People who think weight loss injections are cheating

[AuntieDote]

I've seen this viewpoint over multiple threads recently, and I'm just really curious to understand it a bit more because it makes no sense to me whatsoever.

What do you think people using the injections are cheating at?

As in - what's the competition and who are they gaining an unfair advantage over? What do you think the rules of being allowed to lose weight are/ should be?

Is it more important to you that overweight people/ those struggling with obesity lose the weight, become healthier, reduce the burden on the NHS, stop taking up more than their allocated amount of space in the world, or just stop doing whatever it is that upsets people so much about the existence of fat people -- or is it more important that they struggle and suffer whilst doing so?

Or would you secretly prefer them to remain fat so you can feel superior?

Is it that you feel you've worked really hard to either lose weight, keep it off or never put it on in the first place, so nobody else should be allowed to achieve this without the same amount of struggle?

What do you think the weight loss injections actually do, and do you not recognise that those on them are also doing all the usual things people who are trying to lose weight e.g. modify their eating, exercise etc? Does it not count that they're doing these things because it's made easier in some ways by the drug?

What types of weight loss support or tools are not 'cheating'? e.g. I used hypnosis once and it worked for a bit, to the point that I felt pretty much the same way I do with the injections i.e. reduction in food noise and compulsion to snack etc. It didn't last anything like as long, but it worked for a time - was that cheating?

Would it still be cheating if they weren't as effective as they are?

FWIW, I really couldn't care less if people think I'm cheating - who cares? Who does it impact only me and my bank balance? If someone said here, press this button and you'll be a healthy BMI overnight and stay there forever I'd press it with both hands and not give a shit about how anyone felt about it.

But it's just the logic of it that baffles me - I've never seen it as a competition and have never felt like getting to or being a healthy weight only counts if it's done in a certain way - I suppose I'm not much interested in what size anyone else is or what they do to get that way, so I can't imagine for a second ever thinking another person was 'cheating' - only ever being happy for them if they're happy and hopefully healthy too.

There is an argument that yoyo dieting, or weight cycling, is actually more detrimental to health than staying fat. A lot of people would be better off, if more overweight than they'd like, if they'd never dieted at all - because each time the weight goes back on, more comes with it @usernamealreadytaken

As for How about losing the weight and keeping it off? - do you genuinely believe that no one obese has ever tried this? What do you think yoyo dieting is? What a glib and vacuous response, given in such bad faith.

Are you maybe still feeling sleepy? And not thinking right? Surely no one could genuinely beleive that people have not tried that. Desperately so.

Or are you so utterly resentful and envious that you maybe lost control?

It’s generally well understood that obesity, just like being underweight, impacts fertility and messes with menstrual cycles. Have, anecdotally, read lots of stories where women who have not have periods, or only had them irregularly, for years have fallen pregnant because they lost weight and clearly started ovulating.

All the screening for these meds asks you if you are pregnant or planning to be and if you say yes you are declined, which means that the prescribers are aware of the chance that non-ovulatory women may start ovulating again as they lose weight. I think the issue is that those same prescribers should be counselling users that they need to use contraception (or use additional forms off) whilst using these. Perhaps they already do (I’m post menopause so maybe they didn’t bother to run through that part of the medical advice).

This strikes me as less of an unwanted side effect, but a failure to alert users to the risk combined with an inexplicably casual attitude to sexual health/contraception.

Thank you op for your post…I’ve been beyond baffled as well with the bizarre stigma around taking weight loss jabs , making many hide it and others ‘confess’ ..as if it’s a dirty secret ..it’s just mad … at last, a decades awaited breakthrough to help long suffering people in their VERY TOUGH journey to lose weight, and massively unburden the health system for everyone ( including the begrudged people more annoyed to see less suffering than to celebrate the breakthrough benefitting all ultimately!)..it’s not much different than seeing taking antibiotic, antihistamines, insulin etc etc as cheating ..because suffering people with any condition , should really keep suffering without help in order to stay ‘honest’, and shamed otherwise … ffs haters ..give up the bitterness..let go of the venom ..set yourselves free…breathe some love ..in and out..

No sensible person chooses to be obese, to feel unwell, inferior, stigmatised, shamed and a failure …gaining weight doesn’t mean you haven’t tried again and again …and succeeded and failed ..again & again …these are complex issues ( age, genetics,illnesses, mental health, socioeconomic factors etc …),and we should applaud anyone who refuses to give up and continue their long, hard and expensive battle to better their lives:health, looks, self esteem and general well being …what’s cheating about deploying tools to try to live better..don’t we all one way or another?

