The rise of the trend of GLP-1 and the pressure it brings?

[PiriPiriMenopause]

First of all I just want to say I have nothing against the choice people make for the injections at all, I think they’re great and they obviously work for people who need them! I totally get why someone would want to take it, and it really is transforming lives.

But I worry about the pressure this is bringing so the it. I’m a size 14 and pretty normal. At the moment I don’t have trouble buying clothes or getting stuff to fit. My BMI is about 26 which yes is higher than the recommended but not massively so.

So many people I know are on this drug! Honestly, in my normal every day life, I know of at least 15 people who are taking it. It’s working brilliantly and the results are fantastic they’re happy and it’s great, I love seeing how their confidence has turned on a sixpence. Some of the women were larger than me some were not that much larger than me or the same size.

I’m not sure if my experience is a reflection of what’s going on country wide or not. But AIBU to worry about the knock on effect this will have moving forward. I worry that a size 14 will soon become almost obsolete in the shops because people are no longer requiring larger sizes, I worry about the knock on pressure this will bring to those of us who can’t afford to take it or simply don’t want to or can’t take it. I worry about it becoming a culture for people of my daughter’s age and what it means for their confidence in future.

I’m just interested to see if I’m just being paranoid or if this is something other people worry about. There’s always been a massive pressure on women in particular with their size and appearance but this is the first time I’ve ever really felt it so extreme!

“I've been thinking overnight about why people baulk at the idea of taking WLI for life but are happy to take medication like statins and I think it comes down to a perception of vanity.” @HereforonedayonlytoavoidStrangerThingsspoilers

I’ve also noticed (by stalking forums) how much rage there is toward overweight people taking WLIs and this idea that it’s ‘cheating’. That’s partly to do with how the media has portrayed them as magical fat burners when in reality, if you’re on WLIs, you have to also be in a calorie deficit or they won’t work.

I see Mounjaro as a weight loss tool just like smokers who use nicotine patches or any of the other remedies/aids out there which help people to do things they ordinarily find difficult. All of those things are seen as ‘acceptable’ but when it comes to fat people, nope, you have to do it ‘the hard way’, otherwise you’re ‘cheating’. It’s very much feeding into all those stereotypes about fat people sitting about lazily stuffing their faces all day, being totally thick and uneducated.

For me, I’ve struggled with my weight since I was a child. I put on weight very easily but my excess weight was a ‘slow creep’ over 10 years. Obviously in that time I’ve been eating more calories than my body needed but I certainly wasn’t sitting about stuffing my face with sweets and chips all day. In fact, I’ve felt like I’ve been on a permanent ‘diet’ since I was 15. I’d go all week in a calorie deficit but then as soon as Friday hit, I’d relax and enjoy my weekend and then presumably undo the hard work of the previous week. It was an utterly horrible, self-defeating cycle. For me, Mounjaro has broken all of that.

My biggest lesson so far is learning the value of protein and fibre - I’m hoping that when I do come off MJ, that those lessons will serve me well for maintenance.

It may be that as these drugs develop there may be a variation you could take in the future.

Just as an aside, little and often is exactly how many on WLI eat as big meals are not what they want. Long gaps of not eating are definitely not what WLI are about and should be avoided for everyone not just those with challenges around ED.

Some great posts in the last few minutes! While OPs concern about size 14s isn't realistic, I do think the underlying basic point that WLIs are having a societal impact beyond those who take them is sound.

On the issue of people's reactions, I think some of it is just good old fashioned being stuck in one mindset. People genuinely believe eat less move more works, and don't bother looking it up, because after all that's what we were told for years. I don't necessarily even blame the medical profession for that, because until WLIs became widely available we were lurching towards a colossal health crisis and able to do fuck all about it really. If you're a GP in 2010 and someone approaches you for weight loss support, you wouldn't have had any useful tools to offer them so what the fuck else are you going to do really? And it takes time for this view to shift.

Thank you for coming back and posting that @HereforonedayonlytoavoidStrangerThingsspoilers . I think what you have said there makes a great deal of sense.

