Anyone taken weight loss injections and regretted it?

[itsallfoggy]

I feel losing weight wouid help me build my confidence and get life back on track but im
just really scared that something awful will happen. I am very close to ordering online. I need to lose around 2 stones. It just won’t shift. Please share your experiences. Thank you ☺️

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.

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

@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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Exactly.

What it has done (I hope) is made me fit and strong (along with yoga, cardio etc) and has probably contributed to keeping my weight from being a lot more. Most women put on 5kg to 10kg in peri menopause. I put weight on having kids in my 30s but then actually lost about 5kg during my 40s. Just really struggled to get below BMI 27/28. Developing high (for me) blood pressure and joint pain was the last straw for me. I'm hoping now at BMI 25.6, going down to BMI 23/24 it will kind of reset my weight. My diet was good, I just couldn't sustain eating in the kind of calorie deficit required to lose weight for long enough.

My GP was very supportive and said to do whatever works for me. I was only just in the obese category but being menopausal suffering from joint pain and general tiredness I was struggling to stay on track with any fitness regime or diet. There’s jabs have supported me and I’ve lost very slowly going up only to 5mg. I think you have to take a measured approach. There’s a risk in any medication but balance that against being obese and the implications that go along with that.

I do too, especially if the preliminary research about the other benefits comes to fruition.

Cost and logistics are a problem at the moment, and the NHS can also reap the benefits of a significant minority of the obese population funding it themselves as things stand. But these are things that could change.

Sorry to hear about your experience but were you receiving clinical advice to remain on WLI when you were only 7 stone? If if you are very, very short that is starvation/eating disorder territory.

I had a bad and extreme reaction. I was a ‘super responder’. On smallest dose for three weeks and over four weeks lost 22lbs. I retched if I even smelt food.

it interfered with my depression meds and sent me proper loopy. Took about 6/8 weeks to stabilise after the injections and I was off work.

I have no gallbladder as that went in my early 20s after slimming world. I have maybe two stone to lose?

my friend who is celiac had dreadful sulphur burps and constant diarrhea. My other friend also coeliac has found it amazing and only has maybe a stone to lose.

There a large amount of luck
involved.

I have been on WLI since January and have lost 3st. I'm very happy with them. Still have around 2st to lose.

I don't think you would qualify for WLI as only 2st would not put you above 30 BMI.

Please think carefully about this. Do not lie to qualify, be honest.

You are unlikely to be heavy enough to need them. I have lost 5 stone on MJ and am still technically 2 stones overweight but my BMI is now 27 so wouldn't be eligible to get it.

You are eligible at BMI 27+ if you have things like PCOS, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes etc. And you can usually carry on to lose weight down to BMI 23 once you are on tirzepatide.

https://onlinedoctor.asda.com/uk/mounjaro-pcos.html

I think in the next few many years many will regret it for some reason.
Same as having fillers and botox etc.

What reason/reasons do you think people will have for regretting it?

I'm 5.1"
I was not underweight at the time but I did get very slim, very quickly.

I used them for about 8 months. In that time I lost approximately a stone (with horrendous stomach pains, nausea, anxiety etc) a year later I have lost an additional 3 stone through calorie counting and regular exercise. I often wonder if I should try losing the final 1.5/ 2 stone with the injections combined with calorie counting and exercise, but then remember how ill they made me. I think they must be great for some people, and I don't regret taking them- but have found that diet and exercise with a healthy dose of will power has been more beneficial to me. And hopefully will be a better long term solution as now I have created healthy habits I can stick to.

There are companies that provide maintenance plans for around £120 per month. Check out https://monj.co.uk/mounjaro-maintenance-pharmacies/

Also!! I have had a thyroid goitre for many years which caused no issues and was stable. In the time I took the ozempic it grew exponentially- to the point I now need a total thyroidectomy as the goitre is now in my chest cavity and compressing my tracea. I do not know if this is linked but as ozempic is linked to thyroid cancer I would say there's a decent chance I have done this to myself by taking the injections. I have been too embarrassed to ask my consultant. I will say that for those with obesity which causes genuine health problems then ozempic is probably the lesser of 2 evils. But as someone who was obese with no health problems, it has likely been more damaging to me than not.

🙄

That puts you on the threshold of 'underweight' BMI - I'm sorry you didn't get better clinical care. It seems madness that any clinician allowed you to stay on WLI with this BMI. That's exactly why they are clamping down now.

What a ridiculous comment

Totally agree. We all know what we NEED to do but the WLI injections turn off the food noise and keep us fuller longer so that it's easier to do what we NEED to do!