I agree. A sensible response. It’s a medicine. We don’t moralise or use thinly veiled faux-concern to judge or condemn people (women) about any other drug. Though I suspect there was the same outcry over the contraceptive pill when it was launched, with users being condemned as women of lax morals. It will calm down in time. But it shows how far we still have to go before women are truly considered to have full autonomy over their own bodies.

Yes, tbh it’s the bodily autonomy and women’s rights aspect of this that has left be stunned by the disapproval and criticism. I completely get that many people have concerns and chose not to use these medications on that basis (and I support their right to do so); however, that is between them and their medical practitioners and does not give them the right to preach and condemn women who do - and, despite more men being obese than women, it is still mainly women using these medications… and we all know this is because of the social pressure and general condemnation women already feel if they are not attractive and under 35.

I was never even faintly feminist before I had children/my late 30’s, feeling that we’d sorted out equality and could just move on, but I am appalled by the unconscious misogyny that frames discussions like this, where a woman’s right to bodily autonomy is at the core of it.

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I think this wins the title for the most obnoxious post on this thread and there’s A LOT of competition 👏🏻 👏🏻

Absolutely. The rage over private providers etc is overwhelming driven by outrage over the idea that we now have so many women- fat women no less- taking charge and making decisions about their own bodies and health.

Yes, I’ve had a few stressful days and may have been guilty of posting some of the previous obnoxious posts… hoping a lie-in this morning and a morning walking my dogs will allow my usually kind and thoughtful self to come back to the surface (that may be a veiled apology for being a bit of a dick… this topic makes me a bit cross and sometimes my ADHD brain goes into overdrive. I should steer clear, really.)

It's the absence of the doctor in this that I find worrying. Along with the playing down on this thread of the side effects some of which can be fatal. I can't quite get my head around how informed consent can be given in the absence of the above and that's what troubles me.

I will also add that I can't see that misogyny comes into this particular issue, not from my perspective. Women do indeed have some autonomy over their own health care, but that health care has to follow the legal framework that has been deemed appropriate for using drugs or undergoing other medical procedures. Those rules don't differ according to the sex.

If you really want to draw out misogyny in health care there was a very good article about it in the Guardian I think it was, about how women's health care around gynae issues is dire, women being ignored and effectively being told to go away. There is definitely misogyny there but I can't see it over wli.

God, this post resonates with me.

I just do not have it in my make-up to drink any more than a handful of times a year. LOVE a nice G&T when I have one - exactly the right gin and the right tonic, in the right glass, with good ice. 🤣 Would never have one just at home though, even though I have all the makings of it, just wouldn’t occur to me. If I was out with friends and ordered one and it didn’t meet my strict criteria 😆 I wouldn’t bother drinking it. I am sure there are loads of people on these threads expressing their moral superiority at over-eating who drink regularly, because they DO have that switch.

It is an absolute revelation to me on Mounjaro that I can thoroughly enjoy good healthy food, but not eat too much of it, and not hoover up everything else in between every time life takes me through the kitchen or a shop/cafe. I honestly feel normal for the first time in my 50+ years.

A doctor isn’t absent, your gp is notified nearly always unless you’re daft enough to opt out with some shitty supplier who allows it.

secondlh in the USA. 16 million people on them, less than 300 deaths over 5 years, and not one attributable to the drugs when taken right, all due to either reckless usage or fakes.

you don’t genuinely think the regulatory authorities in so many global communities are being lax do you?

it is also shown the severe risks were in early trials before they tweaked the drugs, but still have to go on the box.

do you spend time fretting about the 2000 people a year who die from taking nurofen? Or is it just weight loss injections you’re stressing over? Even though you don’t take them, no one is asking you to take them, and the scientists, endroconiligts and regulatory authories are way way more knowledgeable than you and they are all good with them?

There is a doctor or qualified pharmaceutical prescriber - I assume you have no issue with taking the pharmacist's prescribing antibiotics for an ear infections, as they do now, or advice on which cough medicine to buy, or on which OTC drugs you should not be taking with the prescription they’ve just filled? They are heavily regulated and have to be highly qualified before being registered.

There is considerable detail on the side effects - you sign that you have read them when emailed/ordering; the medication comes with the usual information leaflet informing you of side effects etc which, again, you are supposed to read before taking ANY medication. As with all medications, the onus is on the patient to clarify with their clinician/prescriber what the side effects may be and to read the leaflet. This constitutes informed consent and harks back to the bodily autonomy comment above.

