Mounjaro affecting friendship

[MounjaroBore]

Name changed for this and i'm posting it in relationships because there is no aibu and weight loss injections isn't the appropriate outlet because people are there seeking support.

I have a friend who has recently gone on mounjaro. A few months ago. She wasn't that overweight, and only had about a stone and a half to lose.

I'm happy for her that it's doing what she wants, but I am finding it's affecting our friendship. Whenever we go out, she's decided she wants to go for dinner despite being unable to eat more than a few mouthfuls. She eats barely a few mouthfuls of her dinner and then asked the restaurant to box it up.

All she talks about is mounjaro, and how much weight she's lost. She shares about buying needles off the internet for the golden dose and the extra dose, and tells me about the new community community, she's found on reddit, to help her do this. She said she's beginning to feel like a drug addict.

Whilst doing this, she encourages me to finish everything on my plate and order more food. I am a bit overweight, too, and I was actually more overweight than she was. I suggested perhaps I should get it and she was like, no, you don't need to lose weight.You look great order something else... encouraging me to order more food.

She keeps asking me if she looks as if she's lost weight. Every time I see her. She tells me how many people haven't commented on her weight loss and she wishes, they would.

She tells me this every time I see her and I reply with the same thing every time I see her which is it is generally a faux pas to comment on someone's weight. Perhaps people haven't noticed or if they have, they don't want to comment because it's impolite to mention somebody's weight.

Sorry. What's going on here? We've been friends for years suddenly I need to eat more food when I was more overweight than her to start with and all she talks about is her weight loss. She seems to ask me to go out for dinner with her to demonstrate me how little she eats.

She had her dinner boxed up, and she made such a thing of it that she'll barely be able to eat the other half for lunch tomorrow.

I don't want to back away from the friendship, but the last few times I ve met with her.I end up eating alone with her commenting.How little she eats and how I don't need injections.On how I should eat more.

The last time we did something that didn't involve eating.We went to the cinema. But then when she got home, she texted me to ask what I was having for dinner, and I told her, and she said she was eating nothing. She just has to get it in how little she has eaten or how she's eaten nothing.

Any idea how to handle it tactfully. Or just ignore.

This resonates with me. I lost a lot of weight and had people telling me not to lose any more when I was still clearly quite a bit larger than them.

One comment from me .

Your friend is not a friend and i am sure she has a eating disorder and very soon will be very ill .

I am on Mounjaro and have been for the last 4 months .
I had 4 stone to lose , 2 down 2 to go .

I am on 7.5 , never had any side effects at all.
I also have ulcerative colitis…totally cleared up now .
Not everyone suffers from side effects, in fact the only ones that do are the ones posting about it .

You cannot starve and eat nothing .
You have to eat good food , if you dont, you will be ill .
protein, fibre and take some vitamins .

Also she must have lied to get it as you have to have a BMI over 30 .

Thats just my comment .

Forgot to add, i dont talk about it and i have only told my cousin .
No need to brag or shove it at anyone

Not sure how someone who only needs a stone and a half off was prescribed it in the first place? You need a bmi over 30. So, she has to have been medically obese to be prescribed it. Anyway. I would be honest and say can we talk about something else mate? If she demurs I would withdraw and not see her. Not too difficult really.

She sounds like she is developing an Eating Disorder unfortunately.

It was quite easy to fiddle the results. She bought it off the internet.I don't know what she did. Said she was more overweight than she was.I really don't know.

yep she wants you to put on more weight to make her look even better by comparison.

I would just start being “busy” when she’s suggesting dinner.

I was a bit embarrassed by my body, and I showed her photos of myself on was at my best, and she said, that was amazing, that's how she wants to look. That's the body she is planning for herself and then said, that look find the way I am now.

I am over two stone heavier than I was in that photo I showed her. So my body at its best is what she aspires to, but i'm find the way I am now 2 stone heavier.

Actually, all things considered, i'm just going to be unavailable in future.I can't be arsed with this.

She sounds awful! Not a positive influence in your life. I would be very tempted to be too busy to see her or to chat in the future.

