Oh, the mad diets I have tried! Thank goodness for WLI.

[threeeggsontoast]

I’ve struggled with my weight since I was about 12 years old - I’m now 50! I was thinking last night about how much of my life I’ve spent on one diet after another. WLI is the only thing that’s given me sanity!

As a 12 year old, I pretended to have a tummy bug once and lived on low sugar Horlicks for a week, losing 7lbs. That was till I was so hungry my hands were shaking, my mum found out, went mad and immediately made me eggs on toast and told me to not do anything silly like that again.

In adult years, I went to SW and WW, did Adkin’s (never want to see another steak!) plus did good old calorie counting. I tried Keto for a while and oh, I lost and regained 3 stone (twice) on Cambridge/121 diet. When Cambridge got too expensive I experimented with a cheaper alternative which tasted like powdery lumpy stew. 🤢

I think the worst part is the YEARS of avoiding social events because of one of two things, either feeling too fat and frumpy to go out or not wanting to ‘mess up’ whatever half baked diet plan I was on.

When MJ became a thing, I was sceptical for a long time but then met up with an old friend who walked in looking fabulous, having quietly lost 2 stone on MJ. That set me off thinking and here I am now, 12 weeks in.

Not really sure of the point of this thread but I wish I’d not spent most of my adult life obsessing about this!

This is lovely
Those who have never struggled with their weight don’t understand how being overweight can have an adverse effect on all aspects of one’s life .
My mum is on Mounjaro and it has given her a new lease of life . She is so much happier
She spent most of my childhood on diets and it was miserable for her
This is why I get pissed off with the naysayers who focus only on the negatives.

Great post OP which sums up my life as well. I also shout it from the roof tops because I get so irritated by the constant barage of posts on social media implying that fat people are stupid and need to be told to just eat less. I've been on mounjaro since March and have lost 2 stone 6lb. I'm in love with the inventor of it! 😂

Exactly this. Posts like that are so lazy and uninformed as I’d say the vast majority of significantly overweight people will have spent a lot of their lives in the never ending revolving door of diet culture. Lose little, gain a little and on and on.

The extra downside is that in order to lose and maintain, I can’t really eat that much (probs 1300 cals is my maintenance cals) so even when I lose the weight it’ll be a daily balance of missing some things in order to have others. I am ok with that but for me, my weight has never been because I’m ‘lazy’ or don’t know how to lose weight, I’ve just been trapped in the misery of constant hunger.

Yes.. I have been fat since I was about 9. now 41.
I recently watched a video that I hadn't seen before from me in year 6 in primary school & my jaw dropped seeing my fatness.
I went on my first diet at 17 & lost 5 stone within 4 months. Was just hovering above the overweight category in the BMI. I subsequently put the weight back on quickly & have been yo-yoing ever since. Not just buy a few stone either. We are talking gaining & losing 7 stone multiple times. I have done Atkins, Weight Watchers, Slimming World, Slim Fast, just trying to eat heathy without a plan & fast 800.
It's exhausting.
The mental & physical toll which I am sure you can all relate to.
I really think that being obese and the long battle has had a major impact on my life.
Hoping that MJ is the solution. It does feel like a key part atm.

I’m autistic and always thought this was the reason I hated attention, didn’t like eating out etc. Turns out it’s actually been because I was so overweight. I have bags of confidence for these things now, and I’m still a 16-18 clothes size. Being a 22-24 made me terrified of everything. I spent so much of my life (late 40s now) struggling with things because I was fat. I mean it’s absolutely amazing that I have this new found confidence, but I’m annoyed that I thought it was due to my autism the whole time. I still struggle with new things etc but my anxiety is at an all time low and I am actually enjoying new experiences.

I get so annoyed when people don’t understand how hard it is or assume we are uneducated about weight loss. I literally special interested every diet going for years. I knew what to do, probably more than the average person. I just could not do it.

