A former Gogglebox star has opened up on her weight loss journey. Amy Tapper appeared on the Channel 4 show between 2013 and 2018, she appeared alongside her mum and dad, Jonathan and Nikki and her older brother Josh.
Amy appeared on ITV’s Good Morning Britain on Thursday to discuss her choice to begin using Mounjaro. The television personality previously weighed 23 stone and wore size 26 clothing. She has now lost seven and a half stone and dropped to a size 18. She attempted twelve years of various diets without success prior to her recent sessions with a personal trainer and using Mounjaro. Amy spoke to presenters Kate Garraway and Richard Madeley about the journey she has been on.
She said: “It was just ongoing for years and years. I’d been overweight since I was about six or seven years old, and that was when the doctor visits started, seeing what was wrong, and no one could quite put their finger on it.
“I just started dieting, a number of diets, tried everything, and it would be the same thing over and over again. I would lose about two to three stone. Once I got to that three-stone mark, nothing more.”
The former Channel 4 star continued: “I just got to the point of being fed up. I said, ‘I want to have surgery, I want to wake up tomorrow and not be like this. I can’t do it anymore’. It’s all a circle, isn’t it? It’s a constant vicious cycle.”
Amy’s GP has recommended she continues taking the injections for life, to stop her body returning to its previous patterns. However, Dr Amir Khan clarified: “When it comes to these drugs and how long you should be on them, NICE [National Institute for Health and Care Excellence] suggests that you should be on them for a maximum of two years.
“Within that time, we should get the holistic support that goes along with getting down to a healthy weight. It might be different for each individual person.”
Speaking to host Kate Garraway, Amy said weight loss injections had changed “everything” for her. She said: “People think it suppresses your appetite, which it does, but it does so many other things.”
She added: “I think it needs to be much more available to people that need it on the NHS.” The mass rollout of weight loss injections on the NHS in England began in June. It means GPs are allowed to prescribe the drugs for the first time. Around 220,000 people are expected to receive Mounjaro, also known as tirzepatide.
The drug is an antidiabetic drug which lowers blood sugar levels and and slows down how quickly food is digested. Mounjaro will be prescribed to severely overweight people who also suffer from a range of other health problems. It will be made by Eli Lilly, through the NHS over the next three years.
In the first year of the programme, the drug will be offered to people with a body mass index (BMI) score of over 40 who have at least four other health problems linked to obesity, such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and obstructive sleep apnoea.
Dr Claire Fuller, from NHS England, said: “This is an important next step in the rollout of weight loss drugs, with community-based services now able to offer this treatment from today.
“We urgently need to address rising levels of obesity and prioritise support for those who are experiencing severe ill health – and greater access to weight loss drugs will make a significant difference to the lives of those people.”