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Weight loss injections/treatments

Discuss weight-loss injections and treatments, including personal experiences. Mumsnet hasn't checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. You may wish to speak to a medical professional before starting any treatments.

OK I'm convinced, weight-loss drugs are Incredible and will change the world

623 replies

AliceAbsolum · 02/12/2024 19:29

DH has been on them for a couple of months and they've changed our lives for the better. He's an over eater/ mild binger and generally quite obsessed with food. Never managed to keep weight off.

Now he's happy, calm, doesn't think about food, eats like a 'normal person' and it's freed up so much space and joy in our lives.

Apparently in the future it'll be a pill you can either take that day or not, e.g. Most days but not Christmas day. Incredible!

Yes I know people get side effects and they don't work for everyone, etc. But I'm very impressed.
Apparently they also help alcoholics and other addicts as they work on the reward centre's of the brain. Amazing.

OP posts:
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TheSilkWorm · 04/12/2024 08:59

Thatdarncat44 · 04/12/2024 07:48

I take full responsibility for eating too many calories as an adult. Obesity in childhood set the precedent but ultimately it is me choosing to eat what I eat as an adult.

My slim friends always tell me they have to work at it too and I believe them they are just better at it than me.

MJ is not magic. It helps a great deal but you have to accept ultimately you are eating less calories and that is why you are losing weight.

I was always chubby as a child and overweight as an adult but never obese. My comfortable weight was BMI 26, and while I would go up sometimes I could easily get back down again. I didn't 'have obesity' until I got pregnant and stopped trying to control my food intake. I gained 4 stone in 9 months and my body never recovered. I am responsible for doing that to myself but I had no idea how it would affect me. I assumed I'd be able to lose again easily as I did before I got obese. We need better understanding of how people get obese and how to recover.

LegoTherapy · 04/12/2024 09:01

Can metabolic disorders be tested for? So an obese child could be tested, perhaps with their parents to see if anything metabolic is going on and rule out a medical reason for obesity. If there are lots of children with metabolic disorders we need to know why, and why now? Childhood obesity was rare in the 80s when I grew up so what hap changed? Ultra processed foods and the sheer abundance of easy to obtain high calorie nutrient poor food will possibly be a contributing factor but then why aren't all children obese? People don't become obese overnight.

knitnerd90 · 04/12/2024 09:06

The reality is we don't totally understand what!s going on. It's all well and good to hypothesize about UPFs and so on but we don't have conclusive evidence. We do have solid, repeated evidence that diets have an unacceptably high failure rate for long term maintenance. Any other treatment with such poor success would be discarded. We do know that social determinants of health are significant. (Rich people are thinner than poor ones, to give one example.)

and yes, I would like to second the comparison to blood pressure medication. It appears that GLP-1s are more like insulin: they work while you're on them. They are a treatment and not a cure.

ChangeHasCome · 04/12/2024 09:09

I'm going to have to slightly disagree with some pp about 'we are all obese' because of what you ate regardless of why it happened. Perhaps we're saying the same thing here or not but I'm going to try to explain a little bit about some people's* *reason for being obese.

A family with 3 children - 2 girls and a boy - and only 1 child is obese. They're fed the same things, they did the same activities, went to the same schools but something in her body stores more fat and/or is unable to burn as much fat as her siblings. They're adults now and it's the same thing. Mother is the other one who's obese and she exercises, eats healthy and not too many calories most times. It is likely something in her genes passed on to one of her children. Her poor daughter, Lady A, has tried everything as an adult to lose weight including going to the dentist and getting her teeth wired shut so she could only have liquids! Once she stopped, the weight built back up again.

