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!

Hit a nerve?

I've not done the research in this much depth, but this matches my experiences on MJ. Before I was on it, I would get to the end of the day, kids in bed, and feel like if I didn't immediately eat three biscuits, I'd collapse. From when I started, I just haven't had that "I need to eat now! I need sugar now!" feeling. I'd also never understood how people could just "forget to eat," whereas now I do.

I'm getting closer to the weight I was aiming for - which is still not slim! I'll be a 14-16 when I'm done, because that's the shape and size my body is; I've never been smaller than a 12 even when I had a BMI of 20. But I'm interested to see whether my blood sugar regulation remains after I stop.

Exactly right! That's why we have so many people with dementia, because they would have died earlier, but medicine is keeping them alive for longer. The brain still ages!

@MrsSlocombesCat you won’t be offered WLI via the NHS at the moment unless your BMI is over 40 and you have 4 out of 5 specific weight related health issues. Very few people meet those criteria.

You don’t have to be on a maintenance dose for life. You can, if you want to, or you can try without. It’s a choice, what works for each individual.

Long term effects, well this is the same for any recent medication, not just these medications. And the class of drugs have been around for decades now. There are rare side effects, as with all medications. What you are forgetting is that obesity also has many many more health effects and risk of death. So on balance, losing weight with medication reduces your overall risk of health issues.

The NHS is not struggling with a supply of GLP1 medication and no one is taking medication away from T2 diabetics. Anyone who is barely overweight and starts buying a WLI is not accessing it legally or legitimately.

I don't think size 14 is very likely to qualify for it on the NHS unless the person is extremely short.

Personally at your size I wouldn't consider it because imo you need to have substantial weight-related risk to counter the fact we actually don't know the long-term effects of these drugs.

For me a BMI of 26 at your perimenopausal age would not see me playing round with it. And I think that's actually the view the NHS take isn't it?

I know a few people on these jabs (obviously there might be others too), mostly older, affluent women. They look great (tbh they looked good before but now they've lost weight) but from what I see, there is no danger of a sudden swarm of size 8 supermodels which, let's be honest, is the real concern here.

Personally I think a good place to start would be the obscenely large portions of food many restaurants serve. It's normalised eating more than is actually needed. (Disclaimer: I'm not a performative MN teeny-tiny, in fact I'm in the process of losing weight myself atm, but even at my biggest I couldn't manage the sort of platefuls served in some restaurants.)

Poor people can't afford it and lots of people sized 12-14 aren't going to be allowed to use it. Also I suspect side effects to come out regarding this new drug, as that's what normally happens with new medicine. These will deter some people from using it.

I agree OP. I've taken GLP-1 meds (before the price increase thankfully) and have lost five stone, it's been transformative for me, as someone who is insulin resistant.

I think it's naive to assume that GLP-1s won't contribute to a shift in peoples' perceptions of obesity - a lot less has done in the past. We tend to move through phases of this culturally, and I think we're entering into a skinny phase. You really just have to look at the awards red carpets to track this; celebrities always tend to be slim, but you know we're due for a heroin-chic era when collarbones are threatening to gouge out eyeballs.

I don't think size 14 is going anywhere though. Most of us live in the real world where thighs are thicker than wrists.

I think you have a very skewed idea of large and a rather selfish perspective. At my ideal weight in my 20s I was a 16 (I'm 5' 10'). I'm newly on MJ and even if I lose enough weight to fit into 16 on the bottom I'll probably stay an 18 on top as my breasts never fully reduced to pre-pregnancy levels after breast feeding. If 14 becomes the biggest size available I will be absolutely f*cked!

Home cooked food, less UPFs, much smaller portions (hangover from wartime rationing in the older generation), walking everywhere and as a pp has said, smoking.

I agree with you @AbbaCadaBrathat my worry is for kids.

i grew up in the 80s and was a skinny kid, as the vast majority of us were.

I started eating UPFs when I went to uni and it was what was cheap / available. However I stayed slim until my 30s and my weight crept up after having kids, particularly after the birth of my second when a birth injury made it difficult for me to walk much or exercise for quite a long time.

My weight just wasn’t shifting until I tried Wegovy. So I can only imagine how hard it is going to be for kids who have been overweight or obese since childhood.

My primary ages kids are slim and strong. But I know that this could change at any point due to the junk being marketed at them from every angle and dished out at parties, school and play dates.

I’m certainly not a tyrant when it comes to their diet, I’m more of a “everything in moderation” kind of person, but it is very, very hard to moderate due to parties and playdates every week with cake and biscuits. And when it comes to meals, despite my best intentions, I have kids who are fans or chicken nuggets etc.

my fear is that they will continue to target those at children who are increasingly addicted to them, and amongst whom obesity is on the rise. They will then have ready made customers for weight loss medication in the future.
@AbbaCadaBra
Is it perhaps inevitable that the GLP1s and fast food will both be owned and produced by the same massive companies?
We will just be cash cows for them. They will make us addicted to food that makes us fat and then sell us the solution to the problem that they have caused☹️

This isnt entirely true. I am on them and read lots of posts on the WLI boards on here. So many people who were obese have lost 5-10stone and are now around 8-9 stone, some less. I would agree with normal dieting as most obese people I know have lost a few stone and are in the overweight category but on the jabs this isnt the case. Obvious maintenance is a different matter, of course that very much depends on the person.

