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Weight loss injections/treatments

Discuss weight-loss injections and treatments, including personal experiences. Mumsnet hasn't checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. You may wish to speak to a medical professional before starting any treatments.

Original poster

Handling comments about weight loss jabs as cheating in social settings

28 replies

Wildgoat · 15/03/2026 12:01

First cheating comment heard in the wild!

out to dinner last night with some of my husbands colleagues and their partners, one was a woman who we have never met before, she was picking her food choices and said she’d lost two stone, I responded with well done you look great.

she then says “and I did it the hard way, not like these people who cheat and use the jabs,”

im totally open about using the injections with all friends and family, but not work colleagues and my husband is the same, he also uses it, so I’m always going to respect that. Its his colleagues.

so I responded with “cheating who” in a polite and quizzical manner, “surely it’s not a competition”, my husband said “as long as it’s done healthy that’s all the matters, no?” and we changed the conversation immediately to something else.

but we were both quite surprised by it, she didn’t know the group, so doesn’t know who could be on it, wasn’t asked, just blurted it out in an angry little manner.

anyone else heard this in real life and how would you have responded?

OP posts:
MoneyJo · 15/03/2026 14:01

I would say it's the opposite of cheating. It's making the field even for a lot of people (subject to ££ in many cases). Many of us on the jabs don't naturally feel full so it's hard to know when to stop if you don't have that feeling. Also many of us have ADHD and are used to using food as a dopamine hit. For people who do naturally get the full feeling or are not so driven by dopamine, then they probably don't need the WLI. For those of us who are different it is literally putting us where so many people are naturally.
Are glasses cheating if they help people see what those of us with good eyesight see naturally?

Original poster
Wildgoat · 15/03/2026 14:30

MoneyJo · 15/03/2026 14:01

I would say it's the opposite of cheating. It's making the field even for a lot of people (subject to ££ in many cases). Many of us on the jabs don't naturally feel full so it's hard to know when to stop if you don't have that feeling. Also many of us have ADHD and are used to using food as a dopamine hit. For people who do naturally get the full feeling or are not so driven by dopamine, then they probably don't need the WLI. For those of us who are different it is literally putting us where so many people are naturally.
Are glasses cheating if they help people see what those of us with good eyesight see naturally?

That’s an excellent point and I think one many don’t realise, although I guess she was still overweight and had lost two stone, so for her maybe it was an access issue,

OP posts:
MeridaBrave · 15/03/2026 15:03

usedtobeaylis · 15/03/2026 13:46

I've compared it to Sertraline before, and that's my direct experience. When I was trying to deal with anxiety, the anxiety was monopolising my energy, so it was almost impossible in the midst of it to develop any concert coping strategies. I was going from day to day permanently exhausted by it. Sertraline returned to me a baseline that enabled me to actually start to address both the causes and symptoms of anxiety. Mounjaro for me works in a similar way. My baseline isn't the same as someone who is able to improve their diet through willpower alone - in exactly the same way my mental baseline isn't the same as someone who is able to improve their mental health by going for a walk.

But it's the suggestion that I'm not doing anything difficult at the same time that bothers me. Sertraline wasn't an 'easy' thing, and nor was it cheating. The amount of awareness and self-awareness required to tackle anxiety is itself exhausting. It's hard to face it head on. There's no difference between that and facing other processes in your body that require both high levels of self-awareness AND medical intervention. Nothing about the last year on Mounjaro has been easy. But I have been able to make sustainable changes both for anxiety and obesity because of medication.

Show quote history

Yes that’s another good example. Tbh for me, it kind of is “cheating”. I can lose / maintain weight with willpower alone but it consumes a lot of brain space and I want to use my energy for other aspects of my life. But I have all the lifestyle measures in place - I lift weights I do cardio exercise, I have a healthy diet. The jabs just stop me over eating. I’d likely gain weight very gradually eg a month (that’s been old pattern, spend Jan - March will huge amounts of will power to diet and then April to Dec to gain it back.

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