This piece – obviously – talks about intentional weight loss, the (totally b******t) BMI scale, weight loss medication and weight loss programmes, so if any of that feels like it might be difficult for you to read, please, don’t. I should also give the disclaimer that I am not, nor have I ever been, over 300lbs, or in the categories of superfat or infinifat. I probably haven’t even been large fat. For most of my life, I’ve been small fat, and for a short period, I’ve been medium fat. Only in the latter category was I sized out of mainstream fashion. I have a lot of privilege in terms of my body, my fatness and the barriers and difficulties I’ve faced as a result of them. I am very aware of that, and never want to come across like I’ve experienced every discrimination every fat person will ever experience (that would be a wild assertion to make). So please, bear all of that in mind when reading.
Someone messaged me on Instagram the other day to tell me how great I look [since losing weight]. They told me they, too, were considering going “on the jabs”, and asked a few follow-up questions – which, honestly, I’m always happy to answer, although I caveat everything with the reminder that I’m not a doctor, a nurse, or any kind of medical professional, and though I have a qualification that allows me to call myself a nutritionist in Ireland (lol), that’s not a protected term so, essentially, anyone can call themselves a nutritionist in Ireland. FUN.
“Do you feel way better in yourself? Like, do you notice a massive difference?” they asked.
I chose honesty (I almost always choose honesty; as a rule, I lie only – and always – when my Mum asks me, “is that new?!”). “Not really,” I said. “I don’t feel any different, honestly, at least not physically.”
This was not a satisfactory answer.
“But,” she continued, “is it way easier to run around after the lads now?”
I assured her that I wouldn’t know: “In general, I try not to run around after the lads at all, if I can avoid it.”
I’m sure she thought I was joking, but I wasn’t, because (a) I truly don’t run around after my children, unless it’s first thing in the morning and Atlas is trying to avoid putting on his coat and I am literally running in circles around the couch trying to catch him while he gets increasingly hysterical with laughter and I get increasingly enraged and (b) running around does not feel easier or in any way different since I lost weight.
Another message, this week, from someone who was considering joining the ever-growing ranks of those of us taking a GLP-1 medication for weight loss, read: “I have a really high BMI and feel sluggish”, the implication being that, once they lost weight, not only would their BMI be lower but they would automatically feel, well, not sluggish.
“BMI is a made-up concept,” I told her, not (I hoped) unkindly, “and feeling sluggish is about fitness more than it is about weight”. Ilona Maher, for example, is “overweight” going by her BMI, but is not, it’s a fair assumption to make, someone who feels sluggish all that often.
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The thing is, the idea of losing weight is so often sold to us as a catch-all, a panacea for everything that ails us. Not only will we look better (by the almost universal body standards that tell us thin is beautiful and fat is, well, not) but we’ll feel better (because fatties are unhealthy and therefore feel sluggish and unable to run around after their children); we’ll have more energy; brighter skin, eyes and nails; our fertility will improve; any digestive issues we’ve ever had will disappear; our thighs won’t chafe when we walk long distances in the heat; in fact, we’ll probably stop sweating (like pigs) when we’re hot or exerting ourselves; we’ll sleep better and have more sex and be less jealous of our friends and finally manage to write that novel and clear out the basement and finish that craft project and and and AND. I’m not even joking when I write this out; weight loss is absolutely marketed to fat people as something that will change every single aspect of their lives for the better.
And this – I’m sure you could see where this was headed – is total and utter b******t.
There are things that change when you lose weight, but being overweight has not been established as a causative factor in most of the huge number of aches, pains and ailments that are attributed to it. In other words, sometimes your body feels like s**t for reasons other than your fatness. So getting less fat is not going to solve, or even change, those problems in any way, shape (lol) or form.
That’s not to see that things won’t change as you lose weight. I should know; I’m currently losing weight and, like the vast majority of fat people I know, this is not the first time I’ve done it. I’ve yo-yoed up and down 30 or so pounds several times. I once lost over a stone in a week, for crying out loud!
When it comes to weight loss and the effects of weight loss, I’m practically an expert. So, believe me when I tell you that the changes one experiences as one loses weight are not the ones people tell you to expect and, when you drill down, most of them have nothing to do with your body at all.
