"I haven’t failed; I’ve been failed by a system that isn’t set up for people like me"

Zoe Hazel, a mental health campaigner who spoke at this years #DumpTheScales march shares her thoughts on weight-loss injections as someone with binge eating disorder.

Please note this post includes references to eating disorder behaviours.

My name is Zoe Hazel. I’m 34, female, and have had a diagnosis of Binge Eating Disorder since 2019. Binge eating disorder is heavily stigmatised and incredibly misunderstood and  many people with the condition can become 'overweight', or 'clinically obese', like myself. 

Most people only associate eating disorders with being very underweight, and they don’t realise that people with binge eating disorder can also struggle with restricting food and poor body-image.

This means many of us with binge-eating disorder struggle to get any kind of support or intervention at all, if it even exists in our area. There are no services in my area for binge eating disorder, so even after I was diagnosed, I was still unable to get help for my condition.

Weight-loss services in my area are all focused on reducing calories or going on diets, so they are not eating-disorder friendly in both terminology or in practice. Every time I have attempted to diet, the restrictive part of my eating disorder becomes obsessed with challenging itself to eat less and less which is not only dangerous, it isn’t sustainable, and eventually triggers a binge. 

I am constantly made to feel as though I just ‘lack willpower’ or ‘simply don’t want it enough’ and like I have failed myself, and failed everyone around me who was hoping for change. The problem with this thinking is that it simply isn’t true. I haven’t failed; I’ve been failed by a system that isn’t set up for people like me, and by a society who sees fat people as lazy, unmotivated, and worthless - a world that views fat as ugly, undesirable, a scourge upon society. This is promoted through media, through celebrities, through all the weight-loss pills, diet culture, and influencers telling us we need to commit to thinness.

And now the Government is bringing in a new way to tackle the so called ‘obesity epidemic’ - weight loss injections. These injections are terrifying, because there doesn’t seem to be any monitoring of how people are using them, or if people are using them safely and alongside a healthy lifestyle.

I personally know many people who have taken/are currently taking these jabs as a way to override their hunger urges and lose weight quickly without a thought to the long-term effects on the body (which are still widely unknown) and some have even experienced severe hair loss, interruption to their periods, and other health complications due to the rapid loss they achieved.

The scariest part is, they are so widely accessible to purchase online without any real consequences.

When I heard Dump the Scales were writing an open letter about these jabs and the effects on those with eating disorders, I decided to find out more information. I visited my local pharmacist to discuss the jabs, and within two minutes of conversation he had told me that due to my diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and the medications I am prescribed, I am too high-risk to be able to be prescribed them.

But after speaking to some friends I realised how easy it is to falsify medical information on the forms for online pharmacies.   

This is a real and terrifying fact; people are able to get their hands on these medications without any in-person checks, and are able to easily lie in order to access what they see is a sure way to lose weight, regardless of the consequences. It’s shocking that in this day and age, we are still risking our mental and physical health in the name of ‘skinny’. The people I know who have gone down this road are not diagnosed with an eating disorder, but I am. If I had been able to get my hands on these jabs, I would have been praised for rapid weight loss despite me risking my health and not having learned a single thing about myself or how to cope with my eating disorder. 

My fear and uncertainty around these jabs extends past this and also focuses on the fact that we do not understand them enough as stand-alone weight management treatments, and that there is not enough information given about how to take these safely, nor how to come off them safely without returning back to old habits.

At the moment, without the psychological support to work through the reasons behind binging/restricting or other eating disorder behaviours, there is no feasible way that weaning off of these weight-loss jabs will not see a return to disordered habits , or weight regain. I worry this will either lead to further emotional distress, or a complete reliance on the jabs, which cannot be what was intended.

The Government choosing to roll these jabs out to unemployed 'obese' people as a way to get them back to work is just another way to target those who are disabled and/or unemployed, and using them as a scapegoat for the state of the economy. What message is this sending to the people on their hit-list who are struggling with or are recovering from an eating disorder, particularly binge eating disorder? 

To me, it is a double-edged sword. The Government is saying that my body is unacceptable, they are continuing to push the narrative that fat people = lazy and non-contributors to society, all whilst denying me access to services that can enable me to treat my eating disorder in healthy, safe, and secure ways. 

We live in a fatphobic society, and unfortunately this decision the government has made will only make this worse. Why would the public show empathy to people like me when the Government is making us out to be lazy and undisciplined?

There is no evidence that  losing weight will suddenly make me ready for work, and fix the economy.  

We could be providing prevention, interventions, and recovery for people like me before they ever reach the stage that the NHS needs to spend billions on saving lives due to obesity related health issues that have come due to what is essentially negligence in care. But it’s easier to blame us, isn’t it? It’s easier to lean into the narrative around fat people and make them pay further for the shortcomings that already affect them. 

One thing is clear though: weight-loss injections are not the answer; they are a pandora’s box of unforeseen health risks and psychological harm for those the world already views as lesser-than. 

Until everyone with an eating disorder can get speedy access to compassionate, evidence-based treatment, regardless of their weight or BMI, and there is widespread understanding that eating disorders can affect people of all shapes and sizes, we are never going to get a grip on this crisis. 

This blog is part of our Weight Loss Jabs + Eating Disorders: Harm Waiting to Happen campaign.

Have you been affected by the issues raised in this blog? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.