you realise, deep down, that it isn’t a whole lot of fun being fat and you don't want to choose it.

She’s not your friend, it’s as simple as that. She doesn’t want the best for you, she just wants you to stay overweight, probably so she can feel superior. She’s pigeon holed you as the “fat friend”.

I’d either distance myself or mention it loads every time I see her, just for shits and giggles. Probably the latter.

Sorry but these posts are bollocks! I'm sure anyone who was once a friend doesn't want someone they (presumably) care about to be the "fat friend" to make themselves feel better. It will be jealousy because she perceives that she has to work at it while OP gets the easy ride. So she's be happy for OP to be slim as long as it's HARD.

Bully for you. You have no idea what it’s like for anyone else other than yourself. You get to self congratulate because you think you’re somehow better than others because you don’t have disordered eating. Poor you having to work hard to be thin. As I’ve said before you’re more than welcome to eat what you want gain loads of weight and then use the ‘easy option’ of paying £180 a month to take injections that make your burps taste of eggs and suppress your appetite to get thin again. Or just stay smug and keep feeling sorry for yourself that other people are losing weight

Indeed. Watch the haters combust.

It won't stop people using the injections and seeing results.

As much as the thread and mindset is interesting, does anyone on the drugs remotely give one shiny shit if anyone thinks it’s cheating, or is against the drugs, or any other negative feelings. I genuinely don’t. I mean I feel sorry for them, to an extent, as clearly some folks woth real hang ups about weight. But their views on the drugs,,meh, couldn’t care less.

Yeah, I dgaf if people get angry that I am prioritising my health by paying privately for a medication that has helped me in myriad ways. This isn't a zero sum game, what I choose to do about my weight has no impact on their weight. They aren't going to suddenly find those pounds I've lost! 😄

thank 😊

7 months first few months it drops off

best thing is the food noise has greatly quietened down and I feel in control it’s been absolutely great for me

I disagree, not sure about in this specific situation (probably a mixture of the two) but generally speaking it can often be the case that some people don’t want to lose their fat friend .

I don’t surround myself with those kind of “friends” now but when I was younger I had a (now former) friend who always had so much resistance to me losing weight and I’ve never used anything other than calorie counting, walking and the gym.

I was about 9.5 stone give or take a few pounds throughout my 20s and she was just under 8 stone. We were /are both 5ft 2.

It used to strike me as odd that she thought me losing a few pounds was me becoming “too thin” when she was significantly lighter than me and certainly wasn’t looking to increase her weight AFAIK. I was hardly the “fat friend” at 9.5 stone but I was still a lot bigger than her and it did seem she liked it that way.

I can think of other examples with friends of all sizes either discouraging me from losing weight or looking disappointed after seeing me following weight loss.

Are you confused?
You have created an agenda, ran with it, then accused me of doing the same.
Enjoy that, hun

But if you could have been “happily fat for years”, why couldn’t you just be happily fat full stop? Your goal and a Mounjaro user’s goal is the same - to lose weight. If you wanted years of eating all the cakes and chips you wanted before losing weight, you could have had them. You’re deluding yourself if you think it’s a case of stuff yourself silly, have a couple of injections and then hey presto - you’re a size 10. It really doesn’t work like that.

Also, if you really enjoy food, the effects of Mounjaro could come as quite a shock! I’ve had meals that I’ve started out enjoying, but that have become chores halfway through. Of course it can be a positive thing once you get used to the portion control, but on the other hand, the occasional treat you might have on a standard weight loss plan might not be a treat anymore if you’re struggling to finish it.

There’s the cost to consider too. These “magic” injections are not free! I’ve just stepped up my dose, and the cost has gone up with it, to £190 for a month. It’s a lot of money, but I’m prepared to spend it because I’ve been battling weight loss for years. Are you really prepared to spend between £1000 - £1200 in six months for the privilege of an extra year’s worth of cakes? Because guess what - you don’t “just get a jab” as you put it. It’s jabs plural, and they ain’t cheap.

And what happens when you’ve finally reached your goal? You've still got to maintain it. Start eating the treats again in the original quantities, and the weight goes back on. And then you’ve got to find four-figure sums again for the magic jabs.

But yeah - Mounjaro is an easy cheat.

If you think that Mounjaro = "slim with no work", you're clearly madder than you sound!

I didn't say it was it was a competition @Onceachunkymonkey and I absolutely would be pleased for my friend @SilenceInside I certainly wouldn't judge her or cut her off.

People can say all they want that people on the drugs still have to watch what they eat and count calories, but that's a lot easier to do when your appetite is suppressed so you don't feel as hungry all the time.

and it does result in faster weight loss..... the only people I know who have lost weight at the same rate as people on these threads quote are people who have starved themselves miserable.

I don't begrudge anyone using it, and I think it's a great thing if it's helping people's health and reducing pressure on the NHS.

but please don't delude yourselves that it's no easier than doing it without the drugs, because if both ways were equal then people wouldn't need the drugs would they?

@RabbitsEatPancakes How exactly do you believe the jabs work?

You seem to think people just inject every week and then sit back and wait for the fat to melt away.

People still need to be in a calorie deficit, eat healthily and - preferably - exercise. The jabs help them feel fuller quicker, slow down digestion and help give headspace to work on themselves and learn to listen to their bodies. All whilst regulating insulin production. Sure you'll get some that are treating it like an expensive quick fix and carry on eating crap (they will learn the hard way when the side effects bite them in the arse), but most people use that headspace to learn new healthy habits that will stand them in good stead when they eventually come off the medication. Then they'll need to start "working hard" just like you to avoid piling weight back on.

