Everyone just hates fat people

[mamabeeboo]

Yes I'm fat and yes I'm taking the WLI.

I've had it out with a friend of a friend during a catch up dinner yesterday and I'm fuming.

I've lost some weight and still have a good 5 or so stone more to go before I'm anywhere near the 'normal' BMI category. So no, I'm not wasting away or disappearing, or losing weight too fast.

The mistake I made was being honest about the jabs. But I stand by it, I think it's important to get healthy, regardless of how you do it, just get there.

ANYWAY, this person has suddenly decided to feel concerned for my health, now that the loss has become noticeable. With some silent nods from others about how you should 'just eat less and move more'. No shit is that what was supposed to do?!

A big discussion about:
just have willpower
just have smaller portions
do it the normal way, you don't know what you're putting into your body
it's not healthy
just put down the fork
it's about dicipline
it's not really losing weight though, is it (huhh??)
it's more rewarding to do it the normal way so you can feel achievement

It's gotten me thinking of how so many people just hate fat people. You want us to pay for being fat, to suffer at the gym doing workouts we don't like or can't do with joint pain and back pain etc. You want us to 'just have willpower' like it's that easy. You want us to try all the diets and fail so you can feel superior with your 'discipline' and that you 'look after your body'.

You hate the fact that these WLI have levelled the playing field.

I said all this yesterday and it became very frosty. These aren't my friends, I was there for the birthday girl, but I won't sit there and take it.

I'm posting because I'd love to hear what you might have heard when talking about WLI. (Or if anyone agrees with the above 🤔)

It's not everybody's top priority, though. Although I am glad I look slimmer now, I'm mostly dieting for the sake of my health and not fussed about looking super gym-toned (just as un-saggy as possible! 😂), which is just as well because I'm limited on that front due to various health/mobility issues.

To be allowed to continue with treatment don’t you have to prove you are still not at a healthy BMI?
What happens when you get to your goal BMI? I’m guessing they will no longer prescribe?

what happens if you start in BMI 31 and you get to BMI 25 but your goal is BMI 22 do they stop when you hit the NHS healthy BMI range?

Some pharmacies support long term use via their maintenance policies as long as you have proof that you have been on it when obese. I.e a pic of your prescription

Im not sure that has been replicated in all studies, I wonder why they cherry picked 11, why that 11?

In any case, ok, so theres a bigger argument that you'll need to stay on those for life then, just like people who are on BP meds or statins for life, or arthritis meds or PPIs for life. Lots of conditions need life long management, this may be one of them.

So the NHS should be funding that for life. Cutting down the heart attack, stroke, diabetes, risks and interventions needed for those. Excellent news.

No, if you started with an obese BMI the majority (I think, it's an evolving situation, but it's several of them now) of prescribers will now keep people on for maintenance. Bodies that have been obese behave differently than bodies that have always been at a healthy weight, so they recognise that formerly obese people may still need the medication as much as currently obese people.

And out of those 22 what was the actual issue?

Any stats for the same time period of deaths from...

Diabetes
Obesity
Ibruprophen reactions
Falling down the stairs

anything else?

"You might not be able to control your condition without medication" isn't a good enough reason for not treating the condition.

That you even need to point out you did it 'naturally' suggests you make a moral distinction. It's nonsense.

The word is 'enviable' by the way.

This is the issue, isn’t it? The small number of deaths on WLI need to be weighed against the reduction in deaths from heart disease, diabetes, stroke etc etc on WLI (and similarly for non-fatal problems caused and reduced).

From the studies so far, it looks very unlikely that the risks are greater than the benefits and it seems that more benefits are being found as time goes on.

I wish we could just take the shame and moral judgement away from weight and body image completely, it's horrible. It's a health issue, no more or no less. The idea that it's morally virtuous to be thin is a really unhealthy message. These are the people who would have been starving themselves in the name of religion at one point. It isn't healthy to be thin and obsessed with weight, food and virtue any more than it is to be overweight. Society is fucked up.

Why would you need any kind of external validation if you are truly as happy, confident and super-healthy as you say?

Absolutely this. I had WLS, the biggest sin of all.

I even had a nurse say (when hearing of what I lost) 'did you do it yourself'

Well of course I did it my bloody self, no one else did it for me.

And yes it was the hardest work of my life. And it wont be over because as we know obesity, morbid obesity is a life long condition even though I am a healthy BMI, medics/bariatric teams will still consider that you suffer with the condition of obesity.

I think this is how I feel about the WLI.

People who take them refuse to have any kind of balanced conversation about risk, and you just get frivolous arguments like “well, have you ever checked the side effects of paracetamol, hmmmmmmmm?” And so on.

I commented upthread. I’m significantly overweight and have eyed the WLI regularly. I have no moral superiority here.

The prescribing of them has been widely unethical, but that’s improving by the sounds of things. There’s also a lack of long-term data in non diabetics. These drugs fundamentally alter your body and we don’t really know how just yet. It might be positive! The facts are though, no one really knows.

I completely understand someone looking at the side effects - and I don’t just mean the risk of death; there are plenty of other potential nasty effects - and deciding that the risk is preferable compared to the risk of being overweight.

What I find frustrating is the dismissal or minimisation of the risks. It prevents an honest conversation. Typically, WLI users all crowd in to mock anyone who dares to mention the risks or the lack of high-quality, independent data. It’s like some kind of cult.

