If you are on weight loss injections, what do you make of this article?

[IwishIwasacaterpillar]

If you have come off them, have you gained weight very quickly?

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jan/07/weight-loss-jabs-regain-two-years-health-study

It is very expensive. I pay £250 a month for my Mounjaro pen, the same again to my personal trainer and then gym membership on top of that. It's worth it for my health, but the price of GLP-1s will come down as pill forms are developed and the patents expire in the next few years.

Well whenever I've lost weight before I've always gained the weight back plus a bit more, so this is hardly surprising. I'm fully expecting to be on some kind of maintenance dose for life, or if that's not possible then to be off and on them like people go back on WW every January.

At least now I understand more about why I gain weight, and that my body behaves very differently to people who are able to stay naturally slim.

I eat healthily and exercise 3x a week and am still obese. It’s lazy to assume all overweight people have terrible habits. I have no issue with being on a low dose of WLIs for life.

Well yes, we get that because we are not stupid.

Yes, we're all different and I think we all need to find a combo of strategies that work for us. I run fasted in the morning and take my first meal at 1200. This has worked wonders for me. The fact that exercise suppresses hunger hormones and releases endorphins and dopamine really makes weight loss so much easier. I weight train too which is associated with obvious benefits. There is evidence that rapid weight loss using WLI's can age people by up to10 years in terms of muscle and bone density loss. This is extremely worrying. Especially for the female population. Diet and exercise is exactly what it takes to lose weight safely and effectively.

What I see is a lot of people posting about their diminished appetite, living on 1 200 calories a day! How is that sustainable? How is that healthy? Those people are simply replacing their obsession with eating with an obsession with not eating.

Also, they dont learn to say no to cravings because they're not there. They don't learn balance because there is none.

The likelihood is that these treatments will be available in pill form before too long and that prices will come down massively for both jabs and pills. Suspect that many will be on them for life just as people take statins for life, especially as our understanding of metabolic disease increases.

I don't understand why dieticians and doctors aren't addressing the fact that simple (bad) carbs are responsible for the craving of more and more and never feeling full etc.
All this 'food noise' people talk of is caused by this.
The jabs are just a crutch with a load of side effects that who knows what will cause in the future.

I have a couple of friends who are doing well after and they are using fasting and found it is the easiest way.
I cant afford the jabs but have lost over a stone over the last year through fasting. Its the easiest way for me to control the endless food noise.

I'm on Wegovy but have found the nausea/lack of appetite means Im just not interested in any food, healthy or otherwise. So I'm not building any good habits on the eating front. I'm just not eating much. So I fully anticipate when I come off wegovy I will have difficulties when the hunger pangs return.

That describes most diets. I have a great deal of experience of all of them! Go on any MN weight loss thread and you will see examples of obsessive and unsustainable behaviour. No one has really come up with an alternative, I'm afraid.

I can only say personally that I do not go as low as 1200 calories, in fact I do not calorie count at all. This is one useful thing I have gained from the many years of therapy and psychological intervention I have had to try to find this balance you mention. But therapy didn't work any better for me than intermittent fasting or Jillian Michaels' The Shred or anything else I've tried (which, by the way, is everything). It has let me leave calorie counting and some other painful and damaging behaviour behind, but it never helped me lose weight or maintain weight loss. In order to not be obese anymore, having fought this battle since my pre-teens in every possible physical and psychological way imaginable short of surgery (the only intervention I've never tried), I take the injections and they work, and I intend to be on them forever. I don't believe there is another solution to obesity for many others like me.

I think this is partially true. I am a distance runner so have learned to use simple carbs strategically, eating around my runs and treating them as fuel. Post run, and on strength training days I prioritise proteins, essential fats and veg.

I’m on MJ and I know this is a real possibility but also I feel like if I don’t try then I won’t know if I’m one of the ones who will or won’t out it back on - and it’s got to be worth a go because of the health impacts.

I also exercise regularly, I’m not trying to lose shed loads of weight because I know it won’t be realistic for me to maintain, and I’m not eating a tiny amount of calories on it.

