Guardian article

[AmythestBangle]

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/aug/10/body-positivity-shrinking-girl-summer-everyone-getting-smaller-except-me?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

I don't really know how I feel about this woman's article, but I find myself thinking that maybe she could have tried harder to stay on the medication, and if Wegovy didn't work for her because of side effects then maybe trying MJ. She seems to have given up very easily at the first hurdle and also not considered other ways she could have tried treating her anxiety. She says that she stopped the medication because of her kids, but she doesn't seem to have considered that at her size (by the photo anyway) she is certainly going to die when her children are young, so how is that benefitting them?

She says she is not being judgemental of people on the medication but the article is in my opinion permeated with judgement. The rise of "body positivity" was a way to help the mental health and self-esteem of obese people, and was all very well. Being obese and happy/positive is better than being obese and depressed. But now there are sure medical ways of not being an obese person. And being obese, especially as obese as she is, is an extreme heath risk and a disease in its own right. Not something to be celebrated if there are ways it can be succesfully treated, which one should be pursuing with all available tools given the extreme dangers.

Maybe I am being very mean. What do people think?

There is a more positive article regarding people keeping things a secret -
‘I lost so much weight, my husband thought I was terminally ill’: why do people lie about taking Ozempic? | Life and style | The Guardian

I liked this quote at the end - "As Jasmine puts it, “You may deride someone for being overweight, but when they take a medication to resolve that issue, you deride them for doing something about it.”"

That's a good article. The only issue I have is with the little pictures they've accompanied it with. If I'd thought MJ needles looked like that I'd never have gone near the stuff. Bloody hell. 🤣

I think it’s ok. Poor woman. I hope she finds a way to move past this and to liberate herself from her obsessions (and to get off Instagram). Seeing people on here reporting really severe side effects is always upsetting because you don’t take these drugs on a whim. My side effects haven’t been great but they’re tolerable, but even so every time I have thought ‘if this keeps going I will have to stop taking them’ and it feels really hard all round. It’s clear that the pre-ordering question about whether you’ve had an eating disorder will probably expand in the future, I guess bevause EDs can have different causes and links, anxiety disorder perhaps being one.

This is a really interesting thread because it's opened my eyes up to what Body Positivity really means.

I felt for her, but was also irritated. Body positivity is great if it helps you with self esteem (and it did me) but it shouldn’t become a stick to beat others with when they are finally able to lose weight and become healthy.

I was obese for years. And overweight for most of my adult life. I still liked myself, enjoyed life, found myself beautiful. But I am quite certain that everything is better when you are no longer fat. Health, energy, comfort, appearance, mental health. Everything.

It’s a real shame that the writer couldn’t tolerate WLI’s and I do really feel for her there. Because for many people they really are all that does work. The bitter tone though, is really unfair.

It hasn't suddenly changed though. Nobody likes being obese. People were just putting a positive spin on it. Of course people in general and celebs in particular have left on the chance to be slim.

The other thing that wasn’t acknowledged at all is that the drugs and treatments are still developing. If Wegovy made her anxious, what about MJ? If neither of those work, what about the next one in the pipeline? Also, was her GP particularly clued up? Did either the GP or the author consider trying anti-depressants alongside the Wegovy? Did anyone consider adjusting her dose? I think it’s an example of black and white thinking to be like right, that’s it, these will never work for me and I’m doomed to be fat forever.

I have quite a severe anxiety disorder. I know what it is like. And I still think she should have tried to continue with the WLI. She only tried one, and not the newest one either. How does she know how MJ would have gone for her? And there are other effective treatments for anxiety, like Mirtazapine or Venlafaxine in the shorter term and then CBT in the longer term, which she could have used alongside. She doesn't mention what treatments she has tried for the anxiety.

OK, so morbid obesity "only" shortens your life by 13 years? That's not great is it? And what about your quality of life in the later years? This woman is in her thirties, she might rethink when she is in her sixties and postmenopausal (which I am). Things start to fail and not work well and this impacts everything you do. With morbid obesity in the picure the chances are you will become significantly disabled. Heart disease, joint failures, chronic pain, sleep apnoea etc etc. I still think it is very dishonest for her to dress up her choice not to treat her life-limiting disease as somehow being "for her children".