Size 14 is large, I was recently a 14 and my BMI was 28, I am quite short. That was around 24lb over a BMI of 25. If you look back at 90s tv, the people considered large were probably a 14-16. We have very much lost sight of what overweight looks like. Close friends were genuinely shocked when I told them how much over a healthy weight I was, I know they would be honest with me also.

The general public is becoming a lot slimmer because of these drugs and that's a very positive thing. I think it is possible that people with more body fat will be increasingly marginalised, but we all feel a bit "othered" at some point and need to learn to deal with it as part of being a robust adult. I think that is an acceptable downside given the huge upside to public health.

the idea that size 14 would disappear or become hard to get is ridiculous. No matter how much weight I lose I’d never be smaller than a 14 as I have broad shoulders and big boobs. I can’t get my head around what you’re thinking but you shouldn’t be worried about it.

@SexyFrenchDepression it very much depends on height. I am a size 14 at the moment, my BMI is 25, so I suspect I am a decent bit taller than you. So we will look very different in the same size 14 clothes. I don't think I am large, or that anyone who saw me now would call me large. Even in the 90s I don't think anyone would have called me large at the size I am now.

Pretty much this. Have you seen the state of people? There's not a snowballs chance everyone will be so thin they don't make size 14 in your lifetime.

Do you always worry about arbitrary things like this?

I'm going to be super honest here and say I don't totally agree with the looking great.

I've seen a few people take it who look terrible in the face. One had a large coat on when I saw her and I honestly thought she had a terminal illness because I couldn't see it was related to the weight loss. Just sunken, and a total lack of glow.

It just made me feel I don't think this is as good for people as we might think - at least not for those who really only had cosmetic upsides to gain from it, rather than substantive health ones.

Fair points. But would this weight loss drug come with not health unintended consequences? Seems too good to be true.

Sorry, I did mean to say that re height and really it should have read 14 'can' be a large size. On someone under 5ft 5 its likely to be overweight. BMI 25 also looks very chubby on me, I am 5ft 4 and a small build so need to be at least a stone lighter than the top of my healthy BMI range.

Home cooked food, less UPFs, much smaller portions (hangover from wartime rationing in the older generation), walking everywhere and as a pp has said, smoking.

Yeah it's hard to overstate the significance of smoking!

I do think it's quite interesting how often people miss the fact that we've never actually had a period when whole societies had no risk of starvation, when the general public weren't on an appetite suppressant at high rates and when obesity wasn't an issue. As public health got the smoking rates down, we got fatter.

People who think there must be a way for humans to live in societies when they can buy more food than they need whilst also mostly exercising enough willpower to stay healthy weight are making very wild stabs in the dark. That is not a thing that we have ever managed to pull off.

I think whenever you lose weight, with or without jabs, you can look gaunt for a couple of years (how long depends on age) before things sort of redistribute in a more appealing way. I lost a lot of weight without jabs about 5 years ago, and didn't look great for a while, a bit gaunt in the face and very skinny. A year later I looked really rejuvenated although I'm the same weight - now I look like I was never overweight.

Lots of people tend to lose fat off their face first, and as it's the bit we associate so strongly with our mental impression of people- it really jars you to see it.

I looked like absolute haggard crap about a stone ago - seemed to have aged about 15 years - but it's stabilised and those remaining collagen molecules have stepped it up a bit and I've slimmed down into my new face if that makes sense.

I've gone for slow sustained loss which has helped as well - got flappy arms now but that's about it in terms of loose skin which I'll take after 6 stone weight loss.

Yes, modern life is just so different to how humans have lived for thousands of years. 8 hours a day sitting at a desk just isn’t natural. Driving everywhere. Whole muscle groups just not being used. The absence of food, and sugary, addictive food at that.

There is an awful lot going on, a lot of moving parts.

edited to add: yes, to the poster who mentioned 90s skinny celebs.

There were characters on tv who were “the fat ones” when I was growing up, and in hindsight they really weren’t big at all.

But on the other hand, remember when Kate Winslet in Titanic was described as fat? I watched it recently and maintain that she looked great and a very healthy, slim, normal weight.

Attitudes really do count for so much.

Very interesting though the pp who said she wears vintage clothes and would be a 14 in vintage clothing but a comfortable 10 in today’s sizes due to vanity sizing.

i wouldn’t say a modern day 10 can be overweight. But is it? Or in the case of people a modern day 10 is it just down to better nutrition?

Famous chefs have said this is happening already. Their customers are generally rich people though-the ones who can afford weight loss drugs. As far as I know relatively few people can get it on the NHS (though if this changes, OP, you might be right).
At the moment, the average size does seem to be bigger than 50 years ago, though. Most people I know couldn't afford it, at least the ones with kids, as so many people don't have any spare money left at the end of month.