Arriving at a friend’s house for a barbecue last weekend, Sam Astley looked on as the assembled group took turns to congratulate and compliment his wife on her impressive six-stone weight loss.
However, far from feeling proud of Rifu, in a fitted blue dress which revealed her newly trim figure, watching her smile and bask in the adulation, Sam felt furious. The reason? In his view, Rifu, 30, has effortlessly cheated her way to a svelte size 12 by joining the ever-growing band of dieters using the ‘miracle’ weight-loss drug Mounjaro.
What makes this especially unbearable for Sam, 31, is that her approach contrasts starkly with the ‘sweat, tears and unbearable hunger pangs’ it took for him to shed ten stone two years ago – an achievement that friends and family long since seem to have forgotten.
‘No one mentions it any more. Anyway, their praise counts for nothing if they’re also doling it out to Rifu, who’s done absolutely nothing other than inject herself in the thigh once a week with a fat jab. It’s ridiculous – congratulations are completely unjustified,’ says Sam, shaking his head incredulously.
‘I lost weight the old-fashioned, hard way, starving myself for months, trying to keep distracted from the constant rumbling in my belly, while getting up at 5am to go to the gym and then walking six miles a day, come rain or shine.
‘I slogged for every one of the 140lbs I lost. Meanwhile, my wife hasn’t needed a jot of willpower or commitment – she’s let Mounjaro do the hard work.
‘When my alarm goes off at 5am, I never want to go to the gym, especially having to leave Rifu snoozing beside me, but I always feel good afterwards – that’s an exercise high that my wife is oblivious to, thanks to her jabs.’ To someone like Sam, who knows the gargantuan effort it takes to follow a calorie-controlled diet and exercise plan, the estimated 1.5 million people in the UK who, like his wife, currently use medication such as Mounjaro (available on the NHS as of this week) and Ozempic are taking the easy way out.
‘Call it jealousy, but my only solace is that those relying on fat jabs will pile the weight back on as soon as they stop,’ he says, indignantly. ‘The ‘food noise’ they so smugly boast about no longer hearing – which I’m constantly trying to block out – will return.
‘Then, when they no longer feel full after two spoonsful of rice, it will creep up to four spoons, then six, then a bowl and then two bowls before they feel satisfied – because they haven’t learnt any actual self-control.’ While the Astleys have both arrived at the same result – they are slimmer, fitter and happier – Sam, who, had to draw on Herculean willpower to stick to just 500 calories a day at some points and still exercises for 14 hours a week to maintain and avoid saggy skin, pulls no punches when it comes to expressing resentment at the ease with which Rifu has hurtled towards her target weight.
The couple, who live in Crewe, Cheshire, with their sons Noah, six, and Roman, five, were both slim when they met in a nightclub 13 years ago, but say domesticity and the contentment that comes with settling down led to them becoming severely obese.
At 22 st, Sam’s BMI reached 43.1 while, at almost 19 st, Rifu’s was 45.5. A healthy BMI for men and women generally falls between 18.5 and 24.9.
Sam used to work as a hotel chef and would create delicious cordon bleu dinners. It didn’t help that they would eat ‘huge portions’, as well as snack on junk food.
In May 2023, having given no thought to the health implications of obesity before, Sam was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, which causes an irregular heartbeat and can be exacerbated by excess body fat. It was then that he decided he must ‘take action’.
‘We have two little boys and it was a struggle to run around after them,’ he says. ‘I was constantly sweating from carrying so much extra weight, and people at work kept telling me it’s all downhill after 30. So I decided: ‘I cannot let that happen – I’ve got to get in shape!’ ‘
To kickstart his new regime, Sam followed the James Duncan Plan, a protein-rich, low-carb diet with a growing following on TikTok, which promised dieters a stone’s weight loss in a week.
On a typical day, he was allowed a slice of unbuttered toast with a grilled tomato for breakfast, fresh fruit for lunch and two boiled eggs with salad and grapefruit for dinner. He estimates his calorie intake dropped from around 5,000 a day to about 500.
