‘I’m 40 stone and trapped in my home… but NHS says I don’t qualify for weight-loss jabs’

>“I hate it. I can’t stop eating even though I know it’s killing me. It’s an addiction. I can’t stop it, so why won’t the NHS fund the GLP1/Mounjaro?

What is she going to do after she stops the injections? It’s not a permanent solution unless you change your diet and lifestyle.

Surely no one can have this little self awareness or accountability?!

You’re “trapped” because of sustained bad eating habits over many years

She probably doesn’t. There’s a checklist to qualify for nhs of it and you need to hit all the points. Being overweight is just one. Besides that if you can’t stop eating it likely won’t do her any good. She has to want to lose the weight too or she’ll just eat through it and cost the nhs money.

[deleted]

Heh. she calls LBC all the time, cool to put a face to a name.

How can she afford to feed herself to get to that size, she obviously cannot work so is the benefit system funding her food bill. Meanwhile everyone else is struggling with food costs and here we have some 40 stone woman eating herself to death.

Everyone saying she just needs to ‘stop eating’ is no different than telling a depressed person to start smiling.

These issues are behaviors learned over a potential lifetime, there is so many complex issues that need solving before she can change her lifestyle.

Ironically the jabs could kick start those lifestyle changes, although unlikely.

I was about 3 stone overweight and tried Mounjaro privately for a few months.

I lost about 2 stone in total and have been maintaining the current weight since January. I’m still overweight but not dreadfully so anymore.

Mounjaro is weird in that it takes away the urge/desire to eat and seems to inhibit the pleasure you get from eating which I guess is like a dopamine hit or similar.

Food stopped being important and I didn’t fancy it (or booze unexpectedly) so just ate (and drank) less.

I would expect it to affect this person in the same way so I’m surprised they didn’t give it go for a few months to see what happens.

Usually if you have a high BMI but have been refused those weight loss jabs, it’s because there’s another comorbidity that would make your health even more deleterious. It’s not due to her being an overweight. For instance weight loss jabs can cause eye strokes in some patients. People with eye problems are often prohibited from taking such medications.

I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked by some of the comments, but I am.

40 stone is a very serious condition. These drugs are proven to be effective.

I think another question to ask ourselves is, would we be saying this about a person with anorexia, for example? An alcoholic?

Getting that fat is as much a mental health problem as anything. She needs rehab or therapy and weight loss drugs just like we would treat drug addicts, alcoholics and any other eating disorder.

How does she afford the food? Ive been losing weight the past 2 months as ive needed to save and i was only 9 stone when i started. Halved my food bill and yes life is miserable. Some part of me thinks im possibly funding this lass to eat more in a week than I will in a month. Our country is fucked isnt it?

This comment section is a hell scape for misinformation.

Regardless of your opinion on the drug and whether or not shes on it for life, these drugs will save the nhs millions and reduce the amount of intervention required for people with life long weight related health issues. The barrier for entry should be made much easier.

The cost of the drug vs several heart, stomach, diabetic, liver related treatment is pennies. If you have any connection to any medical professionals they are telling you this drug is the miracle drug.

And the diet and exercise argument is so insane, if just telling someone that worked then there would be no fat people.

Should they care more? Yes absolutely. Do they? No.

From a purely selfish financial position, we should give them the drugs.

Annual cost of the maximum dose of Wegovy is around £2500 privately, probably cheaper for the NHS. 

Typical cost of a hospital stay, per day, for a single patient in the UK is around £500. That’s before surgery, specialist appointments, accessibility tools, are accounted for. 

Obesity causes diabetes, joint pain, slipped discs, heart problems, liver disease and kidney disease. If you prevent one hospital trip a year, you’ve pretty much paid for the Wegovy already. 

And that’s before you even account for joblessness, the lady in this article is on PIP due to her weight, she’s unable to work due to her size. 

Most commenters here clearly hate fat people, which is a depressingly common position, but logically, giving people Wegovy on the NHS is probably the easiest way to drive down costs.

I wonder how much she cost the NHS in prescription and treatments. If the cost of a weight loss jab reduces the cost of the above wouldn’t it be a net positive?

I’ve been meal prepping and going to the gym fairly consistently for about 10 years. At one point, with the help of a personal trainer, I was trim and muscular. Despite that, I’ve been obese for most of my life.

Over the years I’ve developed a strong understanding of nutrition, exercise, calorie control, and healthy habits. That knowledge is probably the reason I’ve been able to repeatedly “get back on the horse” after setbacks. But what people often fail to understand is that knowledge alone does not make obesity easy to manage. Major emotional setbacks, like losing my job, caused the systems and routines I had built to collapse, and my weight eventually climbed to 145kg, despite the fact that a healthy weight for me is probably somewhere around 110–115kg. I’m now back down to 135kg and continuing to lose weight progressively because I know how to structure my diet and exercise properly. But even with years of experience and knowledge, maintaining healthy eating habits still requires an enormous amount of emotional and mental energy.

That is the part people who have never experienced severe obesity often fail to understand. Weight loss is frequently framed as a series of isolated decisions. People say things like, “choose this instead of that when eating out,” as though healthy eating is simply a matter of making better choices throughout the day. But for many people, especially those with severe obesity, it is not experienced as a few occasional temptations. It is a constant craving that exists all day, every day. When your body is constantly producing hormonal signals that drive hunger and cravings, resisting them mentally is possible, but it is exhausting. People who eat well past fullness, comfort, or satiety are often portrayed as lacking discipline or self-control, but that framing ignores the physiological reality of what is happening. Their bodies are actively pushing them toward food constantly. And if someone with years of experience managing diet and exercise still finds that battle mentally draining, it is easy to understand how overwhelming it must be for someone without that knowledge or support structure.

That is why GLP-1 medications are so important. These drugs help regulate the hormonal signals that drive excessive hunger and constant food cravings. They do not magically teach nutrition or create healthy habits overnight, but they can bring people back to a baseline where learning those habits becomes psychologically manageable. People often act as though medication is somehow “avoiding the real work,” but that misunderstands the role these treatments play. If someone’s house is on fire, you do not begin by lecturing them about fire safety before helping put the fire out.

For someone like the woman in this article, obesity has taken over her life to such an extent that she is crying out for help. She is asking for access to medication that could help her regain some degree of normality and control over her life. We should not be casually prescribing these drugs to people who simply want to lose a small amount of weight for aesthetic reasons. But when someone is so overweight that standing is difficult and they feel trapped inside their own home, access to medical treatment should not be controversial. The article also mentions that she does not want surgery, and nor should she have to. She should not be forced into permanent surgical alterations to her body when effective medical alternatives already exist.

At the same time, she should absolutely receive mental health and psychological support to help address the emotional issues contributing to her reliance on food for comfort. Obesity can be both psychological and physiological at the same time, and treating one aspect does not invalidate the other. In fact, addressing emotional overeating is likely to become significantly easier once her body is no longer constantly screaming at her for food at a biological level.