So I have lost nearly 7 stone on them, with 1 stone to go. I can honestly say I have not had a single bad side effect beyond feeling uncomfortably bloated the day after I take the injection. I never went up to a particularly high dose which I think helped. I am now tapering off them, and my calorie intake has increased but I am still losing weight. It’s actually surprised me to see how much I can actually eat and still lose weight. I don’t feel I eat that little on them now, perhaps 1500 - 1700 calories a day (I am a short, only moderately active woman) but before I was eating more like 3000-3500 calories a day, so it’s a large deficit by comparison. It’s a lie to say I’m not anxious abut regain - of course I am, but that would be true no matter how I lost weight. It’s not something you can do for a bit and then go back to your old ways, and my eating has now changed drastically (not so much in what I eat, I always ate healthily about 80% of the time, but in portion control). I think the thing that keeps you going is motivation, and I have to say that WLI have changed my life. Not from an aesthetic point of view as I’ve never been one for thinness = attractiveness, but I am now eligible for fertility support, I don’t have the headache of shopping in specialist places and only online, I spend much less on food, I don’t chafe or sweat excessively, I fit comfortably in chairs and on airplanes and trains, my BP is normal again, my cholesterol levels are healthy again, my skin and hair are better, I have a LOT more energy, things that I used to have to plan for and give a lot of thought to I can just do now. I was on a dog walk with my husband and I badly sprained my ankle - he was able to give me a piggy back the whole way back to the car. It’s things like that which have given me my life back. I felt I was a prisoner in my own body before, and now I feel I have freedom. Ultimately, I would never tell someone to go on them - but I would never want to impart fear onto someone as they have given me so so much.
As for gallbladders - you are at higher risk of developing gallstones and needing your gallbladder removed if you lose a lot of weight (and quite quickly), but also if you are overweight. I can only speak anecdotally, but I know four people who have had their gallbladders removed - two of them are very overweight, one of them lost a lot of weight with a gastric band, the other was a healthy weight but just got them, it happens! For what it’s worth - at 7 stone down in a year, my gallbladder is fine!!