Independent and Lauren MacDougall
Tue, July 14, 2026 at 11:33 AM UTC
The Wegovy pill arrived in UK pharmacies this month, offering needle-free weight loss for the first time – but not everyone is rushing to make the switch
Writing for The Independent, Charlotte Cripps explained why she has no intention of giving up her weekly injection for the new tablet, citing the pill’s strict daily routine and the flexibility she has built into her own approach over 18 months
Many readers agreed, with several who already use the jab saying they would stick with what works for them rather than take on a fiddly new regime
Others pushed back from the opposite direction, pointing out that for people with a genuine needle phobia, a pill – whatever its drawbacks – might be the difference between getting treatment and avoiding it altogether
The debate also reignited a familiar argument about whether drugs are needed at all, with some readers insisting that willpower, diet and exercise remain the only long-term answer to weight loss
It helps willpower, it doesn’t replace it
I’ve been on the semaglutide tablet trial for two years for another condition
It just stops the ‘noise’ in your head about food – I’m now not hungry and I eat at meal times. I don’t snack, and I don’t go into a shop for a paper and think, ‘Ooh, chocolate.’ It helps willpower, it doesn’t replace it
Phobias are phobias
I use the jab and wouldn’t want to use pills because I am not organised or disciplined enough to make sure I take them as described. I can imagine that people better organised than myself (not much of a challenge) could find them helpful if they have a needle phobia. The needle is about 5mm long and hair-thin and impossible to feel going in, but phobias are phobias. I have a severe one of my own
Live and let live
Really there is no reason to get het up about a different path to getting the drugs – some things are better for some people and other ways for others. Sometimes having a knee-jerk reaction and opining on it is of no benefit. Live and let live
I wouldn’t take the jabs OR the pills
I wouldn’t take the jabs OR the pills. I was about 16.5 stone at the beginning of last year, and finished it having lost two and a half stone. How? I went out walking and ended up with 1,000 miles on the board. Simple message here is look after yourself
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Restraint and running shoes
I find the notion of the fat jabs (or fat pills I guess they are now) so bizarre, I barely know where to start. No matter how much the medical industry and the serial therapy pushers try to make lack of willpower and cravings sound like a medical condition by calling it ‘food noise’ – you ate it of your own free will, the answer is the same as it ever was – what goes in, must come out. So, here’s in praise of the way adults lose weight – restraint and running shoes!
I wouldn’t change to pills either
I’m also on the Wegovy jab and find it works perfectly for me. I’ve had no side effects and just steady but fairly slow weight loss. I wouldn’t change to pills either
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I know my way works
I have been having trouble with my weight since puberty. I have been more or less overweight most of my life and have had periods where it was ‘really too much’. I have done sustained weight loss too by ‘eating healthily but less’ – and having a prize for every five kilos off (a DVD box set in the noughties, a good book this time. Reaching 95 kilos earned me ‘Regime Change’)
Unless people have a really serious medical condition that requires weight loss, that system is the only one that works. Synthetically reducing your appetite does little towards conditioning yourself to eating less (that goes for crash dieting too, by the way) and therefore is no long-term solution
I know my way works – but only if you keep it up for a year or two and only if you watch out not to ‘fall off the wagon’ a few years later. I am halfway through my third ‘thirty kilos off’ trajectory in forty years. They did not keep me off obesity, but they did keep me off morbid obesity, and at times off ordinary obesity too
Pills have side effects
Use a calorie counting app to track your calories, replace your highest calorie / least filling foods with much better foods, seeds etc that have high protein per calorie, and go for a walk after breakfast, lunch and dinner. Add two to three workouts a week of any exercise at any level you can manage… It takes consistency but it works. Pills have side effects, but a daily eating and exercise plan builds a better metabolism
Some of the comments have been edited for this article for brevity and clarity
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