Helena Gilhooly, late 50s
‘I nearly collapsed on Christmas Eve in the supermarket. I started having a panic attack at the counter’
Running her own small jewellery-making business, Busybeaders, led Helena Gilhooly to develop some “bad habits: late-night working and everything else. Rather than having a proper dinner, you’d have snacks because you’re working away,” she says, explaining how she gained weight. “You’re going to network events for the business, and I just didn’t feel good because of my clothes. So I stopped going to a lot of events. I was fed-up. I tried every single diet.”
Last year she started to hear more and more about Ozempic. “I said, I’ll go and try it. I’ll give it a blast. I didn’t have the funds, so I borrowed the first amount of money off my son.” Initial costs were €60 for a GP visit, € 30 for blood tests and € 145 for Ozempic for one month. “I earned the money through the business to get the next lot.
“In eight weeks I lost 18lb. I had to make myself eat, because I was forgetting, and you get very dizzy when you don’t eat. I nearly collapsed on Christmas Eve [in the supermarket]. I started having a panic attack at the counter. Then my mam passed away and that just blew everything out of the water. Dieting was the last thing on my mind.”
Gilhooly was still on Ozempic at this time, “but I wasn’t dieting, and naturally there was no weight loss... I couldn’t justify the cost if I wasn’t losing weight.” So she took a break. She went back on Ozempic in March, but started getting “bad stomach cramps”. She tried “microdosing”, but “all it did was keep everything on an even keel. I still wasn’t losing weight.” Cost is preventing Gilhooly from being able to afford the full dose. “It’s a huge chunk of my income.”
RM Block
[ ‘Obesity medications may not make you thin or happy but they will improve your health’ ]
Gilhooly hasn’t gained back the weight she lost, but she would like to lose more. Christmas is her “busiest time. I’ll work hard to make an extra few bob, that come the new year, I’ll have the opportunity to go back on it.... I can get properly back to looking after my health.”
David Harte, 44
‘My wife said to me within my first month on Mounjaro: You’re actually a nicer person on it’
“As long as I can remember, I’ve always battled with my weight,” says 44-year-old David Harte. “From when I was a kid, all through my life. I’m a strength and conditioning coach so I’m well up on my training. I know all the right things [to do to control weight], but it’s still a battle every day.
“My mother went on [obesity injections] earlier this year. She had a really good experience. She lost loads of weight. I educated myself more. Before I would have scoffed if somebody said ‘obesity is a disease’. I was wrong. I made the decision and went to my GP, and I started on Mounjaro. From day one it’s been wholly positive.
“The big thing for me is food noise. My number one goal is to remove the food noise. The weight loss is just a happy side effect. I don’t have a huge amount of weight to lose, and it’s slow coming off. But I don’t care. It’s just that mental freedom that I’m not constantly battling my mind about food.
“The kids get a pizza on a Friday and we watch a movie after training. Before I was always sitting there, looking at the pizza going, ‘Oh God, I hope there’s a slice left over’. It would just be a constant. But that doesn’t exist any more.
“My wife even said to me within the first month, ‘You’re actually a nicer person on it’. It’s like my default mood setting has increased, because you don’t have this low-level battle going on inside your head the whole time.”
Harte is now close to his personal goal weight. He’s also very conscious of the cost. He’s currently on a 7.5mg pen which costs £260 (¤300) per month. He orders his medication from Northern Ireland, where costs are lower. “I’m not going to be able to maintain [the expense]. So I’m going to have to be realistic.”
He started microdosing, which he learned about online. “I took half a dose, so I was getting longer out of it. Instead of getting four doses out of my current pen, I’ll get seven.
“I was getting the UK prices, but they’ve gone up recently. The cost was acceptable to me when I was able to microdose, but with the price increase it might not be feasible. So I’m coming to the precipice, where I have to figure out my next move.”
Amanda Brunker, 51
‘I was eating like a bird, and I was losing nothing’
Author and former Miss Ireland Amanda Brunker had a hysterectomy just before her 50th birthday. “It was one of the best things I ever did, but the menopause hit me really hard,” she says.
“The weight had just crept up on me over the last 10 or 15 years. I’ve spent my life trying to lose weight. I’ve always fluctuated up and down. But in the last few years, despite eating like a bird – it had gotten ridiculous, I couldn’t have eaten any less to stay healthy – and I was training in the gym, and I was losing nothing.
“I got to a point where I went ‘do you know what, f*ck it. I’m going to give [the weight-loss jabs] a go’.” Brunker has been on Ozempic since the start of the year, and says she has “never felt better”.
“I’m no longer aching. It’s helped so much with the inflammation in my body that I was really badly suffering with.” Her prescription costs her ¤139 per month. “I feel very blessed and lucky that I can afford to pay.” Brunker says she was really looking forward to “not feeling hungry”, but it took a while for the drug to take effect. “There’s no amazing food suppression overnight.”