Anyone remember the AIDS (not the illness) of the late 70's ....cubes of mint flavoured toffees? Absolutely full of crap ...you ate a certain amount of them during the day and had a sensible low cal meal for evening. My (ex) husband lost loads of weight quickly. We thought they were a revolution at the time!!! How naive we were.
To all of you in your 40's and 50's taking Mounjaro....well done 👍 for shifting your weight now.
I spent 2 decades attending every slimming club available and was always successful but only to put the damn blubber on again.
I've been on Mounjaro for 10 weeks now and slowly losing weight every week. For someone 60 plus I feel confident the weight will stay off this time.

Anyone remember the AIDS (not the illness) of the late 70's ....cubes of mint flavoured toffees?

Yes @Lifecircle I remember these. Pre MJ, I was so desperate that I googled to see if they still existed. My dad lost 3 stone by using them back in the 80s and I have memories of him standing in front of a mirror saying to himself ‘Being thin tastes better than food’. 😂

I think at some point our family all tried the cabbage soup diet too and oh, there was this ‘3 day British Heart Foundation diet’ (which was nothing to do with the BHF). That one involved 3 days of living on cottage cheese, melon and boiled eggs. You could lose 7lbs in a week which of course was regained within the month as I gratefully fell upon ‘real food’ again.

Pretty sure I went through a mad exercise phase too where I near crushed myself with 3 times a day workouts while eating not much more than grilled chicken breast and apples.

And I also remember my mum telling me about the slimming pills she got from the doctor (that was probably in the 60s) which were highly addictive and probably some form of amphetamine. It was all the rage to live on those along with plenty of fags in order to keep the hunger away. I think/hope they’ve long since discontinued those pills.

I’m autistic and always thought this was the reason I hated attention, didn’t like eating out etc. Turns out it’s actually been because I was so overweight.

That’s really interesting. I’m not autistic but I can’t tell you how many social events I’ve turned down on the basis that I’m an introvert and don’t massively like hanging out with large groups of people. Turns out that really I was just worried about what I’d wear, whether people would judge me or not and also, would there be healthy options to eat? And if there wasn’t healthy options, that would mean I’d have to have a ‘night off’ and go the whole hog and drink alcohol too but then how would that affect me the next day? It’s like there was no ‘middle setting’. It was either feast or famine and everything centered around that.

Turns out I’m not that introverted after all (even though I’ve only lost just over a stone) and actually now I feel less self conscious, I’m happy to go out.

These attitudes towards overweight people still persist. There was an article in the Daily Telegraph the other day where the author described how she had been diagnosed as almost type 2 and how she had used WLIs to reverse this and reach a normal BMI after a lifetime of being overweight and/or yo-yo dieting. There were literally hundreds of online comments that were really hateful, telling her she was a cheat and that anyone can lose weight just by sticking to a diet. It was just awful to read, but it seems to be a common attitude.

Ah. @threeeggsontoast those pills! A friend of mine acquired similar pills in the 90's . It was pretty obvious they were 'Speed' . I took some but was a nurse at the time and was well aware of the dangers. I didn't think it would be a good look if I ended up in A& E with heart failure!
As for all those slim fast shakes and soup 😄 Yuk.

Really good ‘you and yours’ on radio 4 right now about WLI.

Yes, good summary of the current situation, with a Professor of Metabolic Medicine:

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002gfww?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

I'm 43 and have been on a diet since I was 13. Every single day of my life I've woken up and said right today's the day you finally stick to your diet. So grateful for the jabs!

Funnily enough I was reminiscing about pills with a friend today. Also in the 90s, I saw an advert for a slimming clinic down the road from my work so I booked an appointment in my lunch break. Quick weigh in, told to eat 1000 calories a day and sent on my way with a little pot of Duramine which were basically speed!

Yes, this.

The cycle of 'today you start' - operating/wrong food - guilt/shame cycle - back again the following morning.