To be jealous of everyone getting slim in weight loss jabs while I get fatter !

[Sundayslump]

Okay - lighthearted ? Maybe.

I’ve been lucky to grow up and be a size 10 . Had a baby at 27. Lost all the weight but my body changed. Baby 2 , again gained 4 stone but I’ve always kept the last stone. I am now 12/14 uk.

I work full time and have two children . I eat healthy for the most part and walk and exercise. When I am super strict which feels so much harder at 40 I am a size 12 but unlike in my 30s it seems so much harder to lose weight now . I feel crap in my clothes and I wish and dream of being a size 10. Call me pathetic !

My brother and his wife , twos sisters and their husbands , work colleagues and a few of my good friends who were never obese but had a few stone to lose are all taking weight loss jabs. They have all lost around 2/3/4 stone and are all now looking fab . All the women are now in size 8 jeans and I am jealous. I sound pathetic . None of these ladies were any bigger than a 14/16 to start with.

I totally understand these jabs are so life changing for so many people who need them but it seems in my life everyone has taken them and gone from a 14/16 to a size 8/6 size Uk and I can’t help but feel like if I just bloody jump on the bandwagon I will feel good, feel happy and be slim.

Now everyone around me is so slim I feel ever more aware of my size .

I want to state I exercise and do eat a healthy diet . I have just found after two babies and getting older unless I basically stick to 1200 calories a day I can’t maintain a size 12.
Ahhhhhh. Sorry for sounding so so so vain.

But you’re just one example.

When I was a size 14 which I was for decades I had no health issues. That’s just one example too.

One example doesn’t make either of us “wrong”. So many women are a size 14 who have no health issues but a person can be very slim and still have cholesterol issues or other health problems just because they’re unlucky.

I think being a size 14 in your twenties and thirties probably won't make you that unhealthy, at all. But as you tip over into middle age it definitely starts to put much more strain on your body.

I agree but my issue is the comment saying someone size 14 is likely to be “extremely unhealthy”.

Most people that size will be somewhere between “overweight” or “obese” but only just falling into that category and won’t have lots of health related issues if any.

This is the problem with judging “healthy” weights by dress size or even BMI. While they aren’t 100% accurate and admittedly can’t be used by some people (pacemakers etc) , body fat scales are readily available and as easy to use as normal scales- and for those that can’t use them, height to waist ratio should be used instead.

Imo MJ should be available (for those that want to use it) only to people whose health is affected by too much body fat or having most of their fat in the waist area (and therefore likely surrounding major organs and detrimental to health - making MJ worth the cost/ potential side effects). Dress size and how many kg you are doesn’t mean anything.

OK @Twiglets1 you are right and all the qualified and experienced professionals who say obesity is dangerous are wrong.

This thread is totally batshit, and goes a long way to explain why so many of us struggle.

I’m out.

Well nobody judges me as harshly as I judge myself.

If you watch shows about weight loss surgery such as My 600 lb Life, most of the participants have suffered from things like parental abandonment or childhood sexual abuse or severe childhood poverty. That is an extreme of course and not everyone who is obese has gone through trauma but it gives an insight into what sorts of things obese people might be dealing with and how unhelpful it is to just tell them to stop eating.

I agree many will be fine, especially depending on weight distribution. It just varies so much from person to person.

For me when I have been slim, if I am then becoming a 16 then it probably means I am on my way back up to something much worse and need to change direction. Whereas many people just have a curvier shape but still a slim waist and wear that size for years without gain.

Isn’t there also some paradox where the category with the best health outcomes is the slightly overweight one? I don’t know.

You can’t know what health issues people may or may not have just by looking at them, or even the person themselves unless they’ve had checks done.
I’m a size 16 and have had acid reflux for the last year, only managed to lose 7lb which went back on.

The start of this year I paid for blood tests to get an overall health check because I was tired which shows my iron levels aren’t optimal, my ferritin level which I managed to increase by taking supplements previously has now fallen again by two thirds over 3 years due to periods. Tiredness makes it harder to find the motivation to exercise and more likely to reach for sugary things to get an energy boost.
My cholesterol is slightly high and something flagged up that I may be heading for an under active thyroid.

With that in mind knowing it’ll take months to increase irons levels and having lost 2 to 3 stone twice previously that I put back on once due to pregnancy I started Mounjaro a month ago and have lost a stone so far. There’s been side effects, but I was already having side effects from being obese.

Maintenance will be the hardest part. I’m only planning to be on Mounjaro short term, there are risks such as people being admitted to hospital which is obviously not ideal if directly linked to Mounjaro but at the same time probably many people being admitted with heart attack and other obesity related issues.

Who are all these professionals saying the majority of size 14 women are “extremely unhealthy?”

Sounds like fat shaming half the UKs adult female population to me.

