to think WLI have given many people huge health improvements despite the remarkable number of people on MN who are anti WLI for no good reason

[MountainStorm]

There seem to be endless anti WLI threads on here filled with misinformation, faux concern, and thinly disguised jibes at overweight people. I don’t really understand the motivation but that’s another issue.

On the other hand, many people have seen huge improvements in their health, confidence and wellbeing from using WLI. I certainly have.

So I wanted to ask AIBU to say that WLI have given many people huge health improvements and to ask what health improvements have you personally experienced on WLI?

For me

• been able to reduce antidepressant medication
• improved fitness, don’t get so tired or out of breath when walking

Maybe you don't see obese people walking to the shops because they are all thin now from taking WLIs?

'LadyTangerine has posted numerous posts arguing against a strawman argument that no-one on this thread is making - that cutting food intake and calories does not result in weight loss'

I've said we've been told repeatedly over the years and on this very thread that 'thyroid meds/schizophrenia meds/anxiety meds' make it impossible to lose weight however WLI work as they reduce appetite so less is consumed! Just admit that existing medical issues do not cause weight problems, overeating does.

Which makes it even dafter that you keep making these wild generalisations about the general public from necessarily limited experience.

@LadyTangerine what you could probably personally contribute is to stop being judgemental and patronising. And to support the use of WLI as an excellent tool to facilitate the change you want other people to carry out.

If you want a serious answer about increasing activity levels, which I'm not sure you do... but, when designing public environments, make walking and cycling safe, give it priority over vehicles, and build it into the environment. Make walking or cycling easier than driving, make it more convenient. Ensure that there are local facilities near communities, rather than a drive away. etc etc.

Genuinely find it fascinating that anyone can be this obstinately unable to grasp what people are patiently explaining, over and over again.

@LadyTangerine Your paragraph should read:

thyroid meds/schizophrenia meds/anxiety meds make it impossible TO EAT LESS, which makes it difficult to lose weight

WLI work as they reduce appetite so less is consumed

existing medical issues can cause weight problems BECAUSE THEY RESULT IN OVEREATING

Sorry for the caps but hopefully this is clear

Hopefully the cost to the NHS for obesity-related issues will decrease as a result of WLI, even if not yet, but in the future,
A friend of mine has lost a lot of weight on the injections and she says she feels so much better and healthier. Surely that can only be a good thing?

But I take thyroid meds they don't make it impossible to eat less at all, fitness and wellbeing is always a motivating factor on when to stop no matter how many hunger pangs anyone gets.

Anything can be a excuse to overeat.

Anyway, i won't resort to caps as that is patronising just good that WLI show people eating less is the way forward. Now for exercise.

'If you want a serious answer about increasing activity levels, which I'm not sure you do... but, when designing public environments, make walking and cycling safe, give it priority over vehicles, and build it into the environment. Make walking or cycling easier than driving, make it more convenient'

Walking and cycling is safe and easy . Sounds like another 'preexisting health problems make losing weight impossible' tale.

But I take thyroid meds they don't make it impossible to eat less at all

That doesn’t mean that’s the case for everyone and every medication or situation though, does it? I take antidepressants and they make it harder to eat less.

Apologies if the caps came across as patronising. They were genuinely just to help with clarity.

I thoroughly agree that WLI are a great thing and have given many people huge health improvements. If any of my patients are eligible and can afford it I encourage them to go for it although I cannot help them myself.

The issues I have with them are not really about them but the way they are currently used/ available

I hate that they are pretty much only available on the basis of ability to pay rather than on need. It’s a crying shame that people with BMI 27 and money can access them and poor people with BMIs of 40 can’t. That’s not the fault of anyone legitimately taking them of course but I feel bad for the people left behind who I see many of through my work. I just hate to see another avenue to inequality.

I also don’t like to see how people play fast and loose with what is after all a prescription medication. Golden doses, using pens past the use by date, massaging BMI stats to get a script, weird untested dosing regimes and all the private pharmacies making a fast buck out of this and some turning a blind eye to good practice. For many people yes they will get away with that but for people who are sicker with comorbidities it might be more of a risk. It’s the way of the world but I don’t have to like it.

I also have a worry that when they finally do become available on the NHS there will be pressure for the NHS to take over paying for private maintenance scripts rather than getting the meds to the people who never had access.

In my ideal world these injections would be available free on the basis of need in a properly controlled and regulated manner like other prescription medications and there would be an ongoing publically funded (not pharma biased) research programme to answer the unknown qs eg about duration of treatment.

And I guess I do have a public health worry that we need to not take our eye off the ball of how the obesity crisis arose and not stop taking public health measures to prevent it even though we may now have an effective treatment. What about obese children? Are we going to start jabbing them for life? Surely that feels wrong. Prevention will always be better than cure. We need to somehow change the reliance on UPF, limit their availability and get people moving more in daily life on a population level.

@LadyTangerine why when asked for population-level discussion, do you take it back to individual-responsibility discussions?

