The first thing Ashley O’Driscoll does when she gets out of bed in the morning is head to the bathroom, stand on the scales and make a careful note of her weight in her phone.
Throughout her day, the mum-of-one writes down every calorie she eats, a habit borne out of years of weight gain and loss that has seen her half in size.
Ashley, from Dublin, has a story similar to many women. Size 12 for most of her adult life, when she gave birth 16 years ago she struggled to go back to her pre-baby weight. Over the years her attempts to ‘move more and eat less’ in a bid to slim down were unsuccessful.
At her heaviest, Ashley was 5ft 11in and 22st, obese and unhappy.
‘The slightest thing would make me put on weight. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get it down and keep it down,’ she tells Metro.
Ashley’s size affected her confidence and she left the house only to go to work, the school run or the supermarket; even a simple trip to the cinema would take excessive begging from her best friend.
‘I felt really bad. I’m nearly 40 and I haven’t lived my thirties because I’ve been in constant isolation because of my weight,’ Ashley, 38, says.
She decided to seek help from her doctor at the beginning of 2023, who suggested gastric surgery but it had a five-year waiting list. So, as a last ditch attempt to lose the weight, Ashley decided to try Ozempic.
Also known as semaglutide, Ozempic is a medication used to treat diabetes which works by mimicking the hormone GLP-1, making people feel fuller and less hungry.
However, a new study of over 6,000 people by scientists at Oxford University has reported that those who use GLP-1 drugs will put their weight back on within 10 months of stopping if they don’t continue to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
Having endured years of failed diets, slimming clubs and exercise regimes, Ashley admits the jab felt like a last resort – and she wasn’t entirely convinced it would work.
She obtained a prescription from her doctor, picked up her first dose from the pharmacy, took it home and injected it into her abdomen. Despite a few mild side effects of headaches and nausea, Ashley’s weight started to fall away within the first week.
‘It was great; it started coming off very quickly and I noticed the “food noise” disappear,’ she remembers.
‘You’re not constantly thinking about your next meal and what you’re going to eat. It decreases your appetite and makes you feel full for longer.
‘On Ozempic, I might have a breakfast of porridge and honey and then not eat again for another six hours. I would have a soup or something really small for lunch, then a small dinner.
‘It was amazing, seeing those numbers come down on the scales. And the more weight I lost, the more activity I could do. So I was walking, running and weightlifting, which really helped. It felt amazing because I was sporty in my teens, but then I spent so much of my adult life not being able to walk upstairs without being out of breath.’
With her appetite suppressed on the weekly injections, by spring last year Ashley had lost 12st – nearly half her body weight – and wore jeans for the first time in years. She motivated herself by doing challenges on social media to walk 10,000 more steps each day for seven days.
‘Ozempic transformed my life completely. I’m a totally different person, physically and mentally,’ she says. But while Ashley was overjoyed to have lost the weight, she was dismayed by what was left behind.
‘When I was overweight, I had an ass and was quite big-chested. Now my bum and boobs have literally gone. I’ve got nothing there now. There’s more skin than there is breast tissue and I only wear sports bras. I’m completely flat. In fact, they’re actually just down to my knees. It’s all skin,’ she explains.
Ashley has also been left with saggy skin on her arms, thighs and belly, which stil makes her feel insecure. She ‘wouldn’t be seen dead in a bikini’, she says.
‘There is no way you can lose that amount of weight and not have loose skin. It’s inevitable. Instead, I hide it well with body suits or the clothes that I wear,’ Ashley explains. ‘If I was to get it removed, I say I’d probably lose another 7lbs just from that. It’s horrible. But I could never afford that.
‘It’s sad because I worked so hard to get the body that I have, that you’d think that I want to show it off, but nobody needs to see all that saggy, loose skin. It’s not very nice.’
Last summer, Ashley fell ill with gallstones, six months before she stopped taking Ozempic, but she doesn’t blame the medication. Rapid weight loss causes the body to metabolise fat, which means the liver releases extra cholesterol into the bile leading to gallstones. She had her gallbladder removed in July, but felt it was a ‘small price to pay’ for the weight loss. Especially as by November last year, she had reached her target weight of 65 kilos – just over 10st.
However, having been made redundant, Ashley found she could no longer afford to spend £147 a month on the medicine.
As they Oxford University study suggests, as soon as she stopped the injections, the hunger came back and she piled on the weight. Buying a dose when she could afford it, but putting on pounds when she couldn’t, her size yo-yo-ed over the course of a few months.
When she had to go totally Ozempic free for six months – Ashley put on over 2st.
‘I’d literally eat anything I could get my hands on,’ she admits. ‘I could make a ham and cheese toastie. I could then make cereal and one bowl will lead to two. I might have gone for toast, which quickly turned into Nutella on toast… You have a lot of cravings when you’re not on Ozempic.’
When Ashley realised she couldn’t do without the drug just before Christmas 2024, her partner helped pay for her prescription and she started the injections again. Now, Ashley is well on her way back to her target weight.
‘Going on Ozempic was one of the best things I ever did, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows,’ she says. ‘It brings with it a lot of trauma from being overweight and trying to accept your new body. I’m not there yet.
‘A lot of people think, “Oh, it’s just a case of you lose the weight and it’s over” – and it’s far from it. It’s trying to deal with and accept everything that comes with it, and it’s a work in progress. You have to maintain that weight. You’re always working on your body. It’s never ending.
‘For me the fear of weight regain is so strong that it’s a daily battle. I worry about every single thing I eat. I count the calories, check the packets – and that doesn’t stop. Sometimes I worry that I am heading down the road of an eating disorder.’
In total, Ashley spent more than £5,000 over the two years, and her doctor believes she will need to take weight loss injections for the rest of her life – another issue that has been raised following the results of the study.
One of the researcher, Professor Susan Jebb, said: ‘Either people really have to accept this as a treatment for life, you’re going to have to keep going forever, or we in science need to think really, really hard, how to support people when they stop the drug.’
Ashley remains grateful for the revolutionary drug, which she aims to rely on at a maintenance dose level to ensure she stays at her target weight.
She doesn’t worry about any long term impacts on her health, either. ‘I’ve been on it for two years and nothing drastic has happened. I’m happy enough at the moment to stay on it,’ she says.
‘Obesity is a disease for which there is no cure. If you come off that medication – you’re going to be at risk of becoming obese again, and that’s the way that I look at it. I have to do what’s best for my health, and that’s to stay on it.’
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