It sounds like 'Performative Piety'. Very popular with TRAs. It isn't enough just to be a good person (or to be slim or a healthy eater), there must be an audience to witness your wonderfulness. Otherwise it isn't real.

It is even better if the audience is actively less wonderful. Not slim yet? Still eating dessert? Don't use preferred pronouns or fail to beam whenever a trans woman enters the toilet? Shame on you! And their halo shines even stronger in contrast to your disappointingly gloomy choices.

If she has been a good, warm friend in the past, it is probably worth one awkward conversation to try to repair the relationship. Otherwise, I would let this one go.

Good luck!

You should tell her that you are concerned about her, but my guess is that it won't do any good because it sounds as though she has developed an eating disorder, which is a mental illness. I may be wrong, but it seems to fit. Her trying to suggest that she is eating more than she actually is, her wanting to be around food and watch you eat while not eating anything herself. She probably genuinely believes that you don't need to lose weight, but can't see the same for herself because of the body dysmorphia.

I can't tell you how you can help her (if you want to) but the B-eat eating disorders website has information for friends and family of those who are suffering.

Tbh this sounds like an eating disorder.

So I am taking MJ also, and also didn’t have a huge amount to lose. I have stayed on lowest dose and so whilst it quietens food noise, I’m eating three meals a day and get hungry for each meal. I’ve been out for dinner, and whilst I haven’t eaten either bread of chips I’ve happily eaten what I ordered. My DC are at uni, we just went on holiday together, including eating out. They know I’m “being careful” ie didn’t always eat desert but would never suspect. Despite all this, I’ve lost 10kg in 10 weeks, and am now at goal weight.

Taking a dose so high that you can’t eat, especially for someone without much to lose is ED territory, and is dangerous. Also risks loss of muscle mass.

Regarding how to address. If it was me I’d probably say that I was worried about her rapid weight loss especially risk of loss of muscle mass. When is she planning to stop taking it? What is target weight? What is she doing to preserve muscle mass? But I can see that not everyone would be able to say these things.

This sounds like classic anorexic behaviour actually. If this is the first time she has ever lost a signficiant amount of weight, it could be that this weight loss has triggered anorexia although unusual to emerge for the first time in older women. Is she under medical supervision? This is very worrying. It sounds like she must be losing singificant muscle mass as well as fat which is dangerous.

I know it must be unbearable to be around but this need to feed others and comparing how much they are eating to others is very much anorexic behaviour. She sounds like she might be suffering. If she has anorexia, she is still a friend and she needs you - this annoying behaviour is the anorexia talking but your friend is still there underneath

We have a family member like this and it's grating at best. When we have a meal together we text each other about the 'performative undereating' going on. She will start sighing and chuckling to herself 'oh, i just cant eat this' 'dont think im going to be able to finish' and then admits defeat, looking around at everyone urging them to SEE how little she's had. Then she'll turn to the nearest 'fattie' and say 'you finish this for me'. Regardless of the fact you've got your portion why would you eat 2? 🤨 then she starts audibly burping after dinner and going 'oh gosh, oh dear' for more attention as if she's struggling to digest.

Now its the clothes. You cant escape. She pounces on you, holding up a garment proclaiming how ENOOOORMOUS it is on her now and then turning to you and saying....'do you want it?'.

I take it on the chin but wow is it obnoxious.

I tell you what else put me off weight loss injections, what happens when you stop them. I haven't really read anything much about what does happen, but as far as I know, the weight can all just go back on.
Once the appetite suppression stops.

This is why with a comparatively low amount of weight to lose and my worries about the aftermath and the side effect I wanted to try and do it without them. For me, it was more the long term I didn't want to go to all that trouble and money.Just to pile, it all back on again.

For me, I wanted to live a healthier lifestyle and lose weight without medication and I m just going to have to be a bit more serious about it now.

You either know or you don’t- are you just speculating or did she get it illegally?
When I did it I had to, send in a full length photo of myself in cycling shorts and a vest rolled up to show I wasn’t wearing padding.
A picture of the scales with me standing on them and a piece of paper with today’s date on it.
A photo of my ID.
My GPs details so they would be notified of my prescription.