Another woman, Lady B, who's been skinny her whole life suddenly has health issues that has caused her to need to take tons of different medications, some of which are known to cause weight gain as side effects. She comes from a family where no one is obese. She has ARFID too so her meals are quite limited and restricted, making staying slim even easier. She rarely eats too much. On taking these medication, she has ballooned within 2 years. She still has ARFID so her meals haven't changed. The only thing that has changed is her body's metabolism and insulin resistance. Something in her body now seems to store fat twice or 3 times or more than normal and/or doesn't break down fat as much as it's supposed to. So every single calorie, every single fat in food, every single carb becomes a source of extra fat storage and impossible to burn despite her exercising after she got better health wise. Her weight wouldn't budge. She lowered her already low calories just to lose weight and all she could lose was 2lbs then maintained. Nothing else unless she starved herself. Poor lady even tried to do so but she couldn't last all day being so hungry.

Enter Mounjaro for the both of them and what do you know? Mounjaro fixed the metabolic dysfunction and insulin resistance in their bodies so that their normal diets and not-anywhere-near high calorie intake than their bodies could burn became enough; their bodies stopped storing fat like it was going out of business and started burning fat like a normal person's body. The weight started melting away 2lbs a week, 4lbs a week, 6lbs a week and it has been going down since.

Lady B has gone from obese to overweight from a bmi of 34 to 27 and will soon get to a healthy weight with MJ. Lady A has also gone from bmi 41 to 30 and will soon be out of the obese category heading to a healthy weight for the first time in her life.

So no, it can be more complicated than just what you ate. For some people, they eat the same things and even less than others but still gain weight or not lose weight (if they're already obese) due to their body not working properly. Mounjaro fixes these problems in the body and these are some of the people who will likely need to be on it for life if they want their bodies to continue to function properly and maintain their healthy weights.

If Lady B got off Mounjaro, she may still be able to lose/maintain weightloss only if she's off the meds that wrecked her system. Since she'll need to be on those for life too, then Mounjaro is just an addition to her lifelong medication. They're all fixing something dysfunctional in her body except that MJ is fixing what the other meds have broken.

TheSilkWorm · 04/12/2024 09:11

LegoTherapy · 04/12/2024 09:01

Can metabolic disorders be tested for? So an obese child could be tested, perhaps with their parents to see if anything metabolic is going on and rule out a medical reason for obesity. If there are lots of children with metabolic disorders we need to know why, and why now? Childhood obesity was rare in the 80s when I grew up so what hap changed? Ultra processed foods and the sheer abundance of easy to obtain high calorie nutrient poor food will possibly be a contributing factor but then why aren't all children obese? People don't become obese overnight.

I think you're putting the chicken in front of the egg (or vice versa). Metabolic syndrome is real but not something that usually applies to children as the diagnostic criteria includes hypertension and elevated tryglycerides that is rare in children and hard to diagnose. Metabolic syndrome is caused by obesity, not the cause of obesity. However it is sometimes the reason that obesity is harder to recover from. Not all obese adults have metabolic syndrome but almost all have physical effects of obesity that make it harder to recover from, including elevated insulin levels, insulin resistance, elevated blood glucose and fat cells that are prone to retaining fat. That's an effect of obesity though, not the cause.

HollyKnight · 04/12/2024 09:18

LegoTherapy · 04/12/2024 09:01

Can metabolic disorders be tested for? So an obese child could be tested, perhaps with their parents to see if anything metabolic is going on and rule out a medical reason for obesity. If there are lots of children with metabolic disorders we need to know why, and why now? Childhood obesity was rare in the 80s when I grew up so what hap changed? Ultra processed foods and the sheer abundance of easy to obtain high calorie nutrient poor food will possibly be a contributing factor but then why aren't all children obese? People don't become obese overnight.

Metaboloc issues take time to develop, but looking at the family history is a good indicator of who might develop problems over time if care isn't taken. Obesity, high blood pressure, low-HDL, insulin resistance (which is often seen in women with PCOS), T2DM.

My low-HDL and high blood pressure are genetic. My T2DM is because I didn't do enough to control my PCOS insulin resistance. But if the genetic predisposition wasn't there to start with I wouldn't have developed it just from being overweight. Obesity makes things worse, but it isn't necessarily the cause. Even when I get to my goal weight I'm still going to have to take meds. Literally everyone in my family - fat or thin - are on statins and blood pressure meds.