You seem to think you are somehow being cheated. The jabs don't just permanently magic 5 stone away.

There are people on MJ threads losing at phenomenal rates but there's also a slow losers' thread and I am someone who loses a pound a week at best on the injections. Probably because years of yoyo dieting has fucked my body's ability to lose weight to the point where for me now it had actually become impossible. The injections have made it possible again, but it's still a laborious process.

I think people want to make it clear that the injections only work in conjunction with healthy eating, a calorie deficit and ideally exercise because of the misinformed belief that persists on here that people on injections eat junk food all day and magically lose weight. Yes, the jabs make it easier to make good choices over a sustained period of time, but they aren't what some people seem to imagine they are.

No. Mounjaro is not easy. You feel nauseous. You shit through the eye of needle, or you can't shit at all. You get crippling trapped wind, you vomit, and your gas tastes and smells like sulphur. You have appetite suppression, and the food noise in your brain is quiet. But you still have to fight against habits that are most likely lifelong. You have to find other things to fill your time and brain with, besides the one thing that has ruled your life for decades. And you have to feed everyone else you're responsible for, whilst not wanting to cook, or even see, the foods that you've built your life around.
You've got to forge new habits, around food and exercise, that go against everything you've ever done in your life, and you have to resist the overwhelming temptation to throw it all away and go back to how you were.
And the ONLY thing between you and a long life of failure, despair, self loathing and obsession, is a drug that you're paying a small fortune for, because for you, there is no other way. Even though you KNEW that you were killing yourself with food.
And you don't lose weight fast, at all. In the first month, you can lose considerable amounts of water weight, but over time, it balances out. The average weight loss is generally 1 to 2 lbs a week.

Ah… so you think being slim is a sign of hard work and virtue.

welcome to the world not being fair.

Why do you care to this extent about what other people do?

Mounjaro is not easy. You feel nauseous. You shit through the eye of needle, or you can't shit at all. You get crippling trapped wind, you vomit, and your gas tastes and smells like sulphur.

In the interests of balance, I haven’t had a single one of these side effects and nor have any of the friends I know that are on it. I’ve felt completely normal but the only difference is I have no appetite. So for me, it really has been an easy fix.

Mounjaro is not easy. You feel nauseous. You shit through the eye of needle, or you can't shit at all. You get crippling trapped wind, you vomit, and your gas tastes and smells like sulphur.

I haven't had any of this.

Out of the 5 people close to me who are on MJ, literally none of them have had anything other than mild nausea 😳

You're doing great OP. Some of the replies on this thread are so distasteful. It's like Person A judging Person B for using anti depressants when Person A also went through a hard time and didn't need them...

I've spent most of my life being slim or slightly chubby up until a few years ago where I had a horrendous time in my personal life. Over the course of just a couple of years my dad died, my husband and I separated and got divorced, pandemic, one of my close friends died, another friend who was living with me started bullying me and wouldn't move out of MY house. I had to deal with all this whilst being a single parent to 2 young kids. I dealt with it through comfort eating and put on 3.5 stone in a year. I thought I'd get it off easily. But being obese has been a shock. People started to treat me differently. Even though I'm bigger, I'm somehow invisible. I got tired more easily and needed more sleep. Exercise became difficult mentally and also for the joints. I developed plantar fasciitis in one of my feet. Mentally it has had a huge effect on me. I'm conscious of my weight every time I go to the toilet, get changed, look in the mirror, have a shower. When I was at my heaviest the shame I felt was immense. It is nothing like being thinner. When I was 19 I was 8 stone and a size 8, I dieted hard to get there. But it's not hard like obesity. People admire you when you're thin. I also had more time then. All the things you know you should be doing to lose weight - going to the gym, exercising, meal planning, I don't have time for a lot of those things.

I lost a stone in a year. I'm on my second week of mounjaro as it stopped shifting naturally. It is like a breath of fresh air. I am no longer craving so much unhealthy crap. I now have the headspace to plan healthy meals and count calories. I have the confidence that this might work. I now recognise that what I was battling was an addiction. Something that helped me in a time of huge stress turned into an addiction.

If someone wants to tell me I'm cheating, that's fine. But the majority of people on the street have no idea what I've been through and if they feel superior because they've managed what I haven't, then that's up to them. I'm glad I chose not to tell anyone irl apart from my mum, though.

but please don't delude yourselves that it's no easier than doing it without the drugs, because if both ways were equal then people wouldn't need the drugs would they?

But I don’t think anyone has actually said that, have they? As you say, people wouldn’t need it if it didn’t help.

What posters including me object to is the ill-informed suggestion that Mounjaro is some kind of magic ticket to instant weight loss, despite what you eat - and that anyone who buys that ticket is a cheat. If you’re going to disapprove, at least learn the tiniest bit about the object of your disapproval.

Mounjaro reduces your appetite. You eat less when you take it because your appetite is smaller, and when you do eat, you get fuller quicker and for longer, so there’s less temptation to snack between meals or take second helpings. It has absolutely no effect on the way you process food. As I said in an earlier post, a 1000 calorie pizza still contains 1000 calories if you’re taking Mounjaro. Nothing is going to turn it into a lettuce leaf.