to think my colleague should just admit she is on weight loss injections?

[betnet]

At work we have all noticed Sally has lost a lot of weight in the past few months. She is always talking about diets and what she eats and does not eat anymore and makes a big deal about avoiding the biscuit tin in the kitchen. She keeps saying it is just willpower and cutting out snacks.

Last week I walked past her desk, her bag was open, and there was one of those weight loss injection pens in plain sight.

Now I cannot unsee it and every time she goes on about her self control it feels performative.

I am not saying she has to announce it to the whole office, but when she is preaching about anyone can do it if they just try it feels a bit dishonest.

AIBU to think she should either be upfront or just stop making a song and dance about how she has done it all naturally?

When I was 24 I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, am on a pump now but used insulin pens for years.

So I'm going to spell a few things out.

• What I'm about to write applies to Type 1 . However, it applies to Type 2 diabetes as well if the person is on insulin.

• When you're on insulin you do not keep the pen(s) you're using in the fridge, you carry them around WITH YOU all the time so you can use them when needed, i.e. multiple times a day. Spare insulin is kept in the fridge. It was the norm to keep the pens you are using out even when I was living in an area that sometimes reached the high 40s during summer.

• Massive over-simplification here, but most people lose weight extremely rapidly when they have just developed Type 1. The body needs insulin to transport glucose into the cells as fuel, but the disease means that their body doesn't have insulin. So basically you are starving even if you are eating, and rapid weight loss occurs. Followed by death if you do not get treatment.

• If you are on insulin, it is not a matter of injecting insulin and then your body just works. You are engaged in a constant tight-rope act of counting up how many carbs you are consuming, and then calculating how much insulin you need to cover those carbs. Whether this covers it successfully can vary because of factors as random as the weather, what stage you are at in your cycle, how well you slept, how stressed you are, how much you exercised the day before, or just seemingly at complete random. In other words, your blood sugar will sometimes go too high and sometimes too low, no matter how careful you are.

• To be able to do the above carb counting, you must, of necessity, embark on a very steep learning curve, where you become intensely aware of food and what is in it.

• When your blood sugar goes too low, you MUST eat something sweet, whether you want to or not. If you don't, you run the risk of going unconscious. This is still the case, obviously, even if you are trying to lose weight.

• Having to eat something to treat low blood sugar, and having someone who knows you are diabetic comment on how you are 'being bad' or asking if you should be eating that, or even trying to fucking withhold it from you ranges from tedious to annoying to outright dangerous. It is one of the reasons, personally, why most of the people I interact with have not been told about my diabetes.

• Even with Type 1, treatment is generally easier if you lose weight. You don't need to use as much insulin, and your body responds better to insulin in general as well. So trying to lose weight makes sense.

• Insulin pens and weight loss injection pens look the same. They are made by the same companies, and unscrupulous people in the past have sold insulin pens as weight loss injection pens, with predictably dire results when the pens were used.

So, to sum up, your description of a person carrying a pen, on a diet, hyper-focussed on food and yet still eating snacks 100 percent fits the profile of a diabetic on insulin.

Or she could be lying, as you claim...

Or you could have made her up to suit your agenda...

BUT, if this (real or fictional person) is annoying you with her running commentary on dieting and you don't like her commenting on your own food choices, then say so to her.

And being bitchy about someone and leaping gleefully to all sorts of conclusions when you really know nothing about their life reflects badly on you not on her.

If she doesn't want to admit she's on WLIs then she's hardly going to leave them on top of an open bag for all to see, is she?

Also it's recommended to keep them in the fridge. And also you only take them once a week so there is really no need for her to be bringing it to work at all.

This is bullshit.

If it's one of the two weight loss pens, it should be in the fridge not her handbag. Are you sure it was Ozempic or Mounjaro and not an insulin pen?

@Tuningfork it's already been explained on the thread, but Mounjaro and Wegovy (the weight loss version of Ozempic) pens can be kept at room temperature once they are in use. As long as they are kept at less than 30 degrees, which is usually not a problem in most of the UK.

As someone who did these injections for a few months, last a fair bit of weight and was very open about it. I honestly don't think she owes anyone anything. It is entirely up to her if and when she tells people.

OP, does your colleague have a good salary? If not, you might see the weight pile back on soon as there is going to be a HUGE price hike on weight loss injections next month.

Did you mean to sound so excited about that possibility?

People are just desperate to see all the former fatties get fat again!

Do share the link to your information about the price increase.

You sound very gleeful about it, are you a manufacturer?

@BlankBlankBlank14 sadly the news about possible price rises are true. The manufacturer of Mounjaro have announced increases to the list price from Sept 1st, which is the starting point for wholesale negotiations by the pharmacies that sell it, so unless they can negotiate massive discounts it looks like prices will be rising for Mounjaro. There are news articles in the Telegraph and FT amongst others if you want to read ore about it.

People can switch to Wegovy instead, which is currently cheaper and a bit less effective.

On one kind. She will just swap to another brand if this happens as most will do.

I see the gate’s open again…

What a twatty comment. You sound about as nice as the OP.

As you say possible! So no need for @NeuroSpicyCat needn’t be doing her happy dance just yet.

Shall people just wait until it happens?

Are you for real?

Are you ok?

Hilarious 🙄

Well, that’s where you’re wrong because she can still use a maintenance dose below that weight, at whichever level of mg is appropriate.
but god, people are shitbags sometimes.

This might really piss you off @NeuroSpicyCat , but I can still afford Mounjaro at the increased prices 🥳

Yep, and they all lived happily ever after,
To decode, you suspect your colleague is on WLI, she won't fess up so you invent a pen in her bag open to view even though she's seemingly trying to keep it a secret.
None of your business if she is, or she isn't, either way she still has to follow a strict diet and allow for exercise, etc. The jab doesn't do that for you 🤣. are you a little bit jealous op? Are you a fatty bum bum,? if so get on the jabs and and shout it from the rooftop if you want, only it might have to be wegovy now., not mounjaro

Just report everything they say.

Yep. Me too. And she was told that yesterday. 💅

Yes. They do. It’s deliberate and their sole reason for being here.