At the risk of huge unpopularity however LadyTangerine is not in fact wrong that, perhaps not on this thread, but elsewhere on Mumsnet and in the wider world you do hear people making an argument that WLI have ‘wider effects’ such as on insulin metabolism that are the main reason for weight loss and are ‘correcting a metabolic deficit’ whereas the clear testimony of everyone who takes them is that the main mechanism is eating less. Hence the preponderance of discussions about appetite suppression and ‘food noise’. I have not heard of anyone who claims to have lost weight with WLI except via the mechanism of eating substantially less so much that people find it makes a real difference to their food budget. Some people do have quite a visceral reaction to that being said though for reasons that I do not understand. The view that people are putting forward on here that they just make eating less much much easier is clearly the correct one to my mind.

WLI do have an effect on insulin and blood sugar as well as how your body uses stored fat. All of which help weight loss, as well as the obvious reduction in appetite. It’s a part of the same mechanism. Which is why you see some people reporting that they are able to produce more weight loss and more consistent weight loss than when previously calorie counting in the same way but without using WLI. Not everyone of course as not everyone will have the same metabolic issues.

I am 3 stone overweight. If I eat more than 1,000 caliries a day, I gain weight. That is my TDEE. It's not uncommon. Have you tried living on 1,000 calories a day indefinitely? WLI allow me to do that without feeling hungry all the time.

You write like everyone who is overweight is consuming thousands of calories every day and they simply need to cut back to average levels. Not all people have the same metabolism.

I’m sorry but that’s utter bollocks and frankly insulting to millions of loving parents.

Some Boomers may have abused their children, just like some Millenials do, and some Victorians did and no doubt some Stone Age hunter-gatherers did too.

This sounds like some crap from TikToc. Do you actually believe it?

All these arguments about weight jabs are a waste of time. Any meds can cause problems. I was put on HRT decades ago, because of an early hysterectomy.

If I try to come off of them, I have problems. So my GPs and I have concluded the benefits to me outweigh possible risks from being on them so many years.

We all need to make our own medical choices. Live and let live. 👍

The usual crap. 🙄🙄🙄🙄😂

I am obese but I don’t have a dog so you will never see me walking one.

I do however walk half an hour to work every morning and half an hour home again at night. I also walk to the supermarket and everywhere else I need to get to in my daily life. And at weekends I frequently “go for a walk” for exercise, often up a hill (in addition to swimming and going to the gym).

And no, I’ve never had a “pile of chips” for dinner.

There seems to be little nuance in the whole debate around WLI a lot of the time. People either seem to be evangelically in favour or hate them because people lose weight when they dont 'deserve' to.
I have some concerns about the long term side effects being unknown and there not being much information yet about whether they can be used short term without the weight rebounding.
Because of this I, as an obese person with no current health issues linked to obesity, have chosen not to use WLI at this point. I have been able to make life style changes that mean I feel healthier and have stopped putting on weight although I can't push myself hard enough to lose weight.
I am however encouraging my husband to consider WLI. He has joint issues probably exacerbated by weight. These impact him day to day and make it harder to exercise. His diet is terrible and he is not motivated to fix it. I'd rather he consider gambling the long term unknown complications of WLI than the known side effects of his current trajectory.
As with most things they are finely balanced individual decisions.

Well yeah they do but surely the main mechanism is appetite suppression because that is what everyone reports. You literally never hear anyone say that they ate the same amount and still lost weight which would be the case if it was all about metabolic effects. In fact people usually relate the rate of weight loss to the degree of suppression.

As I said, it's part of the mechanism, the things are not separate. People get the appetite suppression, that's one of the intended effects. So, you won't see people who eat the same and lose weight, because if WLI work at all for them then they will be experiencing some appetite suppression and therefore not eating the same.

There seems to be little nuance in the whole debate around WLI a lot of the time. People either seem to be evangelically in favour or hate them because people lose weight when they dont 'deserve' to.

Worth pointing out that we have an environment on MN where goady, resentfuul threads and posts are made quite regularly from anti WLI people and there isn't an WLI taker equivalent of that. There's a couple of active threads in AIBU today featuring barbs about easy ways out, for example. I think that may be what OP is referencing. Personally I enjoy that sort of thing, the seething resentment is amusing. But the pro WLI equivalent would be, say, MJ takers starting regular threads about how stupid people are for trying to lose weight through traditional methods and how much better we look than them. And that's not really a thing on MN.

I don’t need to know, I didn’t say that. I just don’t get why people lie about it, if the person being told doesn’t like injections then that’s there problem. I think people improving their health is a good thing, pretty sure I’ve already said that. There’s different ways of doing that and injections are one of them.

There's plenty of reasons why which may include:

1. Keeping medical information private is normal
2. It's not my job to satisfy your curiosity
3. Dislike of criticism
4. Self image
5. Not wanting a debate about medication
6. People gossiping behind their backs

I'm sure there's loads more. I've no idea why you think people should share. I choose to if people ask about my weight but it's very obvious why others don't. I do get bored of justifying my decision and questions around how I'll keep it off when I stop the drugs and the dangers of a maintenance dose... it's dull and really between me and my prescriber or other health professional where it may impact their decisions about my health. It's my private information and mine to decide whether I share.