(personal underlines)
Obesity will soon be history
Semaglutides are changing who we are
I’ve just seen a graph which surprised me only slightly less than one might which showed that the majority of people in the UK thought that Keir Starmer could be trusted to tell the truth about what he had for breakfast. It shows that US rates of obesity have started to fall. The reason, according to the Financial Times, which published the graph, is that one in eight Americans is now taking semaglutides, drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy.
I’ll state right here that I’ve got flesh in the game – though a good deal less than I did before I encountered the wonderful world of semaglutides. I wrote here in the summer of 2023:
I’ve had an interesting relationship with my weight. In my teens, I was so thin that my mother would cry when I went home to visit. In my twenties, I started to ‘fill out’ a bit, which was strange as I was a coke fiend. In my thirties I got so fat that a magazine printed a photograph of Jabba the Hutt holding court and said that it was me with my fan club. In my forties, a private doctor prescribed me a drug called Reductil; the effects were so rapid and extreme that I started to wear tight black yoga shorts under my skirts, as there was a chance that a waistband which fitted me in the morning would be down around my ankles at sundown and I’d have to coolly step out of the errant garment and chuck it in the bin. Like most good things, it was banned and I packed it all back on. In my fifties my son died and I lost a third of my body weight; the fact that the worst thing that ever happened to me was also the thing which caused the most people to say, ‘You look great – I didn’t recognise you!’ has made me sceptical about weight-related happiness.
I lost three stones in as many months last year taking the oral semaglutide Rybelsus in June, July and August; then I stopped as, with autumn approaching, I wanted to go back to my much-loved habit of socialising in restaurants and bars. I put a third of it back on between then and now, but I was definitely eating much less than I had before, even in the year I was semaglutide-free, before I started injecting Mounjaro – the King Kong of diet drugs – six weeks ago. (I get mine from the highly reputable online weight-loss clinic Slimmr, co-founded by the brilliant Spectator writer and excellent physician Dr Max Pemberton.) I haven’t had any of the side effects others complain of (unfortunate occurrences in the digestive and elimination systems which we shall pass over here in the interests of good taste) but then I’ve always reacted well to chemicals; I only had to have a quarter of an E back in the day to get off my bonce.
Talking of drugs – which I rarely do, having kicked a massive cocaine habit overnight nine years ago – semaglutides have proved highly successful in helping people cut down on using them, and on cigarettes and alcohol, even helping with gambling and over-shopping disorders. Internet talk-boards abound with surprised semaglutide-takers comparing notes on how these meds have sorted them out not just physically but mentally; one, a depressed woman who hadn’t cleaned her house in five years, suddenly being energised by her first injection to embark on a massive spring clean. In a recent AirMail essay, Ashley Baker wrote: ‘I linger at mirrors. I allow myself to be photographed from the waist down. I wear high-cut bikini bottoms. I’ve changed. Actually, Mounjaro has changed me. I don’t want to jinx things by calling it a miracle drug, but that’s what it feels like: the antidepressant I never knew I needed.’ I’m generally a cheerful person who doesn’t suffer from any Mental Elf issues, so I can’t comment, but I have noticed a new clarity of thought – and I was smart to start with. I think of it as a Bad Habit hunter in a handy pen-sized syringe.
Is there any reasonable argument against the use of semaglutides? It’s expensive, but I’m saving a fortune on restaurants and fruit; it wasn’t unusual for me to get through twenty quid’s worth of blueberries in one sitting (don’t judge). It could make huge savings for the NHS, considering the massive amount spent on obesity-related diseases in old age; furthermore, two studies this year concluded that these drugs can reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes regardless of the amount of weight lost.
The usual scolds will bang on about it being ‘unnatural’ and huff out the tired old mantra about eating less and moving more, but I’ve always been quite against nature – especially for women, trapping us as it would at the level of beasts. The fetishisation of natural living is an addled delusion; I think of the amusing cartoon in which one cave-man says to another, ‘We have pure air, lots of exercise and raw food – so how come we die at 35?’ It was only two years ago that the NHS abandoned targets for ‘natural’ births due to the totally avoidable rise in infant mortality it brought about. Then there will be the daft quasi-feminists who insist that wanting to lose weight means that one is a puppet of the patriarchy – completely ignoring the fact that plump women were a benchmark of beauty in the past, when women had no rights. The ‘fat activists’ such as nepo-baby Honey (daughter of Jonathan) Ross will be cross, but then they always are. By the way, that’s not ‘activism’ as we once understood it, as in organising to improve the lot of the disadvantaged, but rather sitting on your ever-spreading BTM all day swearing at naysayers on the internet while a gaggle of similarly chunky girlfriends call you ‘Kween’. If one believes in agency for women, it seems perverse to get het up about the fact that some of us are choosing not to gorge ourselves into an early grave.
As John Burn-Murdoch says in the FT, ‘There has been a tendency to view taking drugs to lose weight as cheating. Not the way it’s meant to be done. But here’s the thing: it works. And I suspect when we look back at charts of obesity rates in generations to come, they will prove it.’ In my own small way, I’m pleased to be part of this totally unforeseen and intriguing experiment, when against all expectations the worldwide obesity epidemic was reversed. I should stress here that the main reason I take semaglutides is that I am overweight and keen to be as healthy as I can be at the age of 65 – but only a fool would ignore the other benefits it confers. I’m aiming to stop in December, have a fun festive season and get bang on it in 2025; I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions, but with my little Mounjaro pen stashed in the fridge, I think it might just be the time to start. Whether it’s losing that weight or writing that novel, I’m entranced and emboldened by this interesting drug.
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