To be annoyed by another scaremongering Guardian article about weight loss medication

[FeatherBell]

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/aug/10/body-positivity-shrinking-girl-summer-everyone-getting-smaller-except-me

I understand this is about the author’s personal feelings and experience, but I still feel it’s a little irresponsible. I was a somewhat ‘early adopter’ of Mounjaro and it’s been life changing for me, but if I’d read articles like this it may well have put me off.

• Stating there were shockingly few checks and balances to get a prescription - if she used a legitimate supplier, this is unlikely to be the case.
• Not making clear that her reaction - being barely able to eat and losing 16kg ‘rapidly’ - is very unusual at the lowest dose. And that there are options other than Wegovy if you don’t react well.
• The emphasis on taking the injections to become ‘skinny’, rather than healthier.

I fully agree that people should be treated with kindness and respect at any size and I am someone who took a lot of inspiration from watching plus sized influencers taking part in sport, so I get why she’s worried about losing the body positivity movement. But it simply isn’t true that you can be healthy and obese - obesity isn’t healthy, and if the movement is losing influencers because they are now able to succeed in losing weight when they weren’t before, that suggests that they are in agreement with that. I’ve never been totally sold on how inclusive that movement is anyway - the most popular ones almost always have beautiful faces. It’s the same BS as normal beauty standards, just wrapped in a different size.

The suggestion that she has to choose between her mental health or being a healthier weight also seems somewhat reductive. I hope she finds a happier headspace for herself, but I wish this sort of article could remain as a personal blog/social media post rather than being endorsed by the mainstream press.

Body positivity is a con. I’m obese it is hardly something that is my best achievement to be promoting to others, I achieved it by eating too much for gods sake.

I’m sure people who go on insta who are obese have other qualities and those are the qualities they should accentuate to build their esteem, ie play to their strengths not their weaknesses.

This woman comes off as a profession whinger. Lots of people who are overweight use their other skills to compensate and don’t focus on being fat as the main thing or really anything about them, myself included.

More and more that newspaper attracts people with a victim mindset.

I don’t think taking weight loss injections is the route to improve her mental health, which is why I didn’t say that. I criticised her current plan to do nothing about any aspects of her health whilst sobbing at instagram because it’s not propping her up as much anymore.

I am not engaging with any of the comments on here re. how ‘dangerous’ the jabs are or how they’re a ‘quick fix’ that someone’s size 6 cousin is taking with no checks or balances. It’s a predictable and lazy argument based on a lack of understanding. I’ll stick with the actual medical advice I have thanks.

Wow, your summary is incredibly biased and very influenced by you personal experience.

Which must be based on the short term. I don't think you can really be qualified until wlyou see what happens is 5/10 years' time.

I get why that people who've used them have become evangelical about them, but I don't think that makes you experts.

Not engaging-= ignoring an opposing view I have nothing to argue against.

I think laziness is more relevant to those that ignore the health risks from weight loss drugs and choose to go for the quick fix as opposed to the longer, harder and safer route.It is ok to voice this ( particularly when laziness is hurled at those who don’t go down this route) and part of the discussion.

Don’t like it then don’t start a thread re WLI, it’s very much part of the discussion. You might want to stick your fingers in your ears and go la, la, la. Others don’t and won’t, particularly on AUBU.

I always find it weird that people who take weight loss drugs are so defensive about it whenever anyone else points out the potential risks or how utterly tiring society's fixation on weight is or even just says why it's personally not for them. If you're so convinced they're amazing go ahead and fill your boots.

But it simply isn’t true that you can be healthy and obese - obesity isn’t healthy

Well firstly a huge number of people clamouring for weight loss drugs aren't medically obese. They're possibly carrying a few extra pounds but they're perfectly healthy, just fixated on their weight because society tells women their only value is to be stick thin. Way, way too many woman are obsessed with weighing themselves and calorie-counting when they are a perfectly normal, healthy size.

And secondly weight is far from the only measure of health, and weight loss drugs do nothing to encourage an actual healthy lifestyle: working out, exercising, eating the right amounts of the right food, enjoying food and fostering a mentally positive relationship with it. They don't make you stronger, they don't build stamina, they don't make you more flexible, they don't help your immune system or gut health or mental health. Those are much more important indicators of your overall health than what the scales say.

