Doctor who 'didn't believe in fat jabs' tried them and lost six stone

An obesity specialist shed 6st using Mounjaro — and claims it cleared her rosacea, acne and endometriosis symptoms within just a few months. Dr Emma Anders, 39, says she has "always" struggled with weight since childhood and tried "every diet out there" and after her weight loss journey slimmed down from a size 20 to size 8 . Despite shedding pounds through dieting and regular exercise, she found herself unable to maintain the results. Having worked as a private GP for the past 10 years, Emma admits she turned down clinic requests to offer GLP1 appointments , but after witnessing the results in patients who had used them, she decided to give it a go herself. Now 6st lighter after consistently using a 2.5mg dose of Mounjaro, Emma's acne and stage four endometriosis symptoms have disappeared entirely, and she recently completed two marathons in a single week. Emma, a private GP from Wilmslow, Cheshire, says: "I've done every diet out there , Weight Watchers more times than I can count, and Keto. "Everything works but I can't keep the weight off and I feel awful. I came across GLP1s working in AandE 10 years ago. Usually, I was dealing with people who'd had complications with them and I was very critical of their efficiency and if they actually worked. "As a private GP for the last 10 years, lots of patients had discussed weight management with me and in the past I wouldn't have brought GLP1s up as an option, but now I do. "In October 2024, it got to the point where I'd never been bigger, I was exercising just as much and had done every diet out there. I saw people on TV who weighed 400lbs (28 8lbs) and I thought, 'I'm going to get there'.", reports Cheshire Live . "If I'm honest, I was desperate and panicked. The year before, I'd worked more and more with people on GLP1s, not prescribing them but seeing the change. "People weren't coming to me saying they were happy to be a smaller size but were healthier and had a clearer mind. I was more open minded to them and decided to try one because, honestly, I think my weight would have killed me and I didn't know how to stop it." Emma began on the required starting dose of 2.5mg of Mounjaro, but as it was "so effective" she chose to maintain the same dose as she saw "no benefit to increasing" and has continued with weekly doses over the past 18 months. She continues to eat three full meals a day and shed 56lbs (4st) in just three months. "I started one day on October 12, 2024 and the next day I woke up and felt like a different person," she says. "It didn't change my appetite in the first week but I felt really good. By the end of the second week, my acne rosacea which I'd had for 10 years was completely gone. "It came out of the blue right before I got married. I remember going to look into a little child's eye once and they backed against the wall and called me 'pizza face'. "It didn't impact me but because it was acne rosacea my face would be very hot and very sore all the time. If I stopped my GLP1 my face gets very hot. "The biggest effect is it makes my face less painful. By the end of the third week I'd eat a meal and didn't realise I didn't feel full. If I eat a big meal with loads of carbs and protein, I feel really content. It's life-changing. I realised, 'this is going to work'." After several months, her stage four endometriosis symptoms had also eased considerably. A lifelong fitness enthusiast who previously competed in Olympic weightlifting and represented the England karate team, she now says she feels she can "move so much better" following her weight loss. "I used to go to the gym before work because it gave me mental clarity and used to make my head feel clearer and felt better, but I was desperate to lose weight," she says. "Now I wake up on Mounjaro feeling that mental clarity and do it for the sheer fun but feel the effects on my body now. I have never had a single side effect on a GLP1, not a single one which is unusual. "I'm not fighting a body that's not working anymore. I have stayed on the same continuous dose as I've received maximal benefit with no side effect and never felt the need to increase the dose as there was no benefit to be gained". Emma believes doctors should move beyond simply discussing the negative impacts of obesity, and instead focus on conversations with patients about "the experience of being obese how they eat why they eat and why their diets fail". Rather than "blanket giving" GLP1s to every overweight patient, she argues that doctors should be engaging with individuals and tailoring treatment to address the root cause of their condition – and once achieved, extending that treatment to younger patients as well. "I think there will be an exciting shift in medicine in the next few years where we can understand more how it's [GLP1s] working," she says. "We know it decreases inflammation and has been trialled for things like long Covid and we know it helps balance hormones and are looking into treatments for PCOS but the reality is we don't know the full extent of how they work. "That's good and bad. It's positive because it transforms lives but there is the negative of what could potentially happen in the future so we have to balance that as well."