‘Having been used to eating fry-ups, burgers and chips and pizzas, as well as crisps, chocolate and takeaways, whatever took my fancy, it was agony surviving on so little,’ says Sam. ‘But I’d lost 13lbs by the end of the week, and that really spurred me on.’
Continuing on the diet with an increased calorie count of between 800 and 1,500 calories a day – consisting mainly of boiled cabbage, cottage cheese and rice cakes, as well as lean meat and vegetables – Sam shed another 9 st over ten months.
Although he hasn’t lost any more weight since, at 5ft 11in he still works hard to maintain his lean, 12 st frame. Proud of his success, Sam has shared every step of his journey with his thousands of followers on TikTok.
So what of Rifu at this time? Although impressed by her husband’s dedication – ‘Sam always achieves whatever he sets his mind to’ – she recalls feeling ‘very frustrated’ by the impact on her and their two children.
‘He couldn’t join us for family meals – meatballs, pasta, curry – and I’d have to explain to the boys that Daddy is eating something different,’ she says. ‘He would also nag me to go on long walks with him or to join the gym, but I’m just not an active person so there was no way I was going to do that.’
After 18 months of ignoring her husband’s pleas to join his plan and, she insists, feeling no jealousy – or shame – around his weight loss, it was last November, when several of her friends were waxing lyrical about the wonders of Mounjaro, that Rifu decided to jump on the fat-jab bandwagon.
‘I only got interested because they made it sound so easy and I didn’t want to have to slog at it,’ she admits. ‘I’ve always been a confident person so I was never really upset about my size – a UK 20-22 at my heaviest.
‘Having said that, I’ve taken more photographs of myself in the past month than I did during the previous five years, so I can’t say I exactly loved my old body.
‘I thought Sam would be pleased when I told him about my Mounjaro plans, but instead he said: ‘I can’t believe you’re planning to spend hundreds of pounds on losing weight instead of just eating less and moving more like me.’ What a spoilsport.’
She went ahead and ordered a 2.5mg dose pen from an online pharmacy anyway and, the day after her first injection, Rifu noticed a huge difference in her appetite.
‘It was a bizarre and unfamiliar sensation,’ she recalls. ‘My stomach would be gurgling for food, but I just didn’t have any appetite. It’s stayed that way throughout.’
At 5ft 4ins, Rifu has so far lost 6st 3lbs over the past seven months and, at 12st 10lbs, is now a size 12-14. ‘I love my new figure and take so much more care of my appearance than I used to,’ she says.
‘I enjoy shopping for smaller clothes, doing my hair and putting on make-up every day. It’s nice to look nice – and the compliments are a real boost.
‘I know Sam thinks jabbing is a cop-out but there’s no way I would have been able to starve myself and do all the exercise he did, so I’ll be for ever grateful to Mounjaro for making it so easy.’
Each month, the dose Rifu injects has increased from 2.5mg to her current level of 12.5mg which, she says, will be her last.
Apart from the initial contact and sending photographs to the online pharmacy she ordered from, Rifu has had no supervision as she has upped her dose.
But, although she heard some users experience gastro-intestinal symptoms, she has sailed through with nothing more than ‘sulphur burps’ in the early days.
When people try to tell her about ‘scary side effects’ – rare ones include kidney and gallbladder problems and pancreatitis – she says she’s happy to take her chances with Mounjaro for the many health benefits that come with being slimmer.
While Rifu never had a specific weight loss target in mind, her goal is to get down to a size 10.
As I chat to the couple over lunch – a sandwich platter which would have easily fed a group twice our size – the difference in their dieting plights is plain to see.
Sam says it’s taking ‘every ounce of self-restraint not to polish off the lot so, of course, I’m jealous of how easy it is for Rifu to resist’.
Meanwhile Rifu nibbles half-heartedly on a couple of quarter triangles of sandwich before moving on to a fruit kebab.
‘I used to wake up ravenous every morning and often started the day with a packet of biscuits,’ she says. ‘Then I’d eat junk – crisps, chocolate, whatever – all day, then have an evening meal. Before Sam started dieting, we’d also order a cheeky takeaway before bedtime.
