I’ve just seen another unsolicited opinion from a self-styled ‘health care professional’ (with no obvious credentials) and it was the same old shite.
’Don’t take the easy way. Eat less, move more. These people want an easy fix. All they need in willpower and discipline’
Now… speaking for myself, but also listening to everyone’s stories, I find that laughable.
I have lost and gained since I was 16. I wasn’t actually overweight at 16, but thought I was. It was the 90s. I have big boobs and wide hips (hourglass - which is supposed to be good, but wasn’t then), so was never going to look like Kate Moss. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent in the gym and following diets since. I genuinely think this was where my weight problems began. I think I starved myself so much that the rebound was brutal. My body wants excess weight to guard against my own will to deprive it of calories.
I actually gained proper weight in my mid 20s when living alone in London and starting a corporate job with lunches and dinners and drinks and constant work events. I finally lost it all by doing low-carb and taking up rowing.
Then I had a baby in my late 20s and was very ill. I gained several stone. After 6 months of feeling too large, I lost it again with 2 hours in the gym 4 times a week and 5 mile walks every day.
I gained it again with my second. With tiredness and stress (I divorced during this period) Your own health is rarely your priority at these times. When you are in survival mode, it’s easy to just eat a teeeeny bit more than usual every day until it adds up.
I took up cycling. I went on another drastic diet. I lost it all again.
Then I hit a period of intense depression. I gained about 4 stone. Yes - I should have had control over this, maybe, but the point is that I had gained and lost weight so many times by then, that the hunger is all encompassing and I need to be in a very positive place with healthy self-esteem to tell myself to ignore those signals and prioritise myself, when I feel like it doesn’t matter/I don’t matter and may as well eat myself to death.
I spent 2 years getting all of that off again. I was starving the whole time, but I made it. I kept it off for a couple of years.
Then I developed severe arthritis in one of my knees due to a historic skiing injury. I struggle to walk far. I feel about 92. I took my eye off the ball. Again. Yes. That’s my fault. I get it.
I do know how to do this. I have a will of absolute iron when I’m in the right mindset.
But the 2 years when I was losing the last time were miserable. In order to be successful, I have to focus entirely on it. I have to substitute the constant food noise with constant weight-loss noise. It’s exhausting and boring - and beyond a point feels selfish. I have to put so much effort in that other things suffer.
People who have never had to lose a significant amount of weight, or who have only had to lose around a stone think this is easy. It isn’t.
There is so much discipline involved in digging in for the long haul and losing a lot of weight. Why on Earth would you begrudge anyone a tool that makes this long process less miserable?
I won’t be told I’m lazy and lacking in discipline anymore. I am taking control and making this the last time. I know I can do this sensibly and have mentally committed to a year without any pressure to do it faster. I can be less extreme about it this time, because it’s not taking up so much space in my head that everything else goes on hold. The confidence that it will work makes it healthier for me. Every time before, I’ve believed that if I let up for a second, I’ll fail. It’s been all or nothing. I don’t feel like this now Mounjaro is taking away the obsession.
I am disordered, I will agree to that, but I will NOT be called lazy or indisciplined - and neither should anyone on these medications.