Weight loss injections should be advertised as lifelong medications

[weighmoreweighless]

When Ozempic first came out, the guidelines were for usage to be for up to 2 years. I can’t remember if I read the rationale for that but seem to recall it was in the guidelines.
Thinking back it was along the lines of Ozempic was to be used alongside lifestyle and psychological support to address unhealthy eating habits and psychological drivers for overeating. By the end of two years people were expected to be able to maintain these new habits and weight. Happy to be corrected there but that’s meet I remember reading.

Now we have Mounjaro and many users are saying it’s a lifelong medication similar to blood pressure medication or asthma medication.

From reading the weight loss injections topic there are lots of posters who believe they will take the drug for a few months and that will be it, cured of obesity.

Now many of those who have successfully lost several stones are saying that they will remain on these drugs for life because of course they stop working once you stop, just like any other medication.

There are plenty of threads from posters who have regained weight after stopping. A few posters say they have maintained their weight loss but these seem rare on mumsnet at least.

I know diets don’t work and wish that word would disappear beyond being used to describe what we eat eg vegetarian diet, Mediterranean diet etc. I’d love to see diet replaced with another word or phrase such as healthier lifestyle or similar.

The reason diets fail, or one of them, is that so many people drastically cut their food intake for a few weeks, struggle with hunger, lose a little weight and give up because it’s too hard to sustain that low level of calories, food and nutrients.

The focus should always be on eating a healthier diet, achieving a healthier lifestyle by including more exercise within your own capabilities, less alcohol, not smoking, plenty of vitamin D, good sleep and relaxation habits. It should be a holistic approach, not just eat less, move more. Eat better and yes, move more but it’s more than that. It’s a mindset of needing to change habits for life. Sure we all have times and events where we eat and drink more or don’t exercise as much for a variety of reasons but what matters is what we do most of the time.

With this in mind I’m thinking that the advertising should be changed to reflect this. Companies need to be more transparent about the medications so that people are fully informed that these drugs are not going to be a quick fix or magic cure like people seem to think or hope. I’d be so angry if I’d paid out thousands to lose weight and then when I stopped it came back on because the prescriber hadn’t been completely open with me. There’s been posters who have stuck to healthier eating and increased exercise but still gained weight after stopping.

There’ll be arguments for fully researching the drugs before taking but how many people have the time or understanding of research to be fully informed? Most will just trust what they read in the press or on social media and the pharmacist prescribing. Critical thinking isn’t applied or rather thinking about what happens after. It’s the instant gratification and not thinking of the long term consequences or the financial implications of having to pay out indefinitely or at least until they become available for all on the NHS. Not unlike that packet of jam doughnuts I really wanted to buy yesterday instead of eating a healthy lunch . Just to clarify I wouldn’t have eaten them all. Two of the five for sure though and maybe a third after the school run. I’m a terrible sugar fiend.

This has ended up all disjointed because I can’t go back up the page to edit as I’m typing. I’ll try once I get to the edit option. I have ADHD and my thought processes are all over the place and I go off on tangents. Sorry.

TL:DR Should pharmaceutical companies/pharmacies/doctors/pharmacists change their advertising and recommendations to say that WLI (weight loss injections/medications) are likely to be needed to be taken for life to control obesity due to the likelihood of weight being regained once stopping even in cases of maintained healthy diet and lifestyle due to the chronic nature of obesity?

I’m going to try and edit this now into some semblance of order but if it remains chaotic I’m sorry. It at least has paragraphs even if it does jump around like a flea at a fair.

Poll:

YABU: No, people who take these drugs should realise that these aren’t a quick fix and they need to stay on them long term, and be prepared for the financial cost.

YANBU: Pharmaceutical companies/pharmacies/ pharmacists etc should tell people they are likely to need to take this for life and pay for it themselves unless it becomes available to all on the NHS.

Of course when you stop taking an apatite suppressing drug then your apetite will stop being suppressed.

You will then probably eat more and most likely gain weight. If you stop reducing calorues after ANY diet you will regain weight. Ts not complicated.

If people were able to resist hunger and eating cues on their own they wouldnt fat and there would be no market for the drugs.

I know that without @LI, hunger and cravings will beat me. I will stay on them so long as I have a penny in the bank and breath in my lungs. That was always my intention. I was not misled. They have changed my life imeasurably for the better.

If people can take maintenance doses of weight loss injections once they're at a healthy weight, why can't slightly overweight people access them? It seems unfair that you have to be very overweight to be able to get these when they clearly have a massive impact.

Amazing that you've read this thread and still need to ask that question! Obesity is a disease and it continues to affect people even after losing weight. That's why it's considered an acceptable risk to continue taking WLI once fat is lost because the likelihood of regaining weight is very high. Whereas a person who is just a bit overweight doesn't have that likelihood of becoming obese so the risk of introducing a drug with potential side effects just to lose a bit of weight isn't considered acceptable.
In fact there are clinics prescribing off label to people who aren't obese and I'm sure that's the direction of travel but it's not that difficult to find the answer to your question if you give it a bit of thought.