Lovemycat2023 · 04/12/2024 10:16

TheSilkWorm · 04/12/2024 06:27

No you aren't the same category as someone who has never been obese at all. Being obese changes uour body. Fat cells that have been obese are altered/damaged and more prone to storing fat again. People who have lost weight are recovering from obesity from an unspecified time afterwards, their bodies don't become the same as someone who has never been obese. That's why people using WLIs are likely to need to stay on them for maintenance for a period of time or risk regaining the weight. It's not just about 'habits' .

Thanks for answering - I was about the ask the same question. Absolutely makes sense

ObsidianTree · 04/12/2024 11:12

Have only just come across this so late to the party. But want to clear up some things that some people have been saying.

These meds help you to eat better. In the US, where they have been around for years, the fast food /upf companies are losing money because of these medications and are worried. McDonalds profits went down for the first time recently. Some could say due to cost, but could also be because people on weight loss drugs just aren't buying fast food anymore.

Someone said that these drugs could have bad effects in years to come. I disagree, I think these drugs are going to reduce weight related deaths massively. Also, with the new research into their help with addiction, will it cut lung cancer deaths, liver cirosis deaths etc. It has great benefits to hearth health... Will there be lives saved there? This is a miracle drug and has so much potential to save lives.

Costs wise, it might seem a lot a month but if you are the type of person that's spends money to go out drinking, eating, takeaways, smoke etc, then you will save money.

Someone asked about a tablet form. They are currently being developed, tested now. I'm sure soon there will be pill to take for maintenance at least.

ObsidianTree · 04/12/2024 11:33

SweepingChimneys · 03/12/2024 08:07

Thank you for replying.
It was Zava who made this clear in their communication with me when I fist started using MJ in May. I contacted them with a few questions about long term use once healthy BMI is achieved, and this was one of my questions.
So what you're saying has given me a new hope!
Do you happen to know how long people will be able to stay on a maintenance dose for? As in, how long pharmacies will be willing to keep prescribing for once people are in a healthy BMI? Or is it too early days to know at the moment.
If Zava won't prescribe long term maintenance doses, will other chemists do this for me even though I'd be at my healthy BMI by then?
Sorry for all the questions, im tryto find long term answers.
Thank you.
(Edited smartphone typos)

Edited

Funnily enough, Zava has recently changed its turn on maintenance and are now letting people stay on it to maintain! I guess they were losing loads of customers who were moving away to other prescribers! Myself included!

ObsidianTree · 04/12/2024 12:50

@1clavdivs love the bingo card ☺️ I think nearly everything is covered!

SweepingChimneys · 04/12/2024 13:53

Thank you @ObsidianTree
Thank you for your informative post this morning to everyone, and then for your reply to me.
I used to read all your posts on the big MJ thread that was running.....such a huge and supportive and popular thread that they kept moving on to the next one every time each thread filled up with 1000 posts. I only stopped reading because I couldn't keep up with the volume of posts, but I found it hugely helpful.
You were the person that greatly encouraged me to give MJ a go after I posted to say I'd like to try but was afraid of failing again after a lifetime of failing to lose weight and a broken self belief as a result. I've been meaning to message you to say thank you and seeing you here today has prompted that. So, thank you🙏(I used a different name on that thread.)
I'm glad you've found this thread.😊

SweepingChimneys · 04/12/2024 13:59

TheSilkWorm · 04/12/2024 06:35

@SweepingChimneys
I appreciate a lot of your feelings here but come on - you don't just have the disease of obesity. That's not what is meant when it's referred to as a disease. You get the disease of obesity by eating in excess of your calorie needs for a long time to the point that you become obese. Your posts implies that you never did that and just became obese because you have the disease of obesity. I also never ate processed junk as a child and always cook from scratch etc etc but I'm obese because I ate too much, over a period of time. It's like alcoholism. We may be predisposed to getting the disease but we trigger it through our own actions. All the things you talked about as things you tried to lose weight - I've done most of those. We all have. And they work! For a period of time, you lose some weight. But then your body seeks to return to its obese state because obesity damages your cells and creates a dependency on overeating. So they don't work for long.