I’ll be honest I’ve not changed my diet yet, just eating smaller portions, but only started in November and then had Christmas so I’ve always had in mind that I’ll use Jan/ Feb to start healthier habits and I’ll also make sure I’m on MJ long enough that those habits have become the norm. I plan to track calories long term, MJ has just made it possible for me to get into that habit.

As I say it may well all go on but at least I’ll know that I’ve tried and my only options are to stay on it for life or accept being obese and the health issues that comes with that.

You might be on too high a dose, or wegovy may not be suited to you. Total appetite suppression isn't advisable, and it's something you should discuss with your provider as simply not eating will lead to the muscle and bone density loss other posters have mentioned, and that will create more problems including weight regain.

Whether intended or otherwise this does come across as a bit of a gotcha.

Most people who have lost weight on WLIs haven’t spent their entire lives just gaining weight. If you were to picture a graph it wouldn’t be a steady line going up but a zigzagging one, up and down, often quite dramatically. For my part, I spent pretty much the whole of my twenties and the first five years of my thirties gaining and losing the same two and a half stone.

The shocking headline that ‘most people who lose weight on a diet gain it again’ is not the revolutionary headline perhaps the guardian thinks it is. It is true of just about every popular and unpopular diet or weight loss method you can think of: weight watchers and slimming world, meal replacements, low carb, clean eating.

I am not convinced that getting to the root of the psychological aspect is the answer either. I don’t need a counsellor to tell me why I eat too much! And it’s funny when people triumphantly say how expensive it would be to be on them for life - indeed, about the same as therapy, but I bet if I said I needed therapy and it was saving my life people would support that.

It’s so tiresome. Just let me be happy FFS.

It's not always about bad habits but simply about eating too much. You can eat as healthily as you like but if you eat too many calories you will gain weight.

I think mounjaro etc has sadly shown a lot of people how little they really need to eat, especially in middle age.

I thought it was common knowledge and
well documented that the majority regain the weight lost, this is the evidence that people haven’t changed their lifestyle or habits

It's absolutely not evidence of that at all!!

It’s very true for me but was always true about any diet I have been on.

I wonder if the regain is faster because the weight loss achieved is larger than would’ve been achieved otherwise so the rebound effect is bigger.

I haven’t gone back over my original starting weight because I have restarted the medication before that has happened but I do think I probably would, which is what has happened in previous yo-yo diet cycles.

Those people have said I’m sure the drugs will become cheaper over the years and I do think the weight gain problems of middle age are reduced in old age so maybe not for all of life.

No, but people who come off weight loss jabs do regain weight faster than those who lose weight through traditional diet and exercise based strategies. This suggests it's probably a good idea to lose weight by changing diet and exercising.

I'll move to tablets and be on them for life.

I stopped them in October after losing 60lb. I have put back on 3lbs and been pretty stable since. I want to lose another 3 stone ish so will give them another go shortly.

I stopped 6 months ago and have put on around about 2lb (I blame Christmas!). I weigh weekly and cut if appropriate. My friend who took it the same time as I did has also put on a couple pounds. She also does the same.

This is what I thought, but the hunger that kicks back in was insatiable for me, I literally could of ate a horse

I maintained perfectly well off the jabs within 1-2kg of my lowest weighy after going on injections for Type 2 diabetes. I lost 3 stone, and reversed the Type 2 with diet, exercise and the lowest dose of Mounjaro for 12 months. Once off it, I had to keep to the same high protein, moderate carb diet, not too much alcohol, very few white carbs, sweets/treats, etc, and a regular exercise routine. It was a fairly strict regime, but better than diabetes and cheaper than paying for jabs. When those routines fell off the wagon due to stressful events, weight regain started and I went back in the prediabetic range, so will be restarting treatment to gain control over my blood sugar levels again and reestablish the good habits that reversed it before.

Access to restart treatment is important to prevent the regain getting out of hand, I'm pleased to have been able to nip it in the bud early, and to be able to afford it, because the NHS won't prescribe until I get much fatter and sicker.