‘I’ve shrunk from a size 3XL to an extra small on weight loss drugs - and saved £4,000’

A woman has saved £4,000 in a year on her food shopping after losing 11st on Mounjaro.

Holly Barron, 22, gained eight stone in a year after a PCOS diagnosis and was diagnosed with type two diabetes when she was 20. At her heaviest, Holly weighed 21st 8Ibs.

She tried different diets and struggled to lose weight. After suffering an intolerance to her old diabetes medication Metformin and spending four days in hospital, her diabetes clinic prescribed her a 2.5mg dose of Mounjaro in June 2025.

With the help of the jab and overhauling her old eating habits, Holly has lost more than 11st and has shrunk from a size two or three XL and is now an XS and a 13 junior.

The part-time content creator from Urmston, Manchester, has been able to more than halve her expenses on food shopping and have more extra cash to spend on what she wants to.

A study revealed nearly two-thirds of their 11,638 respondents reported reducing meals out since starting their jabs.

And households with at least one GP-1 user spent £418 less on grocery shopping in the year after starting their medication compared with non-users.

Holly said: “I used to spend £540 a month on takeaways and I now spend £200 a month on healthy foods so I have been able to save more than £4,080 in one year.

“The money that used to go on the takeaways is able to go on the food shopping and I have a big full month budget and plan everything out day to day.”

Before starting Mounjaro, Holly tended to grab a bacon butty or a McDonald’s breakfast in the morning and have a Chinese takeaway or a meal deal for dinner.

After following a strict diet of chicken salads for dinner and high protein snacks for six months, Holly now enjoys planning her meals to get her daily carb count and staying in her calorie deficit.

She has found she particularly likes to eat Chinese style pork loins from Asda with an egg and garlic and herb mayonnaise eggs for dinner to get her protein and vitamin intake.

Holly said she has been able to treat herself since cutting back her spending on takeaways and has bought herself a brand-new gaming computer worth more than £1,000, a splash out she would have felt extremely guilty about before the weight loss.

She said: “I didn’t want to splash out all the extra cash at once straightaway; I chose to save it up and buy something special.

“It felt good to be able to go out and buy the gaming PC without feeling I needed to go out and earn it straightaway because I didn’t have to worry about spending too much on unhealthy food.

“It has been such a nice feeling to be able to buy new things without feeling guilty. I have bought myself a whole new wardrobe and bought loads of clothes all in one go because I’ve lost the weight and the cost didn’t affect me.”

Holly got the results from her doctor about her blood glucose test and they said she did not have to increase her 7.5mg dose of Mounjaro because it had worked so well.

The content creator has been documenting her weight loss journey on TikTok @hollbarron which has 63.3K followers and has achieved more than 5.7 million likes.

She said: “Using Mounjaro has made me feel so much more confident and now I am working towards maintaining my weight.

“I know exactly who I am now and been able to manage my budget a lot better.”