I would very much like to try the WLI but probably won’t as I have a weird body that doesn’t react well to drugs.

As time passes, we’ll get more data and hopefully greater information can be provided objectively about the risks, rather than relying on sensationalist journalism. There are so many conflicting stories right now, it’s impossible to truly understand what either the short-term or long-term risks are.

But to all those who are losing weight, however you’re achieving it, a sincere round of applause to you! 👏

Weight loss done naturally, without WILs does take more effort, it’s ridiculous to say otherwise. Of course she should be proud of what she’s accomplished. She doesn’t need external validation, but I can understand why she would find it annoying for people to say she did it with weight loss drugs. It’s like getting an A for an exam when someone else takes the paper for you.

It’s like getting an A for an exam when someone else takes the paper for you.

It really isn't. It's like getting accommodations for your exam because you're dyslexic.

I think you’ve misunderstood what ‘external validation’ is. Feeling proud of yourself isn’t external validation; it comes from within. I don’t for a moment suggest that this poster shouldn’t feel proud of herself.

Describing one’s own body as ‘envious’ (she meant ‘enviable’ but the meaning was clear) frames it entirely through the lens of what other people perceive. Saying that ‘I deserve to be recognized for doing it naturally’ is absolutely seeking external validation and that’s a slippery, nebulous thing to chase.

@Zebedee999it still involves making 100s of small changes though, that doesn’t change. The mechanics of weight loss don’t change. But the volume of noise does. And it picks up again as the week goes on. But my every waking and sleeping thought isn’t about food.
And as you must know exercising is much easier the less it hurts.
Yes most of us will probably need to be on them for life in smaller doses. Just as we would need to be on a bunch of other drugs in the longer term if we didn’t take these.

There are some excellent threads on Reddit about the unintended consequences of taking them. Lots of people with ADHD have less trouble concentrating, shopping addiction noise drops off etc.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Mounjaro/s/3zQX9hORbT

All through my twenties and thirties I was fit and managed my weight with diet and exercise. I enjoyed running and ran a few marathons.

Now I'm 45 I work night shifts and have a child with non verbal autism so most of the time I am either at work (overnight), sleeping, or caring for my son - usually alone as my husband and I work different ends of the week to cover childcare.

I have no capacity or time left to prioritise my health and wellbeing. Mounjaro is helping me lose weight alongside my usual life demands.

You have said weight loss injections are a cheat to "continue a lazy lifestyle off limits to others". I could equally tell you that for carers and disabled people the daily exercise and 10,000 + steps that many others enjoy can be off limits.

Yes ime the majority of people who come out with crap like “I’m just disciplined” are wealthy, have plenty of free time, have relatively low stress lives, don’t suffer from depression/anxiety and have access to high quality food.

I think the defensive attitude you're seeing often comes from the strangely aggressive arguements from people who are anti WLI. There is a strong whiff of well you're all going to DIE if you use them and if you do it's all your fault for being lazy fat bitches! I've seen MN posters who 'cant wait' to see what the long term side effects are. It's disturbing to see someone hoping you long term pain because you used a prescription medication.
I am someone who has pointed out that the side effects and risks are comparable to plenty of other drugs, mostly as no-one starts shouting at people using those, which highlights that something odd is happening around the WLI conversations. The pill comes with a huge number of risks, but if people are discussing birth control options - another area of non essential but life changing health care - I never hear people shouting that you'll die of blood clots of you use it.
I'd always be up for genuine conversations about WLI, because I think they are a fascinating bit of science, as well as something improving my own life hugely, but it can be hard when people who know very little about them just want to shout about some clickbait Daily Mail headline they read.

Just because people can't be fucked discussing the risks with concern trolls doesn't mean they haven't done any risk assessment.

I agree that's part of the reason for he defensive attitude but also just the implication that people are stupid as well as fat and lazy. You're not just weighing up the risks of the medication in isolation, you're also weighing it up against the risks to your health of not losing weight. The disguised assumption that people aren't doing any kind of assessment and are just blindly sticking themselves with needles every week is mad, especially on a forum where pretty much every single thing you can think of to do with the drug is discussed in great detail. I know I'd rather discuss it with someone in the same boat as me than anyone assuming through their own sense of superiority that I don't know the risks in the first place.

Drives me mad all these gym bros and women, who either don't have children or don't give a fuck about leaving their partner with the children 5 days a week and spend 2 hours in the gym. I do not have that luxury, so train hard and be disciplined, okay tell my SEN children that and my ex lazy partner who never has them, I have to save babysitters to cover work related stuff. I do weights at home when I get a spare minute but I'm never going to have the time at the moment to do that. I'm just not.

Yes, the problem is that so much of the discussion about risks is concern trolling, special double standards that only apply to things they don't like or really stupid. It would look different if so much weren't coming from places of obvious bad faith and/or panic.

Unfortunately, the existence of all of that makes it more difficult for obese people to engage in sensible discourse about the risks and benefits of WLIs for them. This is not the fault of the obese people, except where they fall into the bad faith cohort too.

It's another type of behaviour that isn't specific to WLIs but comes up in multiple areas of discussion on MN. Some of us talked upthread about how there are people who deliberately engage in threads they know will upset or trigger them, WLIs just being one example. Selective, bad faith discussion of risks due to the poster's own ideological perspective also isn't limited to the WLI forum. Comes up all the time in threads about ELCS, for example.