On Tuesday, the Health Secretary announced a proposal to prescribe weight-loss drugs to fat people in a drive to reduce sick days and what he called the “significant burden on our health service” as part of a trial that will invest £279m in the Government. Jenny Leigh talks to i about why she thinks the normalisation of weight-loss drugs is more dangerous than we realise I’d been trying to change my body for 20-something years before I found fat liberation in 2020. I have a history of disordered eating which leaving diet culture behind has resolved for me, but back then, I had got to a point where I was throwing everything at it.
I was a Slimming World member from the age of 17 to 33. I took Saxenda (liraglutide, a GLP-1 weight management drug similar to Ozempic ) at the end of my dieting journey. I was starving myself.
I was using laxatives – and I was very unwell towards the end. Not that anybody would know. If I sat in front of a doctor’s office and told them that, I wouldn’t expect them to do anything other than give me GLP-1 drugs.
Saxenda made me vomit. I was grumpy and mean and just didn’t feel like myself. It started to affect my relationships.
My marriage had ended in 2019 and I was at a point where I just thought, I can’t battle this battle any longer. Eventually, someone – a thin guy, actually – said: “Well, why don’t you just..
.not?” And I was blown away. I started to look at alternatives to dieting and came across the principles around .