Confused? Allow me to explain.
You’ll feel better (about yourself)
Every single article, pamphlet, opinion piece, film, TV show or ad that features weight loss tells the lie that, when you lose weight, your body itself will feel radically different, and by “different”, it’s very clear that they mean “better”.
But they don’t really mean better the way I’m experiencing it; they mean better because you’re healthier, so your body is, of course, functioning at some kind of elite level now that you’ve stopped being such a greedy slob (this is how society views fat people and we all know it).
In truth, losing weight via GLP-1 – so, you know, simply by eating less, not necessarily by eating better, exercising more, or drinking more water (the old-fashioned, and useless, ways) – hasn’t, for me at least, led to any of those physical health improvements.
But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel better; it’s just not a physical improvement. I feel better because I’m no longer embarrassed about my size or weight. I feel better because I’m losing weight – that is to say, I’m being a good fatty (a dieting fatty) and not a bad fatty (one who is determinedly not dieting).
I feel as though I am morally better, now that I’m losing weight, than I was before, when I was not losing weight, even though I know that there’s no moral superiority about weight loss, or thinness, or any potent combination of the two. And honestly? This is really fucked up! It’s gross that I feel like I’m some kind of better version of myself now, when I was a perfectly brilliant version of myself before! It’s disturbing that I was so ashamed of my body and my fatness that simply knowing I’m losing weight has lifted a certain amount of that shame.
I know this is all rooted in the internalised fatphobia that led me to want to lose weight in the first place, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s still really disappointing to experience.
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You’ll fit into clothes you couldn’t fit into before
Sure, this is a bit of a “duh” change, but also feels groundbreaking, honestly. Having lost a not-insignificant-but-not-life-changing amount of weight – I’m not gatekeeping this, but I know hearing numbers can be really triggering to people, so message me if you really want to know and I’ll tell you, but also, who cares? – I can now shop almost anywhere, and it feels freeing but also weirdly maddening.
Sure, I could buy a size L dress in Mango now (MAYBE), but also, why should I? Why should I give my money to a brand that deliberately, consistently and for no good reason whatsoever excludes fat people, when I’ve spent years being one of those fat people?! It’s like that golf club in Dublin that wouldn’t allow women to be full members for years – I always wondered, WHY would any woman ever want to be a member there?!
Why would I want to give my time, my money, my attention to a brand or company or business that purposefully, willfully and blatantly excluded me and people like me because of the size of my body?! Not to mention the fact that, as someone with a decent social media following (ish?! I don’t even know what a “decent social media following” is any more), I feel a certain responsibility not to turn my back on all fat women everywhere by suddenly wearing, posting about and (ergo) promoting brands we can’t all fit into!
(If you follow me on Instagram, you will see that I posted an outfit the other day that included a pair of Zara trousers, but these were bought in a blind PANIC the day before I was speaking on a panel for IMAGE magazine’s live Motherload podcast event; more often, you’ll find me in clothes from Old Navy (up to 4X online, terrible selection in stores), Marks & Spencer (up to a UK 24, with a pretty decent selection instore last time I was there), Dunnes (hit and miss; sometimes goes up into the UK 20s, but other things only go up to XL) and Target (a large size range but shitty ethics, a reminder that there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism).
One of the most frustrating thing about being plus-sized is feeling incredibly limited when it comes to where you can shop, so I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel good to know that I have more choice now – even if I’m not sure I’ll be exercising that choice because (see above) I’m not sure I’ll ever get over the fact that brands choose not to include fat people in their offerings for no good reason.
You’ll stop feeling guilty about your food choices
This one comes with a disclaimer, and it is this: as long as you’re still losing weight. Which makes it a really weird thing to observe in yourself.
The truth is, my eating habits haven’t massively changed since I’ve gone on Mounjaro. I’m slightly more conscious about my protein intake, and I try to get more vegetables than I once did (mostly due to the fibre fearmongering), but by and large I’m eating the same things as I did before, just in smaller quantities.
I’ll still eat the things I want to eat, when I want to eat them: chocolate after dinner and ice-cream in front of the TV and tostitos with guacamole on a Sunday afternoon when dinner feels 10 million years away because I’ve been up with my children since 5am.
