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 personally haven’t said anyone shouldn’t be part of it, and I was very clear, I specifically stated on my post I was sure there were many other buckets.

but let’s be honest, a lot of what we see is barely concealed aggression, resentment, envy etc, as there is absolutely no need for it. On one thread I saw one poster say she couldn’t wait for everyone to get cancer. People salivating over the thought of regain, or people getting unwell. We have even seen it on here, comments of something will come out and they won’t be able to be used, how there will be a class action law suit, picking over Kelly osbourne and her mother like they are the poster child for weight loss jabs, no one is going on about how unwell Serena Williams is and posting her image.

However, can those who've benefitted also acknowledge that they have also dialled up the diet noise for everyone

Everyone? That's a broad claim and there's no way it's true. The impact of the jabs goes beyond only those who take them, but it's not a point that benefits from this level of exaggeration. It's a group of people who typically expend effort maintaining their weight, and now feel differently because the built in group of obese people they used to be able to compare themselves against is shrinking. In more than one sense.

That aside, I've said before, I have a great deal of sympathy for people who'd benefit the drug and can't get it. As long as they behave themselves and don't attempt to use their feelings to harm obese people. Let's hope access improves soon.

That’s a rather odd summary, with or without mounjaro you need to diet, the weight doesn’t magically melt off. It really reads like you think it melts fat off.

the overweight friend may have had less to lose so a smaller amount was more visible quicker than the obese friend who would need to lose a lot more weight for it to be visible. Otherwise the person on the jabs was on a higher calorie deficit.

but factually the fat doesn’t melt off. There is no cheating either.

it’s such an odd thing really, the focus on cheating, the use of the word, and the implication the jabs make you lose weight, they don’t, whay you eat does, the jabs simolh enable you to stay in a defecit.

I don’t think that it’s at all likely that the MHRA will approve use of a prescription strength medication that has rare but serious side effects for non-health related weight loss for peiple who are only slightly overweight (BMI under 27 but above 25 let’s say). There’s no evidence that there is sufficient health benefit to warrant the additional risk.

Perhaps it may be approved for use for people who are only slightly overweight but have more than one weight related health issue. Or, approved to treat other health conditions whilst at a healthy or slightly overweight weight, but with no expectation of weight loss.

I wondered about people who were previously obese and currently have say 25-27 BMI. Since they're more likely than not to become obese in the future, whereas that's not necessarily true of someone who's been a stable 26 BMI for years.

Rhey can’t prescribe though based on predicting fhe future, those will never be the prescribing guidelines. But if it happens they can get the medication, it’s a prescription for something uou currently have you can then stay on to prevent it reoccurring, it is not something that can be prescribed as you once had it. Even if you are obese now and stop, there is a cut off point of time you can be off for where they won’t give you the meds.

Yes, I'm speculating about whether we might see changes to prescribing guidelines and if so, what. It's guesswork. Maybe we won't see any change at all.

OK 'everyone' was just a turn of phrase, I obviously didn't mean it literally. What I then should have said was 'it's dialled up the diet noise more generally'. And the group for whom this is true includes a lot of people, especially women, and those who suffer EDs (which includes a close family member. It's churlish not to acknowledge the wider effects.

To me, the "wider effects" on women in society are part of the usual social commentary on women and their bodies. If it's not one thing it's another. It's endless and comes from different angles and sources, but is consistent in being damaging to women. The recent rise of effective weight loss treatments for obese women (and men... but the focus is never on them!) is just the current focus, and it will no doubt move on to something else and continue unabated as it has to date.

None of those social effects should in any way affect the access to GLP1s for obese women, nor should it be used as a way of shaming or judging those women for having got access to this effective medication. It is also not the responsibility of women taking GLP1s to manage the emotional responses of other women who find it difficult to deal with its existence. Nor is it their responsibility to change how social media and society discuss women's bodies in relation to GLP1s.

I strongly believe that the overall effect for women is positive. I can see that in the long running threads that I post on, it is transformative for us all and is having widespread ongoing positive effects for the other people in our lives.

That's is a better way of putting it, I agree. It has changed the landscape for those affected by such things. So yeah, happy to acknowledge all this and sympathise, and that will only stop when someone in that category is being enough of a dick to forfeit it. Basically, honesty about the impact on oneself is fine.

