is taking weight loss medication cheating?

[theweightlossqueen]

i used to be a super sporty child and then life happened. i've put on a few pounds and my food (mainly snacking) choices aren't the best...

i feel like if i just dedicated time to exercising then i'd get fit but i don't want to keep the current relationship that i have with food, you know?

is taking weight loss medication cheating, really?

I’m sorry about all your health problems. But I am saddened to read someone who claims to be a hcp working with people with food issues, makes such ignorant statements such as food noise is due to greed,

I politely suggest you come off the internet and spend time educating yourself further.

as the honest truth is when you make ignorant statements such as food noise is due to greed, or that obesity can be prevented, it shows your complete lack of any understanding of the multitude of issues people face, be it metabolic disease, insulin resistance, or pyshological issues trauma, etc.

Even in the face of your own near obesity you still make these statements, but seem to think only you is it down to health issues, and you’re not really actually fat with a bmi of 29.

you lose credibility and I for one am no longer going to engage with this nonsense.

@Gall10 Diabetes.org might discuss historic issues with supplies of some medications for various reasons. Mounjaro has never been in a short supply to the point of being unavailable.

It is simplistic and unhelpful to suggest that people using legally acquired, MHRA approved medication via private prescriptions are actively taking that medication away from diabetics. They are not. What is the point of suggesting that people using WLI are damaging diabetics health? It's untrue and deeply unpleasant. It's an attempt to shame and upset people.

Thank you you have educated me but I’m still no clearer as to the true definition of food noise. It’s not something I’ve come across professionally. A quick google suggests a better description would be hyperphagia. I accept that “greed” carries a negative connotation and maybe a taken as an insult. Now it is being accepted as a medical symptom of a more complex condition hyperphagia is a better descriptive.

@Gall10 , I had a conversation with a very good friend of mine who is a diabetes nurse as to whether there are any supply issues currently for people with diabetes 2 weeks ago and she said there are currently no supply issues, I think your info is out dated. She has about 200 patients on WLI currently.

Interesting how health care professionals attitudes differ on this, Above mentioned friend is very supportive of me and a large number of her colleagues are currently on Mounjaro. I am taking it having been recommended by my rheumatologist to consider WLIs in 2023 but took a year or so to decide as was worked in research back in the day and I wanted to ltake time to read around the subject.

It may be ‘cheating’ in the eyes of some but I cheat by having medication to control ny blood pressure and to minimise joint deformation from psoriatic arthritis so I am ok with it but find it a weird choice of word, mostly coming from a place of ignorance and lack of understanding of obesity.

I also find the differing attitudes of health care staff interesting.

I am very lucky I have a fantastic doctor, when I mentioned I was considering this, she checked I had no contradictions, explained how she’d a number of patients on these drugs for diabetes, thay she would recommended if she could, explained the drugs, also the final trials for other things past weight loss, ie cardio vascular and kidney disease and the results just coming in and likely to be aproved, that these peptides have been in use for over two decades, in various forms, and that she’s had a lot of success over the years. She was very saddened she isn’t allowed to prescribe.

She said that in her view I was her patient, and even though they weren’t supposed to monitor and support, she would do that, so she monitors me monthly as my blood pressure is coming down, and fast, I’ve went from the highest dose of my two meds, to the lowest of each in 3 months, and likely about to stop one completely. She thinks it’s likely I can come off completely as I continue to lose weight. She always asks how I’m feeling, how much weight I’ve lost, what dose I’m on etc and shows a genuine interest. And she’s noted it on my notes and enters progress in there when I see her.

but I see posts on here from people whose doctor won’t even discuss it with them.

I guess you also see posts from hcp’s with their own personal issues about their own situation and weight, that cloud their judgement, and drives their resentment/envy/anger etc.

but for me, I just remember that’s about them and their issues, not about the drugs themselves.

Well managed and monitored weight loss with WLI is the gold standard. However, it’s the unlicensed use of the drugs that are worrying to HCPs. Being presented with patients who have not had full health scan before taking the drugs is difficult because the emerging black market in WLI are using a variety of medications to imitate the legitimate drugs. How does they know what they are treating?

HCP are not against WLI but the explosion of their use is likely to put undue pressure on NHS GP services if people are not getting decent support from private providers.

Like all novel treatments that are easily accessible privately, when it goes wrong patients expect the NHS to pick up the pieces.
Patients travelling abroad for major cosmetic surgery are currently swamping the NHS services because they are discharged too soon.

I looked up diabetes.org on that poster's advice to see what they said. Apparently the licensing of mounjaro for obesity means that there may be some supply issues for people in some parts of the world. Which I think is a very vague and unevidenced, non specific comment and a bit of a reach.

Sorry for being ignorant!

If you don't actually know, why would you post so confidently?

Article from Dec 24 re supply to NHS.

www.diabetes.org.uk/about-us/news-and-views/our-response-serious-supply-issues-drugs-people-living-type-2-diabetes

From that article

There is still intermittent supply and shortages of some GLP-1 agonists including Ozempic,(injectable semaglutide), which are expected to be resolved by the end of December 2024

ok

I mean, what is the point of this repeated insistence that people, who nearly all are taking Mounjaro, are harming diabetic people by taking their medication away from them? Is the intent to stop us from taking Mounjaro? Or just to make sure that we are taken down a peg and made to feel that we are bad people? What?

If you read the article one solution to shortages of drugs is to move patients onto more readily available drug such as Mounjaro. The knock on affect is that they then restrict Mounjaro to T2 diabetics since their need trumps weight loss.

So, yes, you would like to see people like me prevented from accessing Mounjaro. Ok.

I think it comes from diabetes being a 'proper' illness and obesity just being an excuse made by us stupid lazy fatties who don't understand that broccoli is better for you than cake and lack the correct moral fibre to lose weight the hardest way.
It does remind me a bit of the Brass Eye Good AIDS/ Bad AIDS sketch.

Despite the facts that a) obesity is a disease and b) many cases of T2 diabetes are directly caused by obesity

Do you think Diabetes, Cancer or Heart Attacks have ever ‘played by the rules’?

By the same logic then any medication taken would be ‘cheating’.

Gosh you really are Angry, aren't you, @Angrymum22?!

So you would support the sufferers of obesity to go without treatment, because there's another condition that you think 'trumps' theirs?

And your nonsense earlier, likening private Mounjaro to those having cosmetic surgery abroad and then leaning on NHS for complications is just that- absolute nonsense

Exactly! From monitoring at home I may have reduced my pre diabetes status in just two months on mounjaro, so maybe that means I'm not a cheat who is stealing from diabetics after all.
The 'naughty fat thieves' narrative always ignores that GLP-1 agonists are only one type of diabetes medication too. My dad has type 2 and has never taken them, I don't think his sister has either.

OK so one possible hypothetical senario which is metiomed in passing by a charity ( not NICE or the NHS) is your reasoning for the current medically lisenced use of a drug being restricted?

Wow you really are clutching at straws.

Honestly there is no point engaging on this desperate nonsense.

But guys we have a MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL in the building! I think that is on the bingo card actually 🤔

😂

I know, right?

I'm also a medical professional ( hospital consultant for the last 20 years)
And I think she's talking utter trash lol

Typical fat -shaming ignorance about obesity

Enjoy your jabs and regaining your health , everyone. I know I am!

Thank god we have a medical professional that gets it! Pharmacist gave me the flu jab today and he was raving about it. So many lives changed for the better. I’m so thankful.