She’s very focused now on “making sure I eat enough protein and I have been going to the gym” but the drugs gave her a “kickstart” with her weight loss.
“It’s lovely to be able to get into old clothes… I’ve lost over three stone. It’s kind of shocked me… I can’t believe I had that to lose. I still have a bit more weight to lose.”
It has taken the joy out of eating junk food and drinking alcohol, she says.
“I’d feel ill. It’s quite boring after a while. I was only on it a few weeks and it was a friend’s 50th birthday and I went out and we had a big night, and I was lying in the front garden projectile vomiting. I honestly thought I was going to die. It was cartoonish. It was like my body just went ‘we cannot have this. This is not acceptable.’”
[ It’s time for a reality check about certain ‘weight loss’ drugs, and here’s whyOpens in new window ]
Carmel Greene, 52
‘If I could afford it every month I would keep going’
Carmel Greene, who works in financial services, is diabetic. “I started on Synjardy and had brilliant success with it. I was never a small girl, but I wasn’t massive either. At that point I was about 17 stone. I’m 5ft 6in. [The weight] dropped off very quickly, I got my diabetes numbers really good, and then the weight-loss stopped. I lost 2½ stone, but I want to get more off.”
Greene switched to Ozempic, “and it was great, until I couldn’t get it any more,” she says, referring to issues with supply in 2024. “It’s reimbursed [under the Drugs Payment Scheme for Type 2 diabetics], but we couldn’t get it.” In the interim she changed to Trulicity, which she says didn’t work well for her. The weight “wasn’t budging”.
She thought perimenopause might be having an effect on her ability to lose weight. So she went back to her GP, who switched her prescription to Mounjaro. But the cost is significant, at around €300 per month. Mounjaro is not reimbursed under the scheme. She’s only on the lowest “maintenance dose” and says, as dosage increases, so does the price.
“I went off with my prescription into the chemist came back out minus €300, completely forgetting that it wasn’t reimbursed. I have a kid in college. I’ve another one coming up behind.”
She has been taking Mounjaro for a month. Initially, she says she was sleeping better and had more energy. “I’m down seven pounds. It’s turned off all that food noise. I do find - my injection day is Monday – by Sunday I’m getting cravings. I am concerned how it’s going to be long term. It’s a tool. It’s fine to build habits, and that’s my plan. I’m going to give it another two months.. I just don’t think long-term it’s going to be sustainable [financially].”
She is also starting to feel some side effects which include “heartburn and running to the toilet”.
As part of her job, Greene works with underwriters and recently asked how these drugs were to be treated when people were applying for insurance. She was told that even after weight-loss, some companies would include a financial penalty, and add on a portion of the weight that was lost due to the drug usage.
Saoirse*, 36
‘I feel these medications are for people who are severely overweight, and I wouldn’t class myself as that’
Saoirse has sleep apnoea. Members of her family have been pressuring her to start on weight-loss drugs, she says, but she’s vehemently against it, preferring to try diet and exercise.
“When I got diagnosed, everybody jumped to [the conclusion] that my weight was the reason I had sleep apnoea,” she says. “ I really felt the pressure, kind of: ‘I have to do something’. I was very resistant. I feel [these medications are] for people who are severely overweight, and I wouldn’t class myself as that.
“I started to try and be in a calorie deficit, but it’s exhausting trying to keep on top of that. So that only lasted a month or two.” Pressure from one family member has continued. “I’m at a point now where I’m not talking to her, because every conversation I have with her she’s asking me, ‘What about Mounjaro?’”
She is avoiding family meet-ups. The conversation repeatedly returning to her weight makes her feel very self-conscious. “I feel it’s being made into a bigger deal than it needs to be, because I wouldn’t consider myself a big person. I know I could be a little bit healthier, and I could look better dropping a few pounds, but I wouldn’t call myself big.”
She hasn’t discussed taking these medications with with her doctor, but she is not even sure she would qualify for a prescription; she doesn’t think her weight is high enough. Her family member suggested, “You could always get it online if your doctor doesn’t want to give it to you”.
Saoirse struggles with anxiety and this issue isn’t helping, she says. She feels an upcoming family event might be the reason she is being put under pressure to lose weight, “to look a certain way for the photos”.
[ The history of weight loss is littered with supposed quick fixesOpens in new window ]
Aaron*, late 30s
‘For the vast majority of people, dieting and exercising just won’t cut it with losing weight’
Aaron* is a doctor and has struggled with his weight for a decade.
“The weight gain happened slowly while I was in university; nothing out of the ordinary for most men in their 20s. The problems with getting the weight down happened towards the later end: I was spending long periods studying, and when I wasn’t, I was on my feet. I swam several times a week, typically doing reasonably intensive cardio for 45 minutes each time. But my diet was not great. There were a lot of meals with high sugars, and plenty of fats.”
