To wonder what happens when you reach a healthy weight on Wegovy etc?

[Milsonophonia]

I have three friends who were mildly overweight who've used Wegovy. All are now looking very slim - one looks a bit frail - she's lost 3 stone. Two of them lied online about their weight to get it. Anyway, they are happy with their new thinness and the new reasrch that it's a potential wonder drug.

What happens when you stop? Do you get the anti inflammatory benefits forever? Or does everything on your body return to how it was - hunger back, no anti inflammatory benefits?

I'm constantly tempted - have a bmi of 29 and need to lose a good stone and a half - but can't seem to find anything about people who have stopped the drug.

Also I'm slightly worried one of my friends is going to disappear, as she's already thin but still taking it. Can you just take it forever?

Don't be so silly.

You really don't think people who are overweight haven't tried and failed to diet, or curb their binge eating? My friends who are overweight have all been on more diets than my friends who are slim.

What’s your weight to gain weight on 1000calories?
im 8 st 10lb….. I gain weight on more than 1500 calories if I do no excercise or walking ……at 1500c I maintain…..tbh I would like to weigh a little more these days as at 59 being too slim is aging

Of course they've tried unsuccessfully to diet, but I think you are living in cloud cuckoo land if you think people aren't trying half heartedly to diet and then just going straight for semiglutide,.particularly now with all the media coverage.

@sunseaandsoundingoff you say "considering there are a lot of long-term cancer risks associated with it" - this isn't true. There's no evidence for this. In one study of semaglutide (Ozempic/Wegovy), in mice that were given massive overdoses of the drug for a significant portion of their lives, there was evidence of thyroid cancer. In the human trials, no evidence of an increase in thyroid cancers was found. As a precaution, due to the mice trial, if you have a family history of thyroid cancer or some other higher risk factor, you might not be prescribed Ozempic/Wegovy.

People seem keen to scaremonger about these drugs in a way they don't about other medications.

When you apply to go on it online they ask for a photo of you in the scales, showing your weight and the date. Then, they want a full length photo of you sideways in close fitting clothes. Did your friend get someone to pose for her?

She held heavy weights on the scales and said rhat was enough.

Tbf she was quite overweight at the time but now she's really skinny so god knows how she's still getting it.

I don’t have any issues with people struggling with obesity going straight for weight loss jabs. Obesity is an epidemic and has far-reaching consequences for society and the planet as a whole. Overconsumption of food resources, the strain on medical resources, etc and so on.

I agree with this and was coming on to say the same. It’s discussed in the podcast I linked.

@sunseaandsoundingoff what source are you using for your statement that there a lot of long term cancer risks?

I make absolutely no judgement about that at all. It just so happens that I know two women and a man on it and none of them are now overweight but still taking it.

Plus the latest thing is it’s anti ageing so even more kerchinggggggg!

Do you know who their online prescriptions are with? They should be asked for further photos and scales images, before being prescribed with further injection pens. If they are skinny as you say, they can't be providing photos of themselves.

I have a hunch that the only people that will benefit from these drugs long term will be the pharmaceutical companies. They will have created lifelong users of their drugs, but the users will be on and off yo-yoing and probably at more risk health-wise because of this. That's my hunch.

MedExpress will prescribe forever as long as your BMI remains over 23. The rules changed very recently.

People who aren’t obese shouldn’t be using these drugs. People are abusing them, as they do with many other drugs. It doesn’t stop them being valuable to those who really need them. We haven’t banned laxatives for example.

Almost no one using weight loss drugs hasn’t tried other means. They’ve only been available for the last couple of years or so. I’ve been on various forms of diet since the 80s. I eat clean (unprocessed food, low sugar, plenty of vegetables, few refined carbs). I also can’t tolerate more than about 1000 calories max without putting on weight (probably as a result of endless cyclical dieting my entire life, like so many other people), and I’m now the lightest I’ve been since my teens (with a BMI of 23). It’s been literally life changing.

All pharmaceutical companies benefit financially from the drugs they develop and make. That's the reason they're in business. That's the model that we and every other democratic capitalist nation follow. These drugs are no different to the other drugs they make.

If these drugs are used long-term, and people maintain a healthy weight, then there will be benefits for society. The diet industry won't be happy though!

Indeed. Weightwatchers and Slimming World for example make an absolute bomb out of millions of people, and they KNOW their business model depends on failure. I still repeatedly see people recommended to go to them on here.

Yes I agree! Why is op against wegovy and ozempic? Because it's something that helps fat people? And they don't deserve it? Surely they should be against companies making any drugs for profit which inturn means capitalism as a whole lol. And that is an entirely different thread!

To be fair, I don't think the OP is against these medications, but more concerned with how some determined people are able to fraudulently obtain private prescriptions for them. I welcome any additional measures to ensure that people are not able to deceive online prescribers. Perhaps a video consultation should be mandatory, for example. I would rather that than any kind of blanket ban on these drugs being prescribed as that would affect those who would benefit and are using them appropriately.

I have been on Wegovy since November last year and I'm now at my goal weight. To cut a long story slightly shorter: I have been fat my entire life, constantly fighting my weight, desperately controlled by a binge-restrict cycle. In lockdown, I put on even more weight. I managed to lose that excess between 2021 and 2023 but once I got back down to my "sticking point" weight (~BMI 34), as usual, I couldn't push below that. My GP knows my weight history and recommended looking into Wegovy privately.

I have lost 130lbs in total - 80lbs of that on Wegovy - and I'm now lighter than I was at 12 years old. Being on the medication has shown me how easy life is when the "food noise" is silenced; without it, I'm ravenous literally every waking minute of every day. I tried everything but, honestly, it's no wonder I couldn't sustain the willpower I needed.

I use an online service and I have spoken with the prescribing doctor about what happens now. I can't stay on the highest dose but she will work with me to titrate down and find a suitable maintenance dose, which I can take for the foreseeable future. Quite frankly, I was fucking miserable before Wegovy and I will happily stay on it for the rest of my life if they'll let me. I spent decades wishing I could sell my soul to get rid of my appetite, and I have no desire to have it back.

Finally, everyone loses muscle when they lose a lot of weight. There are many reasons for it, but a big one is that my body simply doesn't need the muscle mass it had when it was carrying around 257lbs. However, extreme muscle loss can be avoided by eating enough protein and doing resistance training.

Oh fgs, if you've actually read my posts I'm not against it! I'm actually just wondering how my friend, who is now very thin, is still managing to get it. I know nothing about them. I wondered if you could get a maintenance dose. Which I'm not sure anyone has answered.

Does it make you paranoid as well as thin??

I'm now lighter than I was at 12 years old

That really shocked me.

You can continue to get a prescription at a healthy weight if you are still trying to achieve a realistic target weight. Some pharmacies are suggesting that they will continue to prescribe after that but I'm not sure how many people are actually doing this. If your friend is at the lower end of a healthy weight or underweight then they should not be getting a maintenance dose. But they are already deceiving their prescriber or getting it illegally, so they could be doing all sorts to acquire the medication that they want. Your friends are not good examples on which to base any judgements about this.

I heard you had to be on those weight loss drugs for life otherwise people tend to just regain (as with most other diets).

Can you explain how as there is a process to go through including uploading photographs and proof of ID. And for the most part your Dr is informed.

edited to add

She held heavy weights on the scales and said rhat was enough.

Im not sure how that’s possible with a full length picture being required.

I actually have no idea but she's really thin and still getting it!

My only judgement is that she is getting it somehow and almost certainly shouldn't be.