I have no skin in the game as I'm healthy and fit, but weight loss fixations are so aggravating to see.

If I mention big pharma I'm just going to be accused of wearing a tinfoil hat, but sorry I can't resist. How to make a fortune:- lower the guidelines for potential obesity - scare the living daylights out of anyone a pound or two over average - tell everyone they're pre-diabetic - bring out an expensive weight loss drug - ker-ching💰💰💰

I don't think this is a bad article. She saw the weight loss drugs working. Wegovy didn't work for her - her experience was atypical but not unusual and she got good advice to come off it. And she then had to reset (again) her feelings about being fat in a world that had only just begun to "accept" larger women as any kind of a norm, before that norm was taken away again (she perceives).

That's a lot to deal with, really. I'm fat and on Mounjaro - happily it's working well. I used to be skinny and menopause battered me. I have a friend who has always been fat and it's caused her no end of mental pain. She's worked on it by being as fit as anything and she knows she's not unhealthy. But developing and keeping that mindset is a lifetime's work. I can't talk to her about weight loss. She doesn't see very well why people want to change themselves instead of changing the world to fit them. I have a lot of empathy for that, but it's not so simple. I was starting to not be able to do some things and could see metabolic syndrome looming over the horizon.

The writer reminded me of my friend. In her frustration she imagines that people are desperate to lose weight so they fit into society better. Except that's not it, really, is it? Lots of people want to lose weight so they can do more, and avoid the very well known (but not inevitable) health problems.

This is ridiculous. Almost all forms of mediations have side-effects that can cause problems in other areas and a very large part of medicine is balancing those problems against the main issue. It's a risk/benefit analysis. At the more extreme end you have medicines like chemotherapy, which involves essentially poisoning a person in order to kill the cancer. It involves killing healthy cells along with the cancerous ones and is awful for your body. But the cancer is clearly worse. So you make your patient sick with medication in order to save them from something that will kill them. The risk is worth the benefit.

On a more middling end of the scale, my DM developed osteoporosis over lockdown. The medication she is on for that has reversed the osteoporosis back to osteopenia and is currently reversing that to hopefully healthy bone density. However the medication makes her feel crap when she takes it, for the initial hours, while also overtime causing damage to her digestive tract. She is now at a stage where her doctor is weighing up the benefit of continuing the medication, versus the damage the medication is doing. Whereas I, knowing I'm at higher risk for osteoporosis, take measures in my diet and lifestyle, like lifting heavy weights, wearing a weighted vest during housework, gardening, walks, etc, in the hope of never having to make that risk/benefit analysis, because if it comes to it - I will obviously prioritise my bone health over digestive damage, but if I can avoid having to make that compromise, I will.

GLP-1 receptor agonists, like Mounjaro, Ozempic, etc cause damage along with benefit. There are people who are better off risking damage than not taking them, but the risks of damage are serious and ignoring the potential harms because they make you feel mentally uncomfortable is dangerous. For one, it means you won't take steps to mitigate serious but not insurmountable issues like muscle shrinkage. And you are less likely to keep a track on your heart size, or issues like potential thyroid tumours.

I agree OP that the article is really problematic. There are some good (if hardly groundbreaking) points about media representation of women’s bodies, but the author is really preoccupied with looks and barely mentions that WLI are prescribed as a medical treatment to improve health. For her it’s all about fatness and outward appearance, and not to do with managing metabolic disease, improving health markers like blood pressure and visceral fat, improving mobility, reducing joint pain, making exercise possible and extending healthy lifespan. Not to mention the MH benefits of living a normal life without shame or experiences of prejudice.

She seems to think that fat people are obliged to stay fat, with all the associated health risks, so that she doesn’t have to be “consumed by furious jealousy” when they manage to lose weight. She questions other people’s motivation - “not, they say, in the pursuit of skinniness…”. She is unable to see that it’s possible to be positive about your body and also want to be as healthy as possible, and that there is no contradiction between body positivity and losing weight, quite the opposite.

It’s great to encourage people not to beat themselves up about their weight and to accept themselves with all their flaws, but encouraging obese people to remain obese and be happy about it is crazy imo. The consequences for health of obesity are well documented and very significant. Shaming people for taking a medical treatment to improve their health because she tried to do the same, failed, and is now consumed with jealousy, is really awful.

You have said what I wanted to but so much better, thank you.