I didn't particularly like the article but - what on earth am I reading here? She's not made an active choice to die young, she's struggling with obesity. She's also not (as you've put it) certainly going to die while her children are young.

I'm not saying it's great health-wise to be obese but there are plenty of people out there who are bigger but are healthier by many markers than plenty of thinner people.

You don't have access to her medical records, you don't know what her statistical likelihood of a very early death is. Obesity is a factor in health but you're misrepresenting the situation both in terms of medical science and also the 'active choice' point, and being pretty nasty with it.

I am a huge fan of mj. It's transformed my life and I'm so grateful for it but I'm uncomfortable with judging people who decide not to take it for any reason. The author is clearly in a bad place and I've made decisions to protect my mental health and focus on my daughter that others would disagree with so can see where she's coming from. We all weigh our own stuff in the balance when we're making choices and life is unpredictable so sometimes you prefer to stick with what you've got than risk going down a black hole

I don't know.

There are a lot of harsh words on this thread for someone who has made the choice not to take the drug. Maybe it was a choice based on incomplete evidence although it seemed to me she stated fairly clearly that it made her very unwell with anxiety. However it was her choice and we of all people should not be shaming her for it with all this "she will die young, her poor kids" judgemental stuff. We REALLY should know better than that after our own experience of being obese.

Not needing to "justify" yourself to other people is absolutely NOT the reason to go onto the medication, it should be done for yourself, and your kids. You would be much HEALTHIER, not just more socially acceptable, and THAT is the important part, not what others think. You would be likely to live longer and in greatly better health, for yourself and your children. She seems very fixated on what others think, and oblivious to or in denial of the extreme and certain dangers of her level of obesity. I just don't think she gets it.

And frankly, this can fuck off as well. Many people absolutely do take the drug in order to be more socially acceptable. What is more, this post is itself all about saying her decision is not socially acceptable.

Taking weight loss drugs is not mandatory irrespective of whether it improves your health. It is very true what she says herself in the article, that all fat people want to be thinner, just as we did. Now that so many can actually achieve that, are we - the former fatties who really, really KNOW the hell that it is to be fat - going to become born-again thin zealots and join in berating the fewer fat people who are left behind for whatever reasons?

I totally agree with all of this. Perhaps it's also an age thing though. I'm 54 and have high blood pressure. I was heading towards 17 stone and my stroke risk was increasing, as were my cholesterol and blood sugars yearbon year. I was looking at having to take statins and being diagnosed with diabetes if I didn't do something within a year. That kind of shock really makes you focus.

I've been on WLI since last October. At the end of the day, I had to stick at it as my life was at stake and I'm the sole carer of my Autistic 13 year old.

Body positivity I think is all well and good until a certain age. I was a 'fat but fit' marathon runner at 40. By 50 I was a dangerously obese disabled woman.

ETA 'until a certain age'

Also, this.

This I agree with. I do think that she had other options, as many have said, and could potentially have explored other WLIs. But, as we always say during the 'to tell or not to tell?' debate, details of the medication we are on is nobody else's business. It's completely beyond the pale for us to pontificate or judge someone for making a decision about whether or not to persevere with a medication which, in this case, was having pretty severe side effects.

Also, completely relate to taking it for my health and ALSO because I'm sick of being derided for being fat. Being fat is awful, and no small part of that is the way that a large portion of the general public feel they have a license to comment on, and publicly shame us, for our size.

I understand that we can all (myself included) become reasonably defensive around this subject due to just feeling like we can't win in the eyes of public opinion. But this woman is clearly struggling emotionally due to feeling helpless around her weight - I don't know about you guys, but I can relate. I've been there and I bet most of you have too. We are in danger of becoming those people who were cruel to us if we lose sight of how it feels to be in that situation.

I couldn’t read the whole article - just couldn’t get past all the guff about celebrities and influencers and TikTok and all that jazz. None of it is real and it made me lose all sympathy for her. She’s old enough to have a more mature view of the world. She’s not some naive, gauche teenager with no experience of life.