Excellent post. Women now being held accountable for other women’s desire to , what, compete and be slim too, when all they are doing is taking control of their health, is unacceptable to me.

Weight loss is about health for most people in these injections and people need to get their head round that.

each individual needs to manage their own responses, their own health, their own diet and their own bodies, it is not on other women to acknowledge anything.

Mmm, naturally men taking WLIs are permitted to do so without nearly so many expectations as land on women!

And yes, worth pointing out that obese and formerly obese women weren't asked for our consent to be entered into anyone's mental ranking systems. I'm not bound by rules of a game someone else co-opted me into.

Oh my god, 100% this. Nailed it.

A pp (many pages back who I won't @) with a BMI of 36 stated they won't personally be taking WLIs because they are a carer for their son and want to live as long as possible for him.

What an absolutely baffling position to hold.

I get a vibe that many of the 'class action lawsuit' lot are in the general anti-vax conspiracy theory camp. The same ones that come into posts where someone has stage 4 cancer to spout a load of nonsense alternative therapies.

Yes I raised an eyebrow at that, even if completely ignorant on the drugs you’d know the risk of them is less than the risks associated with obesity. By a million miles, they aren’t even in the same ballpark.

maybe the poster can afford them and just threw in a barb as she didn’t want to say that.

@Daisywhatsyouranswer I want to shout from the roof tops that my food bill each month has reduced by more than the cost of the Mounjaro jab.

Interesting the mentions as well on hospitality....there must be a few takeaways in my town assuming I died 😆

ive dropped from a size 28 to a size 12. Why can’t obese people reach that level?

I’ll add I did it mostly from a health perspective, I had a rare and drastic leg amputation at the hip and if I ever want to be able to walk with a prosthetic for any length of time I need to keep my bmi down. I’ll be lying if I said I don’t enjoy being thinner and having access to more clothes though,

I think you have misread that.

It was the overweight friend the weight was falling off from, exactly as you say, the hard work of diet and exercise. No-one was using jabs. I simply didn't refer to that.

But the obese friend WAS doing the same hard work. I know she was; in fact she was eating less (though exercising the same). She just needed more of a deficit than the other friend did. Whether that was chicken or egg - in the sense that she got obese because her body was more inefficient in the first place, or conversely her metabolism had changed - I don't know. But she simply was not responding in the same way to the diet and exercise. And it was not a case of her making less effort or being greedier or any of the other things people assume.

The overweight friend was the one who used the word cheating to describe when she deviated from what they had agreed on following foodwise. She deviated (if you like) more, but still lost more.

It sounds to me as if you were unwell - as in your health was compromised by being obese. I am not your if it is dr prescribed presumably you are ‘unwell’ enough to get it!

Well yes obviously. It’s a medication and should be taken when medically appropriate.

As a former severe anorexic, I am extremely worried about access to drugs privately without adequate assessment. I have no doubt if I was still ill I would have found a way to access them.

Even in recovery, this has been the hardest period for me. When they added calories to menus I didn't really mind but the constant news coverage and comment on thinness in the media is really testing me and I'm avoiding content as much as I can but I do worry more about relapse now than ever before.

I appreciate that is very much a me problem and the majority of people they will be a real life saver.

I can see why someone in your position would feel concerned.

I imagine it must be a hard thing for people suffering from anorexia to see, but more than a quarter of UK adults are obese with very real risk to their health, quality of life and life expectancy, compared to a life time prevalence of 4% for anorexia in women (0.3%) in men.
The balance in favour of the populations health has to mean that these drugs are accessible in a cost effective way.
If Anorexics chose to lie on their application and then get past the communication with the GP, then this is a shame, but should not be used to create an unnessecary barrier that prevents so many other people benefiting from WLI.

Funnily enough the loon I mentioned upthread who compared WLI to heroin has also expressed anti vax sentiments…

I can’t really understand what you’ve written - apologies. I wasn’t ‘unwell’. I felt physically fine. I didn’t have any health problems that I needed to attend the GP for - in fact I’d not had any health problems since having my gallbladder removed nearly 10 years ago.
So no, apart from being morbidly obese, I didn’t suffer any day to day issues, apart from being deeply unhappy with the way I looked.
So again. Should I have waited until I was ‘unwell’ to have sought treatment?