It is up to individual patients to seek the information and make the decision based on what they are comfortable with. No one else.

I do. Threads like this show it’s women on women. Women faking concern, women jealous of other women, women resentful of other women’s choices, for their own bodies. Women can be mysogynistic. And clearly are.

Completely agree with this. I don’t use this medication but I can see it could be a game changer. I hate the bullying of women disguised as “concern” almost as much as I hate the pressure on women to age like a Hollywood actress.

Firstly, if you're taking it legally, there's ALWAYS a Dr or a Pharmacist, with a strict set of prescribing criteria.
Second, look up the BNF. Check the sides effects of Mounjaro. Then check the side effects of other things you're taking, or may have taken. Start with Ibuprofen, and birth control, then work outwards.
Every single drug has side effects. Thats why many are ONLY available on prescription. Have you ever blithely given your child nurofen when they're ill? Nsaids can kill. Paracetamol can kill. Nobody is playing down the side effects of mounjaro. They're just treating them the same way as everyone else does every other drug in the world.

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Jesus fucking christ.

jUsT eAt LeSs AnD mOvE mOrE 🥱

Oh bless you. It happens to all of us on these forums 😅. Sometimes i think it’s so easy to misinterpret the tone of posts, plus of course there so many awful and triggering opinions being thrown around. Sorry if any of my posts came off the wrong way as well, I really wasn’t trying to be an arsehole, but I think I do sound that way in text sometimes 😅

That’s actually really lovely of you to acknowledge .. we all have our d&%* moments& bad days and it takes courage to take a look at ourselves and want to do better.. the number of times I said something stoooopid and looked back thinking wtf was I thinking … i try to arm myself with humour & forgiveness to myself & others while trying to be/ do better …🌻

For the record, I don't think using these drugs is "cheating."

The article I posted is more so about the fact that the manufacturers of these drugs have no idea about the ramifications of this side effect, as very few drug trials involve women at all and women of childbearing age in particular. So the women of the world are in effect taking part in an unregulated drug trial.

"We don't even know if it passes into human breast milk — though it seems to be present in the milk of lactating rat mothers who take it, which should provide pause.

But the finding that a significant number of women have fallen pregnant on these drugs — and that a growing number of doctors are citing ovulation as a side effect — has gobsmacked me. Not because, whilst slowly slimming, women are finding themselves suddenly fertile, but because yet again, for the umpteenth time, the manufacturers of a wildly popular drug, taken by millions of women globally, have not collected data on what this drug might do to a woman's reproductive organs, or offspring."

Also, it is not just people slipping up on their birth control, but:

"Some of these drugs reduce the effectiveness and absorption of birth control pills, but, as CNN reports, while "Mounjaro and Zepbound warn about this explicitly on their labels, Ozempic and Wegovy only warn more broadly about absorption of any drugs taken by mouth"."

And this being MN, spare a thought for the babies and their future health outcomes, all still very unknown:

"Why worry? Well, animal studies have found that if mice and rats get high doses of these weight loss drugs — which contain semaglutide, which makes a hormone called GLP-1 work better — their babies are born small, have malformations, and are more likely to die."

"It was once believed that medications could not pass from mother to child, a myth spectacularly exploded by the widespread taking of thalidomide — prescribed for morning sickness, insomnia, colds and headaches — which resulted in many thousands of infant deaths and disability (in the 1950s the toxicity of thalidomide was tested on animals, but not pregnant women).

The enduring and understandable reluctance to conduct tests on pregnant women today — although experts say with careful protocol design it can, should and has been done — means that trials effectively occur once the drugs are out and pregnant women are taking them.

They are, unwittingly, guinea pigs."

Not sure where that other article came from... Article quoted from linked prior.

To be fair, there are all kinds of drugs / treatments that have unknown effects in pregnancy, this is extremely normal, not least because it’s not considered ethical to run trials in pregnant women, so this data only comes over time through observational data.

The studies on rats really say very little - what we can extrapolate from this is extremely limited for obvious reasons (humans are not much like rats). With regard to breastfeeding, for example, although data is absent (as with many drugs) it is not thought that tirzepatide would be able to get into breastmilk in any significant quantities because it is a large molecule. Furthermore, the very small quantities that the baby might ingest would be broken down in the gastrointestinal tract and not well absorbed (this is why the meds are injected because they are not well absorbed through the stomach).

So yes that article is misleading and scaremongering . For balanced and accurate information on this topic, this resource is very helpful.

https://mothertobaby.org/fact-sheets/tirzepatide/