And where these foods – “treat” foods, foods we’ve been taught to consider “bad”, and do consider bad, even though we know, intellectually, that there are no good or bad foods – once made me feel guilty when I “indulged” in them (even that word, “indulged!” ugh!), now I just… accept that this is what my body wants to eat.
Because, if nothing else, four months on a GLP-1 has taught me that, no matter what I eat or when, I will continue to lose weight. That’s something I have never, ever felt before. I’ve always believed that my weight gain is because I was eating the wrong things, at the wrong times (snacking between meals, after 7pm, outside of my “intermittent fasting” hours and so on).
Being on a GLP-1 is, I’d imagine, a bit like being a child; I eat when I’m hungry, and I choose what I want to eat based on what I feel like eating. I’m learning to trust my body to know when and what to eat and it feels weird to have this trust, this confidence, that my hunger isn’t working “against” me somehow, that my own greed and lack of willpower aren’t tripping me up.
You’ll feel kind of bad for your past self
One of the things that happens when you lose noticeable amounts of weight – and, like I said, this isn’t my first rodeo – is that people will start to comment on it.
I will say that, the last time I lost weight, some 10 years ago, give or take, a lot more people commented on it than do now. There’s definitely been a shift in people’s attitudes towards what they can and can’t say about other people’s bodies, and while I would say that’s, overall, a positive change, I think we could be tricked into thinking that there’s been a correlative change in how we think about fat bodies, when, in fact, I think attitudes towards fatness have got worse, especially since Ozempic and Mounjaro came on the scene.
Still, there are, occasionally, people who will comment on how I look in a way that I know they’re talking about my weight. You know, “you’re looking great lately” or “God, I haven’t seen you in ages, you look fantastic!” As nothing else about me has changed – I’m wearing the same things, I haven’t got a drastic haircut (in fact, I haven’t cut my hair in over a year and I’m currently growing out my greys, so I feel like no one’s talking about my hair) and I haven’t suddenly got my teeth whitened – it’s pretty clear what they’re referring to.
And while it’s nice to get compliments, there’s always a moment where you realise that there’s an implied comparison in there. “You’re looking great” compared to what you looked like before – and not only did I think I looked nice before (I mean, sometimes!) I’ve been up and down this elevator enough times to know that I may well be back to looking that way very soon.
This is part of the reason why I don’t ever post before and after pictures any more. The larger part is that they can be damaging and triggering to people with body image issues and eating disorders, and sharing them is unnecessary and careless at best and harmful at worst, but there’s a small part of me that doesn’t want to look at a side by side of myself where one version is “bad” and the other is “good”, because both the before and the after are versions of me that I try to love and respect.
The thing is, none of these changes are actually about my body, or my weight, or even about my health, which is to say, the big carrot society at large likes to dangle in front of fat people.
The ways in which I feel different, or better, are, largely, to do with fatphobia and anti-fat bias more than they are about fatness itself. I feel better because I’m being treated better; I feel better because I don’t feel ashamed of my size, or my gluttony (or both); I feel better because I don’t feel guilty about the amount of food I’m eating, or what food I’m eating, or when. I feel better because I’m not excluded from mainstream fashion due to my size.
None of this, to repeat, is about fatness. It’s about all of the structural ways in which fat people are discriminated against, and how good it feels to not be treated like s**t any more.
The thing is, if I’d thought there was a chance any of that would change in my lifetime, maybe I wouldn’t now be taking an expensive medication to help curb my appetite and trick my body into thinking I’m full after a half portion of pasta. But I knew that, even if change was going to come – and there was a glimmer of possibility that it would, pre-Ozempic, a glimmer that has now turned into a single speck of dust on a distant horizon – it wasn’t going to come quickly enough to repair my relationship with my body, its value (or lack thereof) and my attitudes towards food.
So, here we are.
I don’t regret starting a GLP-1, and I’m happy it’s working for me, and I’m losing weight. But I wish I’d never felt like I had to.
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For a totally different piece about Ozempic and fatness and the ubiquity of weight loss medications, this piece disturbed me in the best way.
P.S. I wrote a piece about my experience with GLP-1s and all of my (many) complex feelings around my resulting weight loss for The Irish Times. You can read it here.
