Ah – the jab, it giveth and it taketh away. Or, given that I am talking about the weight loss injections that are taking the world of excess adipose tissue by storm, the jab – it taketh away in a good way and it taketh away occasionally in ways that make you say “Wait, hang on, is that part of the deal too? Nobody said!”
The latter phenomenon has struck reality star Gemma Collins this week, who has been on NHS-prescribed Mounjaro since January and has been unsettled by the particularly drastic weight loss from her face and the ageing effect it has.
This common side effect is generally known as “Ozempic face”, because that brand – despite only being licensed for diabetes treatment – is effectively the Hoover of the modern age in becoming the go-to referent for all the different products doing the same thing.
It exists because although these are, many would say, miracle drugs – suppressing appetites, balancing glucose and insulin levels and all sorts of other clever things – they cannot escape what is known as Fat Sod’s Law. Which is that wherever you least want or need to lose weight from is the first place to do so.
Ergo we now have the modern twist on Catherine Deneuve’s famous quote: “At a certain age you have to choose between your face and your ass.” Which is to say, once youth and certain hormones have fled, or at least begun packing their bags and searching for their passports, you cannot retain enough fat on your body to plump out your wrinkles naturally if you also want to have a bum that doesn’t require its own postcode. C’est la vie.
I’ve been on Mounjaro since January too (as discussed in a previous column, it was a sort of Christmas present to my perimenopausal, polycystic ovary syndrome-ridden, ever-expanding self). I’ve lost about 20 pounds, which is a noticeable difference on a 5’2” frame. Do I look older? Yes. Would I go back, am I going back? No.
Why? Well, fun fact – it turns out that of the two sins I have been told all my life that women must never commit, I have internalised the one that says we must not be fat more effectively than the one that says we must never get old.
Or is it just look old? I’m never quite sure about that one, and the problem with collective social pressures is that there is never an individual arbiter to consult when you need one. It must be that we just shouldn’t look old though, mustn’t it? I think we’re allowed to live, just hide if we get too saggy and whiskery. But I digress slightly.
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My sister bought me weight-loss jabs for Christmas - I'm so grateful
Read MoreMy brain – I don’t mean the rational, conscious, intelligibly-reasoning one, obviously, I mean the part that’s formed while we are babies, children, teenagers, long before we get a say in the matter – says that it is better to be thin than look young. So the pleasure I get from looking in the mirror and seeing a silhouette that is now roughly proportionate and sensible, instead of looking like it is on the verge of becoming wider than it is tall, outweighs the shock I get when I take a step or two closer and see an ageing visage looking back at me. (Even though I don’t even see my mother there – a very attractive woman at all her ages – but my dad. A lovely man but, you know.)
This is the kind of insight that losing weight keeps giving me – unwanted, but valuable. As is so often the way, tackling a problem – or a perceived problem, whichever way you want to put it – gives you both the focus and the headspace to unpack what is going on around it. I, for example, realise that I hate being fat because I work hard to stay in control of every aspect of my life and to me, being overweight sends a message to everyone I pass that I am very much not. She can’t even stop pushing doughnuts down her throat!
Of course I should be above this. Of course I should not want to stop everyone who lays eyes on me and say: “I don’t eat doughnuts! I have polycystic ovary syndrome and every hormone in my body is joining forces against me burning even minimal calories!” But I am human and I do, and it is/was exhausting. Also, I didn’t know I was doing it until I wasn’t. So I need some time to try and unlearn it.
Ageing – well, that’s different, isn’t it? That’s fair. That’s – if you look at it in the right light, metaphorically and actually – is a privilege. I can cope with that and reject the idiots who think that women past the first flush of youth and into their first hot flush instead should be not seen and, ideally, unheard.
This, I think, is the real gift of this new generation of drugs. They give you not just smaller thighs (eventually – see the “last to leave” point above) but a better perspective on all that has led you to pick up that penful of chemicals and find the least painful spot on your soft belly to inject them into, again and again. And eventually, maybe, to ask yourself who you are really doing it for and why. I think in time we might see great changes of a very unexpected kind.
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