Aaron decided to try Mounjaro after watching a talk by Prof Donal O’Shea, consultant endocrinologist and the HSE’s national clinical lead for obesity. “It reinforced what I knew to be true. For most people, the weight-loss industry is a sham. The science, the real hard empiric research, clearly demonstrates that, for the vast majority of people, dieting and exercising just won’t cut it with losing weight. My body’s metabolism likely slowed down during the intense study years and early years of my career, and I was swimming against the tide. The only thing that had worked, intense intermittent fasting, was no longer getting me the same results.
“I found it very difficult with [a] newborn baby and then with work as well - which could be 60 or 70 hours a week - to get a chance to go to the gym. I felt stuck.
“I applied to one of the online health clinics in the UK, was accepted, and Mounjaro] was delivered promptly to the An Post AddressPal service before delivering to Ireland. In the four months that followed, I went from 90kg to 75kg. It relit my body’s metabolism, and limited the cravings for a snack after a long shift. I feel healthier, much more content with my body, with minimal side effects.
“My partner was unhappy when she found out initially, but has come to accept that I am happier having gone on the treatment. I have otherwise kept it to myself, not disclosing to friends or family.”
Aaron says there is still a “bit of stigma” in the medical field. There shouldn’t be shame, he says, “but we’re as human as everyone else”.
“The single biggest issue with Mounjaro relates to cost, but for the benefits in health, I can justify this.”
Claire, 52
‘Two years ago I had to use a mobility scooter because of back problems. This year I am going on hikes and walks’
Claire has been on Mounjaro since June 2024. “I’ve lost about 5½ stones,” she says. “I had a lot of significant health issues. I had diabetes, and the weight was really impacting my ability to exercise. I’ve had a couple of back injuries … I was having skin issues. I was very, very miserable. I felt paralysed, as if there was no real way forward.
“I have a seven-year-old, so I needed to be active for her. Two years ago we went on holidays. I had to use a mobility scooter because of back problems. And this year [since starting on Mounjaro] we are going on hikes and walks. It’s made such a difference, in a very positive way, to my overall life, and to my health. [I’ve] been able to come off a lot of the medication I was on, and start exercise classes.
“At the start I definitely struggled because I just didn’t want to eat at all. You have to force yourself to eat, and try and eat the right things, and drink a lot more water. When I first went on it there wasn’t a real online community around it, whereas now there’s so many people and so many tips. I wish I’d had that at the start.
If someone compliments Claire, she’ll reply “Mounjaro”. She doesn’t hide that she’s using it. “The way I look at it is, it’s just a tool. In the same way that if you’ve high blood pressure, you take a tablet for that.
“It wasn’t that I’m lazy. People say, ‘Stop eating and exercise more’. I literally was stuck mentally, but I was also really stuck physically because I couldn’t move very much at all.
“The one thing I would say is you do struggle [when] eating out. It’s difficult whenever you’re not that interested. It [also] gives you no desire to have alcohol whatsoever. That’s a positive thing.”
She feels her daughter is really benefiting from her ability to be more active. “I was at the stage where I would think about how many times I was using stairs in the day,” she says. “Going to the park is easier now, whereas before my husband would have taken her. I’m a better role model to her now, because when you’re really overweight, you really worry about the impact that’s having on her image. Never mind my self-image. I don’t want her thinking, That’s the way [I’m] going to be.”
Nicola*, 54
‘This year I went back on Ozempic. It felt like admitting defeat, though I’ve come to see it differently now’
Nicola has struggled with her weight for more than 30 years. “The first time I tried Ozempic, I thought I’d found the answer. For six months, the weight dropped steadily: 23kg gone, about 15 per cent of my body weight. My clothes fit differently. People commented. I felt lighter, not just in my body but in my sense of possibility. And yet, I never loved the medication. The side effects were a constant hum in the background, and the weekly injection felt like a reminder that I couldn’t do this on my own. But I stayed the course - until I didn’t.
“When I stopped, I told myself I’d keep the weight off through sheer determination. My endocrinologist had warned me otherwise. They said the weight would likely return. They spoke about obesity as something chronic, especially in someone like me - older now, with decades of losing and regaining. ‘Treatment resistant’ was the phrase they used. I nodded, but secretly believed I could be the exception. I wasn’t.
“The weight crept back with quiet certainty. This year, I went back on Ozempic. It felt like admitting defeat, though I’ve come to see it differently now. Since my journey began in 2021, my weight has gone up and down more times than I can count, but I’ve managed to keep off around 20kg from where I started. It’s not the same headline-grabbing loss as before, but it’s real.
“I still don’t like the drug. It’s expensive. It’s troublesome. The side effects haven’t gone away. But I’ve stopped thinking of my obesity as something to ‘fix’ once and for all. This is not a battle I win and walk away from. It’s something I live with. This isn’t my before-and-after story. It’s my before-and-during.”
*Some names have been changed.
*Always consult your doctor for medical advice before taking or changing medication.
*If you have been affected by the issues around body image in this article, visit bodywhys.ie.
