Anyone taken weight loss injections and regretted it?

Oh and I put all the weight back on in 6 months.

BTW, the long term plan with these medications should be to stay on them. This is what the pharmacist at my GP has advised me.
£200 a month is a bit of a squeeze right now, so I'm taking a break and I expect to put on some weight. I'll go back on them if it starts to feel problematic. In the mean time I'm trying to maintain the habit of eating less, and increasing the amount of plant based food and fibre in my diet.

I'm hoping at some point the NHS will fund weight loss medication for maintenance for people whose BMI was over 30 when they started treatment. I think it'll happen eventually, particularly when the next generation of GLP1s come onto the market - apparently there are some that are in tablet form and they'll be significantly cheaper.

Me! Lost lots of weight - got down to just over 7 stone.
When I stopped taking it my digestive system stopped working and I ended up in hospital... I was totally unable to poo or fart (sorry tmi). I was throwing up the laxatives I was prescribed.
This was last summer. I am still not ok and my sigmoid colon has been damaged and will never be ok.

I have pain everyday.

What's your BMI OP? Are you genuinely eligible?

What's your long term plan? As sadly it's most likely you'll regain when you stop.

@Agix

"Just eat less. If the weight doesn't come off, you're eating too much."

The absolute failure to understand the experience of being overweight and struggling to lose it.. Where do you start? 😞

I saw a doctor's post about a study on a new weight loss drug - Retatrutide - that's just going through a phase 3 clinical trial.

The control groups were the existing weight loss drugs + diet and exercise support, and a control group that had intensive diet and exercise support.

The group in the trial who had support with diet and exercise lost 4 kilos on average throughout the 12 weeks of the trial, which is pretty good. But the medication group lost many times that amount, with the Retatrutide group losing about 5 times as much as the support for lifestyle changes alone group.

By intensive support with lifestyle changes I mean they had 3 contacts with health professionals a week, a personal diet and exercise programme, and supervised exercise. That's about the standard of the most expensive and comprehensive weight loss programmes currently available on the NHS in the UK.

My DH signed up for one of these programmes earlier this year through his GP. 3 exercise classes a week. He had 1 to 1 and small group coaching and was encouraged to stop eating sugar and refined carbohydrates, which he did. He lost a few lbs and enjoyed the classes, but hasn't kept up the exercise habit since finishing - he's just so busy with his job and his elderly mum is so poorly. While he was doing that I took Mounjaro. I lost 50lbs, massively increased both my exercise capacity and my exercise habit, because it's now not painful or exhausting to to it.

I think the point I'm making is that people who've never experienced repeated failure to achieve or maintain significant weight loss really don't understand what the issues are. And actually those who've managed to achieve it who're now going around saying 'if I can do it, so can anyone' are in some ways worse, because they don't understand that we're not all made the same, and weight loss is vastly harder for some overweight people than others.

Yes, I love weight training and recommend it to everyone but it wasn't a silver bullet for me.

I've done weight training since I was 18 years old and I'm now 49. After gaining weight having kids then being diagnosed with PCOS and endometriosis, then losing and putting on the same stone in peri menopause for the last 16+ years I turned to mounjaro.

Based on the poster's subsequent attempt to provide evidence, no. Or if there is, she doesn't know about it. The links only showed that weight gain after coming off the injections is a risk, which pretty much everyone knows and that isn't even relevant for a lot of us who intend to remain on long term. People often tend to miss that if a person already qualifies for WLIs, there is no risk free outcome and thus it's a question of weighing up multiple pros and cons.

It's interesting that some people are so keen on the idea that they'll overstate the case. Worth thinking critically about why. Is it preconceptions, people seeing what they want to see, wishful thinking, outright dishonesty?

Actually they will be healthier because losing weight makes a big difference to health! Yes, you could try the traditional diets but no doubt the OP already has and they don’t work as well and it really is a struggle too! That’s why people crash off them in the end. Is it so socially unacceptable for a treatment which makes you healthier to also be less of a punishment!

