Christmas is famously the season to eat, drink, and be merry. This year, that’s weighing heavily on my mind – not least because I’m taking the weight-loss medication Wegovy, and so am eating much less and am strictly off the booze as a result. Is it possible to be merry at Christmas time when treats are off the menu?
This is actually my second Christmas on weight-loss jabs, which I’ve been taking for around 15 months – and which have helped me drop my weight from about 17 stone, which put me into the obese category for my height, down to 13, a healthy weight. My waist size has dropped from 38 inches to 32, and my chest from 44 inches to 38.
I started on Wegovy late last year, after visiting the doctor with dangerously high blood pressure, causing my NHS GP to suggest I should lose weight and cut down on my drinking. I decided to kill two birds with one stone – I quit booze entirely, and used the money I saved to privately fund Wegovy. It’s worked well for me so far: even before I lost much weight, I found my blood pressure and general health improved rapidly. Last Christmas, I was on the maximum dose – now I’m not trying to lose any more weight, but I’ve opted to stay on a low ‘maintenance dose’ of the jabs to keep the weight off.
One obvious upside of having lost so much weight in a year is that it’s easy to suggest Christmas gifts to anyone who asks. Nothing that fit me a year ago fits me now, and so my wardrobe is painfully bare. Anyone who chooses to buy me a jumper, shirts, or any other clothing – or socks, which most men over 30 genuinely appreciate as a gift – will do nicely.
But I do find myself worrying about the Christmas party season and then the big day itself. Most of the year, it’s fairly easy to get by when you’re on the jabs. I opted for radical transparency about being on Wegovy, freely admitting it to anyone who commented that I’d lost weight. I’d rather that than they worry I’m ill, or think I’ve developed iron willpower. A year ago, this would generally be followed by dozens of follow-up questions. Now, it seems like half the people I know are on it.
Figures on how many people are on Wegovy or similar jabs are hard to come by, because most people get it privately rather than through the NHS. A YouGov poll earlier this year suggested as many as 4 per cent of British adults are on the jabs, meaning up to 2.2 million of us could be doing Christmas very differently this year. Meanwhile, a survey by the weight-loss programme CheqUp found one in ten people on GLP-1 injections plan to stop taking them for the festive period, while a third will reduce their dose. The reason cited was to be able to have a break and “go all out”.
The main way the jabs work is by reducing your appetite, and so when you’re cooking for yourself, you make smaller portions and snack less. If you’re out at a restaurant, you skip the starter and dessert. Your habits adjust neatly to suit your new appetites.
Christmas, though, is a time of set menus – there’s the usual work Christmas party and accompanying meal, and if you work as a journalist, there’s also a long set of work-related drinks you can’t really skip. It’s the very definition of a first-world problem, but my diary for the next few weeks is full of dinners and events I need to go to that I know I won’t be able to eat. That’s a very guilty prospect for someone who was brought up knowing better than to waste food, but I still need to go to most of them. I’m mostly hoping for canapé and drinks events, where food and alcohol are easier to swerve. And where a fixed menu is unavoidable, I’ve learned to just accept wasting some food. It’s better than eating it and making myself ill.
Then there’s the big day itself. Is it really Christmas if you’re not so full that you can’t move? Starting the day with chocolate from the Christmas stockings, grazing on finger food through the day, then a huge feast and too many desserts – a modern Christmas Day is all about food, often accompanied by booze. I’ve happily started many Christmas Days with croissants and prosecco, grazed on gifted chocolate throughout the day, and still found room for an obscene amount of turkey dinner. Today, I rarely have all that much more than 1,500 calories a day, meaning downsizing is well in order.
More than that, much of what you’re being fed is the result of hours of work from someone who’s spent the day cooking as a gesture of love to you and the rest of your family. To reject that is almost to reject their affection – or, much worse, to suggest their cooking is bad.
Last year, my first on the jabs, felt like a minefield, but I had one great advantage: I was dealing only with my own family, who have had decades dealing with my neuroses, and who – frankly – I wasn’t that worried about offending, at this point. This year is a much more daunting prospect: I’m spending it with my partner’s family, who seem to be lovely people – and I want them to like me.
Wondering if I’m wondering irrationally, I decide to consult an expert. Jane Ogden, professor emeritus in health psychology at the University of Surrey, says Christmas is indeed a time which brings out the feeder in almost all of us.
“Christmas is bombarding us with food from every kind of direction, really,” she says. “And so people who aren’t already feeders kind of become feeders – because when everybody around you is eating, if you’re not eating, it makes them feel uncomfortable.”
It’s not just me, then. If Christmas is a bit of a shared moment of indulgence – in every sense of the word, including a sense that food at this time of year ‘doesn’t really count’ – someone not joining in can spoil it for everyone.
“Because of the social role of food, if someone’s not joining in, then it absolutely stands out,” Ogden continues.
Oddly, this is sort of reassuring – I hadn’t been imagining these kinds of pressures, and they probably extend much more widely than just to those few hundred thousand of us taking weight loss jabs over this festive season.
That means there’s a chance to come up with some coping strategies to try not to be a terrible party guest this Christmas. Oddly, abstaining from booze feels like the easy bit – it’s a lot easier not to drink than it was a few years ago. For bigger social occasions, I’m fond of alcohol-free beer, and so sticking to those is a nice, inconspicuous way to fit in.
Overeating on the jabs, though, isn’t really an option – if you eat too much on them, you quickly feel ill, and it generally upsets your stomach for the next day or two. Being on the jabs genuinely changes your habits, because if it didn’t, they wouldn’t work. Mostly, everything is about moderation: where once it would be impossible to open a big bag of crisps without finishing it, now it lasts for days.
But some tastes change – overly rich meals are no fun on the jabs, and so you change what you have with them. Some junk food just isn’t enjoyable to snack on any more. While I’m still on the jabs, at least, I don’t miss it much.
That doesn’t mean I want to have no fun at all this Christmas, though. Last year, I found that dipping into a little of what I liked went a long way – where once I might have snaffled half a tray of pigs in blankets, now one or two on a cocktail stick will do. A tiny slice of cake is still a slice of cake. Indulging in moderation might not quite be in the spirit of the season, but it’s better than nothing.
Professor Ogden helps back me up on this front, too – suggesting that one way to avoid offence is to make sure that people know ahead of time that you’re on weight loss drugs, which at least avoids risking giving the impression that you just don’t like someone’s choice of food or their cookery.
“Forewarn the situation,” she says. “I would always go for honesty because then you’ve got nothing to hide … Then when you go along, you can say, actually, I don’t want any more because I’m on Wegovy – going for something sort of biological takes away all the guilt and all the blame and any kind of criticism of the other person.”
