Terry Prone: With just a little bit of willpower, society could stop shaming obese people

The response to good news about an appetite-suppressing drug is muted only because people have been too ashamed to admit they have rather common conditions such as food obsession

The commentary about Rebel Wilson before and after she lost weight offers a lesson in fat shaming — obese people have no willpower and are not entitled to get help from the likes of Wegovy. Picture: Ian West/PA

You know how men are rumoured to think about sex every six minutes? Maybe it’s only every 10 minutes, but they think frequently of sex, anyway. It’s a wonder they get through a productive day at all, coping with so many bad thoughts.

I think of food that often. Which is why the news of an appetite-killer named Wegovy is so welcome. The fourth of June last year was when the FDA authorised the use of this thing — technically called semaglutide — to combat obesity. Now it’s available in Ireland. 

The research behind the drug indicates that, when injected once a week, it can lead to substantial weight loss.

An elaboration of a diabetes medicine, its cost is likely to be enormous and it’s not clear how soon or even if that cost will be reimbursed by the State for those suffering from obesity.

What is clear is that it works, but that the prescription may need to last a lifetime. Patients who have taken it and then (because they were in a clinical trial) stopped taking it, regained weight almost to a man or a woman. They didn’t want to. They desperately didn’t want to. But the exercise and diet plans that worked when paired with Wegovy stopped working when divorced from it.

The fascinating thing about the arrival of Wegovy is how quiet are those who want and need it, and how noisy are those who feel the first lot shouldn’t be allowed to get it. Which goes to prove that all the guff about us being more compassionate and body positive is precisely that: guff.

Look at coverage of Adele or Rebel Wilson since they lost weight if you want to get a free sample of how the slender are valued by society and the heavy are not only devalued, but seen as having essentially failed a moral test. 

They just ate all the pies, have no willpower, and deserve to be fat. Therefore, they’re not entitled to be prescribed Wegovy, but should be forced to do the hard yards, face up to a bit of deprivation, and suffer in order to lose weight; punish themselves for self-indulgence.

The most prominent promulgator of this school of thought is diet guru Dr Eva Orsmond.

'You don’t need drugs if you have a healthy diet plan,' according to Dr Eva Orsmond.

“You don’t need drugs if you have a healthy diet plan,” she stated in her response to the arrival of the new drug. She stressed portion control and reading labels before adding:

This idea of instant gratification, an ‘easy way’ out by taking something to solve the problem…it’s not that simple. 

Interesting case, is Dr Eva, of an individual choosing to personify an international attitude. Those struggling with their weight — a majority of Western humans, remember — are, in this interpretation, hooked on instant gratification. Instead of dieting, they want an easy way out.

In a nutshell, that’s why most people who get a Wegovy prescription will treat it with absolute secrecy, although fair dues to Matt Cooper, who announced in print last week that he was on it. 

So Matt Cooper is into instant gratification, taking the easy way out, and incapable of complexity? 

Strange. 

Last time I checked, Cooper, aside from being a workaholic and father of a large bunch of mini-Coopers, was also given to athletic pursuits like that extra-tough marathon thing where you cycle a hundred kilometres, fall into the sea, and swim a bay or two before climbing Carrauntoohil barefoot and wringing wet. Not short of discipline, our Matt.

Me neither, Dr Eva. 

In fact, I may be the hardest-working human you know. Punctual and diligent, I am. No drink. No drugs. No cigarettes. Ever. Nor am I ignorant about nutrients: the last year at secondary school, I made it into the year book as the infallible source of info on calories, vitamins, and proteins. I know all those things. Don’t talk to me about exercise, either. I’ve invested in enough equipment to fill a gym. Plus I have walked (oh, the boredom), run, done Canadian Air Force and seven-minute upright workouts. 

And you know what, Dr Eva? Despite all that, for 55 years, I have still thought of food roughly every 10 minutes. Not counting the week in intensive care after a car crash, when I didn’t think much about anything.

I did have freedom from obsessive food thoughts once for a magic six months when an American doctor prescribed me fenfluramine/phentermine, called fen-phen, which, in the late 1990s was phenomenally successful in helping weight loss. 

The weight loss was fine, but the really great thing about fen-phen was that it made your thought processes normal. You might glance at your watch and think “Oh, it’s lunch time, I must eat something,” having worked through the morning with nary a food thought. It was like being let out of mental jail. It was akin to being handed several free extra hours a day.

'The fascinating thing about the arrival of Wegovy is how quiet are those who want and need it, and how noisy are those who feel the first lot shouldn’t be allowed to get it.' File picture

But then patients started to get breathing and heart problems associated with fen-phen. It was yanked off the market and I went back to being sub-machine-gunned with recurring thoughts of apple tarts and Kit-Kats.

In the last year, realising that if I was losing height due to age, I couldn’t stay the same weight as when I was taller, I lost a stone. Which, ironically, makes my chances of getting a prescription for Wegovy even smaller. You probably have to weigh five stone more than ideal in order to get it, because if you’re at the right weight, aren’t you in control and grand?

Nope.

You’re fitting into small sizes but still bombarded with relentless imaginings of biscuits, chips, and crisps. You are in control of your behaviour but not of your thought processes. That’s the important thing. It’s possible to want Wegovy not to lose weight, but to lose the food earworm. To stop being harassed, all day, every day, by ungovernable food thoughts.

Dr Eva created her brand by browbeating people with self-control rules, despite the fact that after a century of calorie-counting and being told to “move more, eat less”, more people than ever are obese, and more people, having lost weight, fail to keep it off despite having diet plans. 

That’s because traditional diet plans do nothing to disable food thoughts and are useless at dealing with a daytime dreamscape where the sound effects are of crunched empty calories, glossy with sugar, crusted with salt, brown-crisped with fat, smelling of chocolate and salted caramel. The autobiographies of those harassed in this way could be entitled. “Girl, Interrupted. By Food Thoughts”.

I’ve no mandate to speak for them. Just for one person who has lived through half a century of recessions and pandemics, created successful businesses, published bestsellers, managed a chronic condition (asthma), survived car crashes and withstood heartbreak.

And Dr Eva has the nerve to characterise me, and anyone else wanting Wegovy as looking for an easy option? She has to be kidding. But she’s not a kidder, is she?