It wasn’t that easy. I got knocked back because I hadn’t taken at least one photo properly.

I am on MJ and have been for over a year. It’s been great for me. I almost never mention unless someone asks me how I’ve lost the weight I have (around 4 st so far so it’s noticeable). I would tell them the truth rather than pretending I did it without help. However my main focus is improving my diet and doing more exercise, there is no point in losing the weight in an unhealthy or unsustainable way.
I think your friend is behaving in an unhealthy and obsessive way. I would find them boring even though I am on the same journey.
I also agree with other posters that she is competing with you and not acting in your best interests. I wouldn’t agree to meet her for food or any exercise related thing. Go for a coffee or the cinema or something where she can’t push her obsession on to you too much.

I agree, I would bin her.

If she has anorexia, this is genuine. She honestly does not see her body for what it is, it's part of the disorder.

I’d definitely distance myself from the friendship for a while OP, till this phase has passed. I don’t like confrontation and I wouldn’t want to kill the friendship, so I probably wouldn’t say anything. But I’d just be less available. And I’d ensure that if we did meet up it would never involve food. Hopefully she’ll get over this stage and go back to being normal again.

I don't know, is the answer. I'm speculating.

But she did only have 1.5 to 2 stone to lose. She sent me screenshots of her bmi and it was 27. Perhaps there's an underlying condition.I don't know about, but she's already told me.She doesn't have diabetes.

I didn't come on here to speculate how she got it.That's actually none of my business.It's more how to handle the friendship. I didn't intend how she got it to become an issue because that's a red herring.

So. My BMI was 27, and I have both high cholesterol and also PCOS. So within the prescribing limits.

After losing 1.5 stone my BMI is 23.

I’ve been on MJ about a year and the usual side effects are real as your friend says - food noise gone, tiny portions, boxing meals up, nobody noticing at first. That’s all normal. What’s not normal is your friend’s behaviour. The constant speeches, fishing for validation, pushing you to eat more when you’ve said you want to lose weight. That isn’t the drug, that’s toxic.

I had an ED in my teens/early twenties and honestly, this is straight out of that playbook. One of my worst habits was encouraging people to eat cakes, profiteroles, doughnuts, all the stuff I couldn't eat because I got a thrill out of it. That’s exactly what your friend is doing. She’s either slipping into an ED or she’s fat-shaming you, whether consciously or not.

Either way, protect yourself. Shut down the food talk, don’t give her material to compare with, and stop letting her turn your meals into a performance of her restriction. Skip meals with her, change the subject if she brings up food, and if she pushes, a quick distraction is better than being drawn into it.

I take MJ and this would fuck me off

In no particular order... she sounds

1. totally self obsessed
2. Like shes doesnt really like you much or wish you well
3. Like shes verging on an ED

Radically reduce contact

This is what worries me about weight loss injections. Yes for some people it’s a great way to lose weight but then there are the people that get a little obsessive over things (especially food and exercise), people that could easily end up with an eating disorder. I am one of these people, I know if I took something like that it would take over my life more than dieting and exercising already does. I don’t have a healthy relationship with food, my weight yo-yo’s from being a stone or 2 over weight to being too skinny caused by restricting food. These injections should not be prescribed to people like me, people that do t have a huge weight problem but has problems with hyper focusing on weight and fitness.

I am sorry this has happened to your friend, I can see why it’s annoying, it sounds like she been brainwashed by this latest trend. It’s not healthy not to eat more than a few mouth fulls, the fact she feels too weak to exercise proves this. Hopefully she will eventually realise that she’s potentially heading towards having an eating disorder….l mean, what happens when she stops injecting? Surely she can’t use it forever? She will regain her hunger and will gain weight?

Anyway, I would try and just meet up after lunch for a coffee and a walk in the park rather than meeting up for food, hopefully then she will stop talking about it as much?

No, BMI of 27 and a list of health conditions. I have PCOS and high cholesterol. Some pharmacies will accept menopause!! Other conditions include high blood pressure, pre diabetes (ie high fasting glucose), heart issues.