Wrong.

SweepingChimneys · 04/12/2024 14:02

@Dietingfool
Oh, but all or most of those things are true, you would lose weight. And you don’t need to just take an injection and like magic you lose weight, you need to follow a calorie controlled diet, it’s very easy not to lose weight on the jabs.
Wrong.

SweepingChimneys · 04/12/2024 14:03

knitnerd90 · 04/12/2024 08:15

"But excess calories!" Sort of misses the point.

the physics may be basically true but the problem is that it's a dynamic equation that's not fully under people's control. Metabolism is an adaptive mechanism. Your body can lower or raise its energy expenditure. And you can be eating quite a normal amount of food, but expending fewer calories than you are taking in.

what this "but calories in, calories out!" stubbornness means is insisting to fat people that they need to ignore signals to be hungry, or to eat ridiculously small amounts of food. From a physics point of view this may be true, but it's not actually possible to do. We aren't built to live in permanent caloric deficit and hunger this way. What can wind up happening is that dieting makes your metabolism worse. Your body thinks it is being starved and starts conserving energy.

it's very frustrating, and I hate to use the word gaslighting as it's so misused, but it really is cruel, when people insist to fat people that we must be lying about how much we eat. Why is it so difficult to imagine that people have different metabolisms? Everyone knows someone who is rail thin despite eating loads, or having an appalling diet, and when that happens we chalk it up to luck. Why can't we do the same in reverse?

the opposition to medication is often really a moral stance. If the goal is truly health, and drugs work without causing harm, then they should be fine. But many people simply act like it's "cheating." That's because dieting isn't merely about weight control. It represents self control in general. Drugs represent some kind of cheat code for gluttons. What people want is not simply for us to be thin "for our health," but for us to demonstrate appropriate control and morality.

(and I'm not even touching social determinants of health here!)

Thank you for posting this.

SweepingChimneys · 04/12/2024 14:09

HollyKnight · 04/12/2024 08:28

Weight gain is from excess calories over what you need. That need varies between people. In older bodies, that threshold becomes lower, which is why weight gain happens easier as you get older. But in metabolically sick bodies, it's not just about that threshold. People with metabolic disorders do not metabolise properly. Even if they stay under that threshold, their bodies still don't necessarily behave the way they should. They don't get the energy they should. They don't burn fat the way they should. They gain weight easier and find it harder to lose it. The longer it goes on and the more weight that goes on, the more disordered the body comes.

These are the people the injections help the most because they address some of those metabolic issues, like regulating the blood sugars in bodies who are unable to do that themselves and they reduce hunger in bodies that lack the "full" signal etc. People who don't have diabetes/insulin resistance won't benefit from that side of it, and people who don't have excessive feelings of hunger will be at risk of anorexia.

That is why these injections are only meant for people with high BMIs and/or health conditions.

Thank you for this post.

SweepingChimneys · 04/12/2024 14:10

HollyKnight · 04/12/2024 08:35

It's not about eating more calories than you need. It's about eating more calories than you can metabolise. This is unnaturally low in some people. There genuinely are people who gain weight if they eat more than 800 cals a day. It is because they have a sick/disordered metabolism. Yet people still insist they must be eating more than they realise. No.

And thank you again for this.
Thank goodness there are some people who understand and get it.