I love Mounjaro. However also did well on Slimming World. Maybe try that first? I’m 50 and menopause fat doesn’t sit well with me.

I went on the cambridge diet and shifted three stone in four months with doing that and excercising. Have you tried something like that because you can do the injections, but most people I know on them have not changed their lifestyle or increased their excercise and weight has dropped off but in reality they arent any healthier. Surely the goal should be to be healthier, and the weight will drop of as a consequence. The injections are a magic pill but then what. Youll just be skinnier with the same bad habits.

I've been on mj since March and Have lost 3 stone
I am very happy with that as I am coeliac and have an under active thyroid so loosing weight was always a huge battle and one I was too exhausted to tackle without help
But when I come off the injections, I am determined to stick to my better choices. I don't snack as much as I used to and I've started running, which has become easier with the excess weight off

Lost 50lbs in 6 months. Effortlessly, with no significant side effects. Mounjaro.

No regrets. All other attempts to control weight with exercise/diet, resulted in me actually putting on weight (and not good muscle weight - fat) because I just couldn't be consistent.

There isn't lots of evidence is there? Just more of what somebody thinks. Please link that those taking MJ gain more weight after than those on traditional diets @Cucy. I get sick of reading bollocks that folks state are fact, happy to proven wrong.

No regrets I've lost 5 stone since Jan with the jabs.

People who say “just eat less” have no idea what it’s like to be overweight or obese! If the solution was so simple then why doesn’t everyone just do that, Einstein?

But it is completely true. What’s not easy is that we don’t eat because of hunger and that’s the bit that can be impossible to control , that drive from the body whether emotional or physical, the availability of food , the joining in social side of it. But that doesn’t make what that poster said untrue.

if you watch those terribly sad American shows where people are hundreds and hundreds of pounds overweight, they are all without exception suffering from some trauma or another and food is a safe bet.

Appetite drives us all. The drive to stay alive and input energy is immense! The injections turn off the food noise driving consumption and that is a huge game-changer. People who say just eat less and move more do not understand the complexity of tackling obesity. I’ve lost a lot of weight through the usual efforts and then also regained it! The trick is to keep it off. We don’t know yet if that will be possible with the injections but the technology is advancing fast. Soon there will be tablets and if a daily pill can keep me a reasonable weight, not perfect, I’d take it!

This shows you have zero understanding of the psychology behind why most women gain weight or how the weight loss injections work. It’s not just about reducing appetite!

Thanks, but this doesn't show that the risk of weight regain is higher than with traditional weight loss methods, and indeed it admits that people won't necessarily regain all weight, let alone all of it plus more. The comparison is what's lacking here.

It does show that weight gain once stopping is a risk, but I don't think anyone suggested otherwise? There's a big difference between people being likely to regain when stopping and regain being more likely than with traditional methods.

And some people are very anti and won’t hear of anything else.

more studies are showing that more people are regaining the weight more than other diets.

But you haven't shown any comparison to other diets @cucy - there is nothing to suggest WLIs are worse for weight regain than other methods of weight loss.

I've looked it up but I couldn't find research to back up the claims you're making here. Could you link to some please? It should be easy if there's that much out there, and you won't need to make subjective claims about common sense.

These are screenshots from a reputable pharmacy that sells them and they’ve cited research.

And these injections haven’t been around that long and so the weight gain that is seen is probably over quite a short period of time and so as time goes on, more studies are showing that more people are regaining the weight more than other diets.

I’m not against the injections at all but I think people like OP need to know the pros and cons to make an informed decision.

Some people are very pro injections and won’t hear of anything negative but that’s not helpful to the OP.

Do you not think perhaps she's tried this already? 🙄

I have lost 2 stone and 2lbs, I was going to go for another half a stone-ish but I am actually quite happy with where I am now, so just a couple of lbs to go to get me to 10 stone. I was 27 BMI with high cholesterol. It has taken five months and four injections, so quite slow progress, but I couldn't get the weight off without the medication. I don't regret it at all and I've had very minimal side effects from the beginning.