Anyone else a bit sick of every single weight loss discussion immediately turning into “Have you tried Mounjaro?”

[toonoisie]

Before anyone says it, no, I don’t qualify for it, and even if I did, I personally wouldn’t take it. I completely accept that these medications have been genuinely life changing and incredibly helpful for a lot of people, and I’m not denying that at all.

But sometimes it feels like the idea of losing weight the old fashioned way, changing habits, eating differently, exercising, being consistent, is almost treated as outdated now. As if nobody wants to even attempt it anymore without medication being suggested within five seconds.

Surely not every conversation about weight loss has to involve injections?

Look, the issue is the many, many.......don't know what to say but ill-informed? comments and posts we get on here about WLIs. They never stop. Further up, I was told it was scary that I was losing bone and muscle density yet both are experienced by women who lose weight and women who are in menopause (which describes me) regardless of how the weight is lost. And you can't help menopaus They're not 'side effects' of WLI yet many will tell you they wouldn't touch them for these reasons. Frequent comments about 'not losing weight properly' or doing it 'too fast' (and when so many of us report a 1lb a week, for example - certainly my experience). If people post about WW or SW, there is no such negativity. No such faux concern for people's health based on those methods of weight loss, is there? The endless ' you'll put it all back on' when most of us accept we'll be on it for life anyway.

So...what conclusion can be drawn from this? Many assume - not necessarily correctly- that it comes from a place of envy when we know these injections cost a small fortune. It could also come from a place of fear - that you were never quite as big as your friend and so could tell yourself 'I'm not that big' but that comfort blanket is now gone. I don't know. There is a lot of envy around weight loss generally. Some people don't cope well with it. We can see that here.

I think it’s only right that SW, WW and WLI all face the same scrutiny. There’s losing weight, and then there’s doing so unhealthily - whether that’s damaging your relationship with food or losing too much too quickly.

But that’s not exclusive to WLI. Anyone with half a brain cell knows that their purpose is to enable a calorie deficit, and that some people do abuse that and take it too far. FWIW, I’m a former ED sufferer - I’d be one of them. That’s one of the many reasons I won’t take them, I wouldn’t use them properly, and I know that of myself.

SW is problematic. I joined early in my “journey” because I needed the accountability of having to weigh in front of someone, rather than in my bathroom where I can fob it off, and I needed ideas of how to change my horrendous diet. I needed support to make better food choices.

But - it is cult like in some ways, if anyone genuinely believes that mashing a banana makes it worse for you, they’ve lost their head. It doesn’t account for water weight, hormonal changes, whatever. It cares about one thing - loss. It actively categorises food into “bad” and “good,” and for some people that’s really problematic.

What I’m saying is that in much the same way it’s okay to scrutinise SW, WW, someone losing a stone in 2 weeks and whether that’s starvation or a healthy loss strategy, etc - WLI shouldn’t be exempt from that same scrutiny.

It is however that in some cases, whenever anyone questions WLI, or makes remarks about their effectiveness, or scrutinises them in anyway, the response is almost… militant. And that needs to change.

The issue is everyone knows these things don’t work, slimming world and weight watchers, most people who do it, do it for decades on and off as it’s impossible to maintain. They have a 97/95 percent regain rate.

so no one gives a shit about them, same as low carb. But the injections are successful and people see it as less work, less miserable. And of course you can stay on to keep it off, or start again with a minor regain, so we see much more conversation with it.

it’s the very success of them that’s the issue,

Isn’t it that the success is the same, for most people?

The reason people go back to SW/WW having left after their target weight, is because they can’t keep it off without whatever they get from going.

The same applies to WLI, most people will need to stay on them at maintenance dose to be able to keep the weight off, or they’d likely also regain.

They’re both limited success based on whether you keep them up or not, aren’t they?

So start a thread about that then 🤷🏻‍♀️ Mine are in the context of the conversation OP actually started.

The scrutiny isn't the issue. It's the misinformation that is peddled on these forums as fact and the glee that goes with it. It's fine to query how/why things work/don't work and the potential pitfalls and I think it's important that people listen when someone says WLIs are not for them - you shouldn't have to reveal that you have an eating disorder, for example. It should just be accepted. But by the same token, the scaremongering based on very questionable 'facts' is also an issue. And don't get me started on those people who feel concerned about my health generally going forwards having taken WLIs but who cannot explain why this is an issue for them when my being 21st in weight somehow wasn't. Because these forums will openly call me out for using precious NHS resources if I remain 21st, and throw in some nasty comments about my laziness and suggest that I 'eat less/move more' like I had never considered that myself. Fact is, I also have a disordered relationship with food and the WLIs work that out for me. I shouldn't have to defend that fact, particularly as I'm paying for it myself. I shouldn't have snide comments about 'not doing it properly' or anything else.

I am still a fat person. But I am smaller. I am happier and I am getting there. It's all good. Why do people want to take that away from me and women like me?

Mounjaro helps you do all those things.