ObsidianTree · 04/12/2024 14:31

SweepingChimneys · 04/12/2024 13:53

Thank you @ObsidianTree
Thank you for your informative post this morning to everyone, and then for your reply to me.
I used to read all your posts on the big MJ thread that was running.....such a huge and supportive and popular thread that they kept moving on to the next one every time each thread filled up with 1000 posts. I only stopped reading because I couldn't keep up with the volume of posts, but I found it hugely helpful.
You were the person that greatly encouraged me to give MJ a go after I posted to say I'd like to try but was afraid of failing again after a lifetime of failing to lose weight and a broken self belief as a result. I've been meaning to message you to say thank you and seeing you here today has prompted that. So, thank you🙏(I used a different name on that thread.)
I'm glad you've found this thread.😊

You're welcome ☺️ glad it's working out well for you 😊

ThatRareUmberJoker · 04/12/2024 14:55

I am just noticing this I am on two weight threads. Christmas is right round the corner I wonder if there is anything in it to be suspicious about 🕵️

Dietingfool · 04/12/2024 16:34

SweepingChimneys · 04/12/2024 14:02

@Dietingfool
Oh, but all or most of those things are true, you would lose weight. And you don’t need to just take an injection and like magic you lose weight, you need to follow a calorie controlled diet, it’s very easy not to lose weight on the jabs.
Wrong.

Huh? Why is it wrong. Plenty of people aren’t losing weight on the jabs, just read some threads, I am on 5mg, I could easily eat more. And then some.

what exactly do you feel is wrong about this statement. It isn’t ok to just shout wrong then run for cover.

TheSilkWorm · 04/12/2024 16:50

Dietingfool · 04/12/2024 16:34

Huh? Why is it wrong. Plenty of people aren’t losing weight on the jabs, just read some threads, I am on 5mg, I could easily eat more. And then some.

what exactly do you feel is wrong about this statement. It isn’t ok to just shout wrong then run for cover.

It's not wrong. Fat can't be created out of nothing. But it's comforting to believe that it can. Unfortunately HAES and fat acceptance rhetoric has permeated a lot of discourse around obesity and is rife with false information.

Dietingfool · 04/12/2024 16:52

TheSilkWorm · 04/12/2024 16:50

It's not wrong. Fat can't be created out of nothing. But it's comforting to believe that it can. Unfortunately HAES and fat acceptance rhetoric has permeated a lot of discourse around obesity and is rife with false information.

No it’s not wrong and the poster doesn’t get to deny my and others lived experiences. It might be wrong for her personally. But this thread isn’t about her personally.

Dietingfool · 04/12/2024 16:53

TheSilkWorm · 04/12/2024 16:50

It's not wrong. Fat can't be created out of nothing. But it's comforting to believe that it can. Unfortunately HAES and fat acceptance rhetoric has permeated a lot of discourse around obesity and is rife with false information.

And I agree, the irs not my fault is comforting to many. I’m clearly insulin resistant , but I put my hand up. I ate too much, moved too little and got fat. I didn’t just wake up fat one day.

Bananabuttons · 04/12/2024 17:48

I’ve been on mournjaro for 6 months and lost nearly 4 stone so far. I feel like a different person and I’m so happy I took the plunge!

AnnieSnap · 04/12/2024 18:24

Flidina · 02/12/2024 22:21

I think, these might work in the short term, but I know some of my friends who have been on them, have regained the weight they lost and more, people I know are actually worried about stopping them, even though they've achieved the desired weightloss, in case they regain. At this point I don't think enough is known about the effects of long term use, everyone sees it as a miracle drug, when something is too good to be true, it usually is.

This is my view too. Very much watching from the sidelines.

MarvellousMonsters · 04/12/2024 18:42

UmbrellaEllaEllaElla · 02/12/2024 21:56

It could be the end of obesity. Marvellous!

Another way to end obesity is to take responsibility for what we put in our mouths. Overeating is the result of a whole bunch of reasons, a drug doesn't fix them, it just treats the symptom. I'm an emotional over-eater, I binge on sweet stuff and then hate myself, I'm not a naturally slim person, gloating. I do understand how hard it is to lose weight for most people, I'm not saying it's easy. But, but, we are not helping ourselves by choosing crappy stuff with way too much sugar and stodgy comfort food, washed down with fizzy drinks or wine.

Take responsibility. Learn about nutrition. Eat real food, stop filling up on crappy carbs and UPF. No injections or tablets needed.

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