In May this year, I was waiting at the local train station barrier for my best friend, who was visiting from America, when she walked straight past me. The reason why? I look profoundly different.
I had lost three stone, six inches from my waist and hips and dropped at least three dress sizes since we last saw each other.
Not only do I weigh less than I did 18 years ago when we first met in New York, but I have ditched the voluminous maxi dresses I previously wore to hide my figure in favour of wide legged jeans and clinging T shirts. Honestly? I’m now in my 40s and I look great.
You guessed it, I am yet another woman who has discovered the miraculous (and I do not use that word lightly) effects of GLP-1s, more commonly known as ‘fat jabs’.
Last November, I tried on jeans in M&S and couldn’t zip up a pair of size 16s. I didn’t own scales but I knew I couldn’t continue pretending that my huge midriff wasn’t (literally) an enormous issue.
How had I got to this point? A radical hysterectomy in the summer of 2023 had plunged me straight into medical menopause and, while my stomach looked substantially flatter in the immediate aftermath of the operation thanks to the removal of 2.2kgs of fibroids, the menopausal weight gain then kicked in.
While some influencers would have us believe that HRT is a magic drug that makes the weight slip off, I think it’s fair to say that this is not the menopausal experience for the majority of women.
It didn’t help that I love cooking (eating delicious food was my hobby) and I never felt full. As I live alone, I would cook supper for myself, and go back for seconds and thirds.
On November 27 last year, at 13st 3lb, and with a BMI of 31 (officially obese), Sasha Wilkins injected herself with Mounjaro for the first time
Sasha had lost just 5lb – and three of those were in the first eight days. But she was disappointed as she saw ‘I shifted a stone in four weeks’ claims plastered all over social media
I would tell myself it was okay because I was cooking healthy food from scratch, but nothing is healthy in those quantities: a whole packet of brown rice, huge dollops of Greek yogurt with my chickpea curries, three or four pieces of heavily buttered sourdough toast with my organic homemade soup, an entire slab of fried tofu in my vegetable stir fries, and so on.
So, on November 27 last year, at 13st 3lb, and with a BMI of 31 (officially obese), I injected myself with Mounjaro for the first time.
I was so nervous that I would mess it up and so it took me half an hour to administer the jab as I carefully read each line of the instructions over and over again.
I didn’t experience the early, dramatic results that some people do. Looking back at my daily weight loss diary, I see that the first month was the worst.
I lost just 5lb – and three of those were in the first eight days. Not for me, the triumphant ‘I shifted a stone in four weeks’ claims you see plastered all over social media.
I had hideous gastric issues, including acutely painful reflux, and soon discovered that eating anything rich and creamy meant a lot of time in the loo the next day. The worst and most unexpected side effect – apart from the bizarrely deep sulphurous burps caused by the drug making food stay longer in your stomach – was a ravenous hunger! The very opposite of what I had been led to expect by friends on the drug – who told me that they couldn’t eat for three days, and only then would pop a cube of cheese, Devil Wears Prada-style, to stop themselves keeling over.
What was different was the satiety. I might have been hungry but I was eating far less because I became full after quarter portions of food. Yet still the weight loss was sluggish.
After six weeks where I had lost just four more pounds I was considering throwing in the towel.
I couldn’t really justify the drugs – between £150 & £200 a month at the time depending on the dose – if I was going to see such slow progress. I had changed my diet and portions so radically that I was wondering if I might have lost the weight anyway.
It was my sister who persuaded me to keep going. She pointed out that she knew how miserable inexorable weight gain had made me. And then suddenly, as I moved up to a higher dose, the gastric side effects lessened and the weight started to slip off – never less than two pounds a week. In February I was able to zip up a pair of size 12 jeans I’d bought in 2015 that only a month before wouldn’t get over my bottom. By March, I was struggling to find clothes to wear that weren’t too big in my wardrobe and that felt life-changing.
Yesterday, I tried on a dress which I had last wore in 2006 for an interview at American Vogue. It fits me perfectly. My body shape has changed beyond recognition: I’ve always been an apple shape with large amounts of dangerous visceral fat and that has disappeared. I have a flat abdomen and an actual waistline for the first time in my adult life. I still have a little pot belly but post-hysterectomy, that’s something I have to live with.
Mounjaro has changed my relationship with food for the better. I haven’t changed the essentials of my diet but I no longer eat when I’m not hungry, or use food as an emotional prop.
By March, Sasha was struggling to find clothes to wear that weren’t too big in her wardrobe and said it felt life-changing
I have no desire whatsoever to eat processed foods or sugar. I’ve also stopped feeling so debilitatingly hungry and woozy that I have to stop whatever I’m doing to find food. Now when I do get hungry, I acknowledge it and then I carry on doing whatever I was doing if I’m not in a place where I can eat.
However, there’s one thing that’s made me really angry while I’ve been taking Mounjaro: hearing slender women in the public eye, such as model Julia Fox and actress Sophie Turner, criticising weight-loss drugs.
Thin privilege is enraging. If their struggle with weight is the difference between being a size 12 and a size 10 or having a little bit of a potbelly in a wedding dress, then they really have no idea what it’s like to struggle with obesity. These drugs have changed the lives of multiple women I know.
Banging on about how we don’t know the long-term effects of these drugs or bemoaning the potential loss of muscle is beside the point.
The use of weight-loss drugs or ‘fat jabs’ has been met with plenty of scrutiny, this is something that Sasha has found comes mainly from more ‘slender women’ and models
Obesity is the second biggest cause of cancer in the UK after smoking. Frankly, I’d rather reduce the inflammation in my body and reduce my cancer risk now than worry about long-term effects 20 years down the line.
Equally, last year my obesity made exercise a struggle: I couldn’t even do a child’s pose effectively in yoga because my stomach got in the way. Believe me, I’ve got a lot more muscle now than I did then.
I cannot overestimate the psychological importance of knowing you’re going to lose the weight when you take the drugs (so long as you commit to the process). Before I started taking Mounjaro I found it so hard to get started on a healthy regimen, seeing weeks ahead of just painful self-restriction, the weighing of lettuce, hours and hours of exercise, and with no guarantee in middle age that any of this would even work.
To anyone debating whether to use Mounjaro, the most important thing to know is that the drugs don’t magically melt the fat off your body. You do have to put the work in, by eating consciously and sensibly, and you do need to exercise, even if that’s walking the dog or, in my case, hefting boxes of antiques daily.
I stopped taking the full dose I was taking back at the end of May – having been on the medication for exactly 6 months. I now take a half dose every couple of weeks and expect to be off the drug completely by Christmas. Much to my astonishment, I stayed completely steady at my goal weight over the summer and even three weeks in France where my diet consisted mainly of baguettes and cheese, it made no difference to my size. I think it’s clear that both my hunger levels and the portion sizes that sate me have decreased so much that even indulging in delicious food makes no difference to the scales.
However, while I am delighted by the reappearance of my cheekbones, like Nora Ephron I too feel bad about my neck, which definitely had a hint of the wattle about it after six months on jabs. But I think I can live with it. After all, as any self-respecting middle-aged French woman will tell you, isn’t that what silk scarves are for?