Very well said

as well as the food noise disappearing the noise i had in my head before going to sleep has pretty much gone and i am sleeping better

i would stay on the jabs just for that

i am maintaining at 11 stone 4ish which is just in my bmi and feels like a comfortable, long term maintainable weight for me even if i could still lose at least another stone

i have a relatively slim face anyway and at another stone off i would probably look quite ill

I’ve been thinking about all this. Not really overweight but have seen influencers my size paying to take it.

I take meds for general anxiety disorder. These may make me a nicer person and people may think I’m cheating by taking meds. The fact is they keep me out of A&E and my family happy.

No one knows what someone is going through or why they have chosen to medicate - I try and apply the same thought to the pen now. It’s a big decision to take meds.

Plenty of people are staying on things for life. It's often the nature of medication.

I'm on asthma medication for life. It is literally saving my life every day. Taking a steroid inhaler every day is also a balance between risk/need.

Being obese is a chronic condition. I consider it very similar to the asthma. I have been medicated now for 20 years and in that time I have never had an asthma attack. Nobody has ever suggested taking my medication away because 'I don't have asthma anymore'. That would be ridiculous.

Same with WLI. If they work for you then you are almost certainly missing the GLP1 they provide. Without them, you'll be missing it again. So continuing to take them is the best option.

I had a conversation with the pharmacist from my surgery who was reviewing my asthma meds last week. She was very supportive of the WLI I am taking and the idea of taking them long term.

Oh yes, I have no doubt that being on it I'd be fine. It's the coming off that's the issue and it's why providers – quite correctly – won't prescribe to anyone with a history of ED.

You won’t get it unless your bmi id over 30. Maybe they look your size but are not?

I am referring to people who are paying for it (usually Trizepatide) from clinics where it is prescribed for managing menopause in circumstances where their weight would not meet the normal parameters (ie, their weight is lower). This is happening in London.

I believe this IS accurately described as off-label prescription. In any case, this is what I am meaning.

I realise this is different from your use of the drug, but that doesn't prelude other posters from contributing to the discussion. In fact, I actually think it is that sort of use that is more relevant to the actual thread topic - the fate of size 14 - than use by people who aren't wearing size 14 in the first place, or the sort of use you seem to be wanting to discuss.

My contribution on that has been that I don't think enough people will take the jabs for those sorts of reasons that lower mid range sizes will be affected.

I'm really not so sure what has got you so riled about that contribution. Presumably because I said that, without needing to take it, I wouldn't. And I wouldn't. But I still think that is relevant to the actual conversation - which isn't are the jabs justified where obesity is a genuine factor (those who don't take them may not contribute except to endorse it).

They are treatment for obesity, so you need to be obese, bmi 30, or 27 with health conditions or certain ethniticities to be prescribed legitimately, and nearly everyone pays for them, about 99 percent of people. Which influencers are you seeing who take them at a healthy weight? People don’t usually publicise that to be honest.

People who are so overweight that they have health problems such as high blood pressure, pre diabetes, joint problems, are unable to move easily and so on.

Should people clearly at risk of these conditions be able to prevent themselves getting these conditions in the first place if the evidence supports it?

I was morbidly obese with a BMI of over 40. Miraculously, I didn’t suffer any other co morbidities and didn’t have any problems with physical activity. There was no doubt I was extremely unhealthy though, despite not being ‘unwell’ and was facing a future featuring some of the things you’ve listed. Should I not have qualified in your opinion? Should I have waited until I was ‘unwell’?

I doubt people are going to want to post names of individuals or prescribers, but actually a quick google would help you find some glossy websites advertising that they consider the prescription of it for people under those weights "depending on the circumstances" (or similar phrasings).

It's not up to us to say if those "circumstances" are justified, but I definitely know people who have said the jabs were not doing much for them besides helping them lose weight, which they liked. Of course that may not be being reported back to to the prescriber quite like that.

And I suppose it's their body, so if that's what they want to do and are prepared to pay, maybe that's a good thing.

My comment has only been that I don't think everyone would be interested in that sort of use.

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If they are an influencer I can’t see the issue in saying who, as it means they are on social media talking about it. It’s not her best mates mums name or something I asked for,

Not that's true. I'm thinking of real people (Dc's friends' mums!)

I agree with this set of attitudes about people who are overweight somehow "deserving" it, and got there only by gorging themselves. The reality is -more often than not, I think - far more complex.

