Weight Loss Injections // 5 Things To Consider Before You Jump For The Jab

Have you noticed it recently..? I know I have.

All these people who struggled with stubborn weight issues are suddenly looking, well, a bit gaunt.

It took a while for me to work out what was going on. Even after 15 years in the fitness industry, I’m still a little naive about these shortcuts which come to the fore every couple of years. I genuinely thought lots of people I saw in the gyms who had been trying to lose some weight for a while, had suddenly all managed it within months of each other. It was a miraculous coincidence.

I was wrong.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past six months; I’m talking about weight-loss injections. Ozempic and Wegovy, amongst other emerging medicines, are now readily available in pharmacies, meaning that people no longer have to hope their GP refers them for treatment on the NHS (in the UK), and neither do they have to pay for expensive private consultations. A simple online consultation where you fill in a form and tick a box to say that all the information you’ve inputted is accurate, is all you need to be prescribed the injections, which you can administer yourself at home.

Sounds so simple doesn’t it. And I’m almost certain the availability of these drugs is why the weight is dropping off some women I know, at an alarming rate. Let me clarify that these women would not meet the minimum requirements to be prescribed this medicine were they seen in an NHS weight management clinic, by a dietician or a specialist in obesity.

To meet this criteria you must have a BMI of over 27, and be living with an obesity-related health condition.

Instead, these are women who were maybe a couple of dress sizes bigger than they’d ideally have liked to be. Who have yoyo’d with their weight by a couple of stones and really want to shift it for good. In short, they are women who want to be thinner rather than women who need urgently to lose weight for health reasons.

If I had a fiver for every woman in the gym who’s said to me “I can’t get rid of this tummy, do you think I should go on the injections?”... well, I wouldn’t need to work in the gym, put it that way!

I’m not anti weight-loss injections by the way. Not at all, I firmly believe they have their place when used appropriately and most pertinently, by the right people. Let’s have a look at what exactly they are, and who they’re designed for.

Weight loss injections work by regulating/suppressing appetite, controlling metabolism and influencing the absorption of nutrients in the diet. They work on the areas of your brain which control feelings of fullness and reduces preference for high fat food. Some also reduce blood sugars and these are often prescribed for patients with type 2 diabetes.

They’re designed for people living with obesity, who are suffering health conditions which impact on their daily lives, who are perhaps unable to work because of these conditions and who have tried all other means of losing weight in the conventional way. In short, and this is where I have a huge problem with the prevalence of them; they’re designed for people whose weight is making them ill, not for people who want to wear a size smaller jeans.

I understand that it’s tempting. I understand that it seems like the easier option than 6am gym calls and sticking to diet plans. I understand that lots of us feel too busy to fit in the amount of exercise we need to lose the desired amount of weight.

But as an old fashioned gal, and someone who has helped hundreds of women lose weight and keep it off, consider these few things for me:

1 - The side effects of these drugs can be pretty grim. Nausea, diahorrea, vomiting, constipation, fatigue, dizziness, bloating. Sure; these are the side effects of lots of drugs. But I tell you what they’re not a side effect of..? Regular exercise and healthy eating. Jus’ sayin’.

More serious side effects of the jabs are pancreatitis, gall bladder issues, heart problems and anaphylactic reactions.

2 - I firmly believe from my years as a PT, and by the way the research backs this up; that long term weight management comes from embedding healthy habits to a degree that they become second nature. Any quick fix such as a diet pill or a weight loss injection will not help you form healthy habits. Yes; you will be advised by your prescriber that you should eat a healthy diet and exercise alongside taking these injections; but the truth of the matter is you’ll lose weight either way. So the motivation to form habits which will improve your health and, you know, keep you actually alive longer, just won’t be as strong.

3 - These drugs are designed for and licensed for individuals living with obesity. The clinical trials have not been performed on individuals with a much lower BMI who could lose this much smaller amount of weight by employing traditional methods. We are at this stage unaware of long-term effects on people buying the drug through online doctors/pharmacies when they would not meet the clinical requirements for the prescription.

4 - The cost of staying on these drugs long-term (and you will need to stay on long-term if you haven’t formed the healthy habits which would keep you at your new weight) is a huge financial commitment. The right candidates will hopefully have supportive clinicians who will help them to access weight loss injections through the NHS or other health providers. But the wrong candidates; that is, the ones whose clinician would say,”No way, you don’t need an injection your BMI isn’t anywhere near high enough”, they then have to make a choice whether to commit to paying for it themselves.

At the cost of circa £3000 per year, and with the associated risks, please ask yourself if there’s a cheaper way to achieve what you want, through movement rather than medicine.

5 - We have become so much more educated on the topics of obesity and weight management over the past decade. We know that the old adage of ‘Eat less, move more’ simply doesn’t work for a lot of people. We know that sorting out someone’s disordered eating can’t be done by printing out a diet plan, but it can be done by retraining their brain. That’s why the NHS provides specific psychologists for health, for obesity and for bariatric surgery patients. It’s why patients are offered cognitive behavioural therapy, individual counselling and guided group therapy, at a huge cost to the health service.

Whilst an injection can reduce weight drastically, it cannot cure the root causes of obesity, and that is the thought processes and behaviours we each as individuals have around food consumption.

Whether you are living with obesity or not, weight loss injections should be part of a weight management plan, overseen by clinicians and prescribed with those doctors having the full picture about your health. It goes without saying that just as with any drug, it is a bad idea to buy them from anywhere unregulated or to take somebody else's prescription.

// Sarah Lawton

For tips on losing weight without the jabs, visit NHS England » The NHS Digital Weight Management Programme