Toni Dowsett’s ex called her fat every day.
Then her GP told her she was too big for the weight loss jab.
The 30-year-old carer from Salisbury, Wiltshire, weighed 30 stone and wore a size 32 when she decided to try Mounjaro in March 2025.
Fifteen stone later, she has a size 12 wardrobe, a gym membership and a girlfriend she met in a WhatsApp group for people on the drug.
READ MORE: I’m a cancer doctor and I eat frozen peas from a wine glass – one viewer thought it was PET food
“My ex used to call me fat every day,” Toni told Creatorzine.
“It made me feel terrible and gave me low confidence that I’m still working on. [But it also] made me want to change.”
Checking the chairs before she sat down
Toni has battled her weight since childhood.
By adulthood, her days ran on takeaways, and at her lowest a single McDonald’s order meant 20 nuggets, a burger, a share box of cheese bites and a large fizzy drink.
She works three 12-hour shifts a week, which she calls “physically and mentally draining”.
“I relied on takeaways because I was too tired to cook after work,” she said.
“At my heaviest, I had to check the chairs out first before sitting because I was scared I’d break them.
I was terrified of having a heart attack and would get constant chest infections.”
Too big for the jab
When Toni applied for Mounjaro on the NHS, doctors turned her down.
“They said my BMI was too high. That’s the only explanation they gave me,” she said.
“I was shocked because I thought they [the jabs] were for people like me and it felt like there was no hope.”
So she bought it privately instead, paying a provider £85 a month and logging every calorie on an app.
She lost a stone in the first week.
“The day my jabs arrived in the post, that was it, something changed in me,” she said.
“I do believe you have to be ready. The food noise was bad, but after a week I was fine.”
Out went takeaways, bread, potatoes, fried food, chocolate, Coke and the three sugars in her coffee.
In came chicken skewers and salad, which she now eats for lunch every day.
Her old daily menu started with a large Red Bull.
Lunch was two sandwiches, two sausage rolls, two packs of crisps, a yoghurt and cheese.
Dinner came from a kebab shop, McDonald’s or Subway, with large bags of crisps, big chocolate bars, milkshakes and a litre of Coke in between.
Now she starts with a protein shake. Lunch is soup, crackers with light cheese, Fridge Raiders and a protein yoghurt.
Dinner is protein chicken skewers with salad or veg, and snacks look like light cheese strings, Popchips, Babybels, cucumber and cherry tomatoes.
Plus more Fridge Raiders. She really likes Fridge Raiders.
“Seeing the scales go down and wearing normal-sized clothes kept me going when I wanted to give up,” she said.
Flirting over dosage tips
Five months in, last August, Toni started chatting to Natasha, 32, in a WhatsApp group for Mounjaro users.
Natasha had only just started the drug and wanted advice.
“Our first ever conversation was about us both being on Mounjaro,” Toni said.
“I saw that her profile photo was taken in Weymouth, where I’d been on holiday. Tash was asking for tips and we connected through Mounjaro.
She turned it into flirty banter, and it [the feeling] was mutual.
“I wasn’t looking for anything but couldn’t stop smiling at my messages.”
Texts became voice notes. Voice notes became a nervous first date at a countryside pub near Toni’s home.
“We clicked straight away,” she said.
“Then we spent the whole week together; she stayed at mine. It feels like fate that we met through Mounjaro.”
A new attraction
Toni’s ex was a man. She says she only started feeling drawn to women as the weight came off.
“I never felt an attraction to women when I was bigger,” she said.
“It might be a confidence thing. I read that the jabs can influence libido, alter brain chemistry and body confidence.
“I couldn’t be with another man in my life. I don’t find men attractive anymore at all.”
Natasha, who put on weight during and after her own previous relationship, says she has lost eight stone since starting Mounjaro in August 2025, going from 18 stone and a size XXL to nine stone and a size 15 juniors.
“Both being on Mounjaro bonded us,” she said.
“We both have the same interests in hobbies and we just click. It’s like we’re meant to be together.”
Still the same person in the mirror
Toni now weighs 14st 7lb and plans to stay on Mounjaro indefinitely.
She can see her jawline and collarbones. She has replaced every item of clothing she owns.
“I was over the moon the first time I tried on a size 12,” she said.
“Sometimes I don’t recognise myself in pictures, and my confidence is up and down.
Sometimes I look in the mirror and see the same person I once was.
“I have so much room now everywhere we go, but sometimes I still get worried that I can’t fit to get out of the car.”
Why It Matters
Mounjaro doesn’t just live in pharmacies.
It lives in group chats, TikTok weigh-ins and private Facebook groups where strangers swap dosage tips, side-effect horror stories and, apparently, phone numbers.
For creators, those spaces have become some of the most engaged communities online, built entirely on shared experience rather than any one personality.
Toni’s story also shows who gets left out of the NHS route and quietly ends up paying a private provider every month.
GLP-1 jabs have produced a whole genre of transformation content, from before-and-after reels to “what I eat in a day” videos, and private prescriptions keep rising as NHS access stays tight.
Toni says she wants to feel comfortable in her own body, marry Natasha and start a family.
Natasha, for her part, calls her beautiful every day.
The ex never got a mention in her plans.
READ MORE: I shaved my bikini line like always – then doctors told me one more day would have KILLED me
