I’m feeling quite smug at the moment. Every year I vow to get in shape in the summer, which means losing weight, drinking less and going to the gym. The summer bit is because there’s a risk I’ll be seen in a swimming costume – I want a ‘beach-ready body’ – and there’s also the exposure that comes from wearing fewer clothes when the sun’s out and the weather’s warm.
Anyway, this summer I managed it. I’ve lost about a stone, am down to about half a bottle of wine a day, and have started working out again after an eight-year hiatus. I might hesitate to strut about at the local lido in budgie smugglers, but the dad bod has gone.
The last time I lost this much weight was when I was targeted by an outrage mob in 2018 and had to stand down from five different positions. One of the benefits of being cancelled, I discovered, is that you start shedding the pounds. It was partly the sheer anxiety of watching the career I had built up over 30 years burning to the ground, but also something to do with the primordial fear of being hunted and the need to slim down so you can run away faster. I remember thinking there might be a book in this – The Public Humiliation Diet. But it wouldn’t be very practical for a yo-yo dieter like me. I’d have to manufacture a new mobbing every six months to keep the weight off.
This summer I cheated by going on Mounjaro, the slimming drug. That has definitely helped curb my appetite for food and booze, although after taking it for a while the effect begins to wear off, which is why most people steadily increase the dose. I was due to go up to 5mg last Saturday, having been on 2.5mg for three months, but didn’t because I got a bug that exacerbated one of the side effects, which is a feeling of nausea. Usually, that passes 24 hours after your weekly injection, but because I was under the weather it stayed with me for a week. Frankly, I’d prefer to be fat than feel permanently sick.
I cannot go on like this or I’ll turn back into an overweight alcoholic, but maybe yo-yo jabbing is the way forward
Which makes me wonder: can I keep the weight off without the drug? If the experience of other Mounjaro users is anything to go by, the answer is no. Once you stop taking the jabs, the weight piles back on – hence the vast profits being made by the manufacturers. No one wants to go back to the way they were, me included. I’ve been delighting in getting back into suits I’d long consigned to the back of my wardrobe, as well as showing off my flat stomach by stuffing shirts into my waistband. Then there’s the pleasure of looking down your nose at chubby middle-aged men, particularly your friends. That’s somewhat tempered by knowing your weight loss has been pharmaceutically assisted – like winning a race when you’ve been taking steroids – but not entirely.
I’d like to say I’m determined to keep it off without any artificial help, particularly as the price of Mounjaro is about to rocket. All it takes is a bit of willpower, right? And people lost weight before this miracle drug was invented. But no. I already have four doses of the 5mg jabs – I got in before the price hike – and my plan is to start injecting myself again when the bug is out of my system. I hope the nausea will pass and I’ll be back on the programme. I’m particularly keen to keep the boozing down, given the inevitable round of social activity in the run-up to Christmas.
Meanwhile, I’m enjoying my brief respite. The way the drug works, at least in my case, is to limit the dopamine hit you get from eating and drinking. It doesn’t eliminate it, but reduces it so you need less willpower to call a halt after consuming a moderate amount. Basically, it provides you with a little assistant, like someone spotting you in the gym. But now I’ve stopped taking it, I’m getting a heroin–like hit from a mouthful of nuts, and as for a glass of good, mature claret – it’s like kissing God, to paraphrase Lenny Bruce. I cannot go on like this or I’ll turn back into an overweight alcoholic, but maybe this is the way forward: three months of hair-shirt injections, followed by a week of indulgence. Yo-yo jabbing.
For all its drawbacks, losing weight this way definitely beats being cancelled. One way to cope with the endless humiliations of getting old is to become a bit more dignified – or to stand on one’s dignity more – and I don’t think I could cope with another public humiliation. I fear I’m hooked on the fat jabs and just hope the manufacturers don’t keep putting the price up.
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