The "cheating" attitude is a nonsense.

I do agree the fibre and protein lessons help. But not everybody knew that. For a long time there was a primary emphasis on low fat as "the secret", and people could be working really hard on that basis and it wasn't actually helping them.

Sorry, I meant "No that's true" (ie; if she is an influencer it's in the open already)

I also think it’s more complex, and cheating is just an excuse they use instead of their real thoughts, as they can’t express those, not without coming across heinous.

i think there is multiple groups.

1/ fat people who can’t access the jabs ie due to cost, or other medical issues, so they attack other fat people and the jabs , due to envy and bitterness, the why should you enjoy it when I can’t..

2/ thin people who work very hard to stay that way, and see their slimness as an advantage over fat people. now furious they’ve lost that advantage and others can be the same with what they perceive as no effort, they need to keep working at it, and think those on the jabs stay effortlessly slim, so they attack also, due to resentment over loss of privalge, and feeling like they are now the loser who needs to work at it

3/ chubby people, who don’t like their bodies and want to be a size eight or ten, would give their left arm for it, and aren’t eligible, so they also attack, resentment, bitterness and envy

4/ Ignorant unpleasant people who simply think fat people are lazy gluttons, and injecting melts the fat off, whilst they keep eating in the imagined gluttonous way, so they also attack, as they feel superior to fat people and now losing they superiority. They use on line forums to spew hate.

5/ ignorant people who simply don’t understand the medication, don’t understand obesity, can’t be arsed educating themselves but who want to rush in and join the discussion with their view from the little they’ve seen on social media.

im sure there are many more, but I suspect a lot of whay we see falls into these brackets,

I do agree with all the above but I do also see quite a lot of aggression from formely obese people now BMI 21 thanks to the jabs. Like hands off our jabs, non-obese person, they're not for the likes of you, you jealous cow, now see what we've had to put up with all these years.

It kind of reminds me of Covid times when all of life's introverts finally felt like they were in the ascendant after years of being made to feel lesser to those who like to live outward looking lives. The glee with which they kept telling others to stay inside and scolded them for being desperate for external stimulation. It was the Revenge of the Introverts.

Of course the jabs are a miraculous help and will improve the health of millions. However, can those who've benefitted also acknowledge that they have also dialled up the diet noise for everyone and they could have a little bit more empathy for those who are overweight but can't for whatever reason take them and those who are not overweight, technically, but have felt shamed and stressed about their bodies all their lives?

I think that’s fair, but I’d counter that is due to threads like fhis one, of which there has been many, many of. With the whole eat less, move more, won’t you think of Sharon osbourne, the bingo card of abuse. And the abuse fat people have had for years, the looking down on them, the sneering and judging.

and to be honest, a lot of women who maintained a healthy weight or above, behaved smugly, this is how I do it, you do it too, it’s easy, you just need my discipline. Now these jabs are here all we hear is oh but it’s so hard, it’s not fair, I want them too.

so sick of the hate, fat people are responding, with yeah, off you pop.

I do understand much of where you are coming from, especially point 4 about people who believe obese people are just gluttons, and have a lot of moral superiority about that. I have had friends who have struggled with obesity and they are anything but gluttonous and lazy, but it can be complicated - too complicated to go into here.

But I would be careful about assuming everyone falls into one of your categories before they have been given a chance to be heard properly ie; before you have really listened to what they are saying. To this end, I would be wary of your point 5. I think some posters on this thread have jumped in very quickly, triggered by a comment here or there, without properly contextualising the comments and really hearing what is being said. There is also a tendency to very quickly dismiss people as not knowing anything, when sometimes they are discussing things that just haven't been their focus.

It doesn't help the debate to become aggressive and tell people they have no right be part of it. That is only going to polarise views even more.

Having watched friends struggle with obesity, I don't think overweight and obesity are actually as similar as we tend to think of them. The bodies of obese people don't always respond in the same way to things I don't think.

I walked with a slightly overweight friend and an obese friend for about six months. They were dieting together and the overweight friend, if anything, was cheating more, but the weight was falling off her, while the other friend was giving it her all and simply not getting anything like the same results. It just was not fair, and that's all I can really say to summarise.

But that's also why I think jabs for obesity and jabs for slightly overweight people are very different topics.