‘Now I just don’t feel hunger. I’ll have a chia seed pudding with granola and strawberries for breakfast and usually don’t eat again until the evening, when I’m full after a few mouthfuls of chicken or pasta.’
However, Sam’s point about his wife’s reliance on injections meaning she’s failed to master self-restraint (and will go back to her old eating habits once she stops jabbing) brings us to another thorny issue for the couple: whether she’ll pile all the weight back on.
At first she insists it won’t happen because her stomach will have shrunk – an assertion he rebuts, reminding her that he had lost 12 stone just before they met in 2013, and then piled most of it back on again.
Then she lands the killer blow: ‘I’ve told you, numerous times, if I put on weight, I won’t hesitate to go back on the jabs and lose it again. Easy.’
Despite having heard it before, this reminder riles Sam.
‘This is why it’s cheating!’ he says, putting down his (fourth) sandwich. ‘If I lapse and eat too much, I cut down for the next couple of days and spend more time in the gym. You’re just going to order another injection pen.
‘And what about the expense? Surely you can see it’s lazy to spend hundreds of pounds, instead of just eating less and moving more?’ Rifu, who now works part-time as a sales assistant, freely admits that she wouldn’t be able to afford Mounjaro if it weren’t for the money Sam brings in, working six, sometimes seven, days a week in special projects at the nearby Bentley Motors factory.
In fact, although they pool their resources to pay household bills, she used his debit card to pay for her supplies, which cost from £100 for the initial 2.5mg doses to £300 for the most recent 12.5mg pen.
‘I haven’t benefited from the ease that comes with using fat jabs and yet I’ve been working to pay for them,’ says Sam, shaking his head and laughing, remarkably good-naturedly.
Rifu joins in the mirth, adding: ‘Oh yes, you’ve paid for it all.’
It’s clear that, despite their different approaches to getting and staying in shape, theirs is very much a love match. Both admit that their new, slimmer looks and renewed energy have done wonders for their sex life.
‘We’re much more active in the bedroom than we were a year ago, and that’s definitely down to our weight loss,’ says Rifu, as Sam nods enthusiastically. ‘And the sex is much better, of course it is, because our bodies are easier to move around and we’re fitter.’
Sam says that ‘getting back the woman I fell for 12 years ago’ is one reason he’s been happy to keep funding his wife’s jab habit.
‘I’ve always found her sexy but now she’s as sexy as she was when we first met,’ he says. ‘And I feel sexier, too. Let’s be honest, who wants a sweaty 22-stone man on top of them, in bed?’
It’s not just between the sheets that their relationship has improved, either. Rifu says that being overweight made them both lazy and tired and they’d argue about whose turn it was to do everything, from grocery shopping to washing up.
‘We both have so much more energy now and, although I’m no more inclined to exercise, it means we’re both up for trips to the park and days out with the boys,’ she says. Although each of them insists they had simply ‘got used’ to being obese and never felt embarrassed about how they looked, Sam says that, with hindsight, he feels ‘disgusted’.
‘Old photographs pop up on my phone and I’ll send them to Rifu with a message saying: ‘Look at the state of us!’ I can’t believe how big we got, or that we still fancied one another.
‘Neither of us can believe now that we let ourselves get so big.’
Both are also relieved to have become better role models to their sons who, in contrast to the way the couple was raised, are not forced to eat everything on their plates before leaving the table – though they are told there will be nothing else available if they plead hunger later.
As Sam reaches for another sandwich, I ask, if the worst happened and he was to regain all the weight, might he be tempted to jab?
‘From where I’m standing, it really does seem like a miracle drug, enabling people to lose weight without all the misery,’ he says. ‘But I like being able to hold my hand on my heart and say: ‘I lost nearly half my body weight through blood, sweat and tears, not drugs.’
He pauses before adding: ‘Also, if there are any long-term effects, while I’ll try to stop short of telling my wife ‘I told you it couldn’t be that easy!’, at least I won’t have to worry about my health.’
Additional reporting: Matthew Barbour