OP I am on Mounjaro but I absolutely know when I come off it the cravings will come back & it'll be bloody hard work. I have lost 2 stone & I feel loads better but I'm under no illusion it's going to be so hard to not put the weight back on once I'm off them. But I can't afford to stay on them forever & I don't think it's advised either for long term use.

Very good points.

Also as I said above there can be and are people whose BMI is low who nevertheless need to lose a stone or two and keep it very low indeed to avoid fat related complications.

I think this is particularly the case for certain parts of the world where you won’t see many people who look very fat, but you will find many with health complications related to fat storage in the body.

Except I didn’t say that. I said that if you were a 14 and in the obese category, you would be very unhealthy (because being obese is very unhealthy). I didn’t say anything remotely like all size 14s were extremely unhealthy.

Yeah it is sad that you felt the need to say that. Would you talk about other conditions such as alcoholism and diabetes the same way? Don’t worry, hopefully they’ll get their diabetes symptoms back soon. Don’t worry, hopefully he will relapse and start drinking. I’m guessing you wouldn’t so you might want to ask yourself what makes you think it’s okay to say it about obese people.

Ah there we have it, fat people are morally lacking, greedy pigs. What a lovely prejudice to have.

So if a person just moves slightly from the overweight to obese category they would suddenly be extremely unhealthy? I think it’s more nuanced than that.

They may have health related issues or may not. Most women will not be very overweight at size 14 ( in my opinion).

Ok sorry but FFS! I know it’s easy to be misunderstood but I am definitely being misunderstood. No I wouldn’t use it like that in those other contexts because I did not use it like that here! I was, rightly or wrongly, not considering the people OP was taking about as having health issues, and I was not saying that I hoped a single one of them would regain the weight! I was simply using a fucking figure of speech to suggest to OP that all may not be easy with the jabs.

I am very obese and have had weight issues for decades, I have high cholesterol, high blood pressure, abnormal liver fat deposits, am prediabetic and very close to full diabetes. I have a three year old depending on me.

There are very few people who have more empathy or sympathy for those with weight issues and related health problems than me.

I am considering taking these jabs and I am having to face the possible disadvantages of doing so which is why I am very aware of them. Perhaps if anything my own struggles have led to a more satirical tone but I don’t even think that, it was a figure of speech but I did not mean anything bad by it.

No, if you’re very overweight, you’ll already potentially be suffering from weight related problems. Moving up into obese category will just increase your risk of others developing.

Sorry to sound grumpy @Finallydoingit24 it’s just I already tried to explain myself and apologise several times for something that had been misunderstood in the first place. It gets exhausting on this site, on every thread people get offended and others get misunderstood. I have been on both sides and it’s mostly, not always, a fuss about nothing. I think I will attempt to reduce my (weight related!) high cortisol levels by bowing out. Genuinely sorry for any upset.

YANBU. Do what makes you happy Op!

If I have something vaguely “unhealthy” I feel an overwhelming compulsion to eat it until I am totally stuffed. I also have a compulsion to carry on binge eating all of that day as the day is already ruined.

Exactly the same here.

I've stopped buying chocolate snack bars for myself recently as its like a switch has been flicked once I eat one, I can go all morning without, or even the whole day if not touched one, yet if I sit down of an afternoon/evening and have one it's never enough I'll eat maybe 3 or 4 more in a row whether I want them or not, the search for other less nutritional foods to eat.

I was not saying that you personally are obese (by BMI).

The point of my post was that OP is saying that they were surprised people size 14/16 were on the weight loss medication; I was pointing out that they quite likely qualify for it as obese or overweight with other conditions (such as high blood pressure). I stand by the statement that BMI of 27/30 is not as big as people think. I don’t think people would have looked at me and called me obese. But I was. I do not have a small frame FWIW.

Again - let’s just agree to disagree.

You can disagree all you like. It’s scientific fact 🤷🏻‍♀️

You do realise that slim people have exactly the same urges pretty often but acknowledge that the square foot of chocolate would be greedy

No they do not have exactly the same urges, as anyone who studies obesity could tell you. Obesity damages the body’s metabolic response to food, sometimes to the point that it can only be repaired by surgery (or maybe WLI). But not, slim people do not have the same urges regarding food. I suppose some people like to tell themselves they do because they can then see being slim as a moral virtue and a sign of superior self control. But they don’t have the same hormone response, which by the way is very lucky.

Not saying that a slim person doesn’t have to exercise self-discipline or work hard for their figure at all. But they aren’t getting the same body and brain response as someone who is obese.

If an obese person is just a fat lazy fuck who wouldn’t know self discipline if it hit them in the face then drugs like Mounjaro would have little effect because the obese person would just keep eating. But what the drugs allow is for a healthy and balanced diet to be followed. Also many many obese people have high stress jobs, work round the clock, care for family members, pursue intense academic study, have significant career success and lots of other things that indicate that they are far from lazy or undisciplined as people.

Absolutely this
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3083889/

This paper explains how every hormone involved in food intake is dysfunctional in obesity.