I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt whilst deciding not to reply to the aggressive reply you had but your comment about broccoli has let you down

Fact - if a person could physically eat 3500 calories worth of broccoli a day and weren’t in a calorie deficit at the end of the day they would gain weight.

Eating healthy foods, Im with you on this. I was the same. I ate clean. Very clean. Everything was home made - I have someone who cooks for me. In fact I’d go as far as to say that my diet was my MO and I could cope with obesity to a certain extent by telling myself - I’m not a fatty who scoffs crisps and burgers and all manners of other rubbish. But my portion sizes were way off and I’d usually have another late night meal or eat other very healthy food in secret. I don’t know how much I was eating calorie wise but I wasn’t in a calorie deficit so I gained weight. Yet as soon as I started eating 1400/1500 calories a day so that I’d be in a calorie deficit of 400/500 daily I lost weight with the help of Mounjaro. Thirty kgs at no more than 450 gms a week for as long as it took.

Your nutritionist - I think it’s great you saw one. I’ve not had a nutritionist on this journey with me but I have and still have counselling to deal with what made me feed my emotions in the first place.

Oh and I was a crossfitter for years before I started Mounjaro so I was very fit but I was still on medication for high BP and prediabetes. My cholesterol had also started to go wrong. Now though I’m off all meds and my cholesterol is perfect. I don’t do CrossFit anymore but I do have functional fitness type personal training twice a week, and I also do two home based session online that my PT sets up for me to do alone on other days.

I call it my ‘whole person approach to me’ and it covers good emotional, mental and physical health as being key to everything I need at 68 to hopefully get another good few decades of life out of me.

eta - it’s never crossed my mind to be on Mounjaro lifelong and I’ll do whatever I can not to be.

i fully intend to stay on long term. I want all the benefits the drugs bring, from reduced cancers on, and I don’t want to live my life struggling with my weight, been maintaining on it at a bmi 20 for about 14 months or so now, weight very stable and feel better than I have in a long time.

and that’s a choice I’m making, others will chose to come off, and maintain without, this is an equally valid choice and is no different to when you stop any other diet and they will succeed. Others will come off and find they do start to regain, and they can just buy another pen, as long as it’s within a year of stopping, and they don’t need to become overweight again, they can say go from bmi 20 to 22 and buy one. And just bring their weight back to where they wish, then start on their own again, thus only needing a pen sporadically. This is also a valid choice.

and that’s what we have op. Choices. Our bodies. Our money, our choice.

A lot of obese people start off overweight. Surely preventative weight loss injections would be a good idea?

Please don't be passive aggressive towards me, it's nasty and uncalled for. I'm genuinely curious.

The drugs are licenced for what they are licenced for. Off label use is becoming more common and FWIW I do agree with you that they are probably beneficial overall to people who aren't obese but are overweight. But what is a good idea and what is licenced aren't always the same thing.

A couple of main stream pharmacies now prescribe at bmi 25.

I’d be interested in the long term effects of these drugs. They’re so fresh and we don’t know enough about them yet. I’d hazard a guess people will absolutely need them long term to prevent weight gain. Not everyone but I think it’ll work the same as people who need antidepressants long term.

My mum is one of these people. Antidepressants I think her whole adult life and whenever she’s tried to stop, she gets so depressed she has to go straight back on them. She’s been taking WLI for around a year and has got very slim but is still taking them so she doesn’t regain. She wasn’t obese when she started but was about 3 stone overweight so almost. I know what she’s like, she won’t stop now and will use them forever.

I don’t really get why people use the royal “we” in sentences like this when what they mean is they don’t know. Glp’s have been in use for over 20 years, in trials for 15 years before it. They have nearly 40 years data, they know. The health authorities know. And yes they can extrapolate from the diabetes patients data on how the human body reacts to the drugs.

What are the benefits? I had an appointment with a cardiovascular consultant and he was generally against them. He talked me out of trying them. I am worried about gaining even more, once stopped. How much is your maintenance dose?

First thing my doctor (specialist obesity GP, not in the UK) said to me when we spoke about GLP1 was that I had to be prepared to take them for life, in the same way as most medications for chronic diseases are life long (blood pressure tablets etc). GLPs aren’t funded by government where I live but they are prescribed by GP in the same way as other drugs.

Difference from what I know of the Uk is because they aren’t funded by the NHS, the NHS GPs don’t prescribe them, offer advice and follow up etc so now the culture sees them as lifestyle related rather than a chronic disease medication.

We have years of diet culture/ weight stigma causing people living with the disease of obesity to feel shame and we live in a culture where we are subject to harsh judgement for having obesity. Now thankfully science has proved the causes are multi faceted and there are medical treatments that treat the metabolic causes of the disease. These treatments are very expensive and are being dropped into the diet culture society that is evolving.

Ultimately when they come off patent and are cheaper it will all normalise.

I voted YABU because all this information about GLPs exists, nothing is “advertised” it is prescription medication, online prescribers are filling the vacuum caused by lack of NHS funding. And my guess would be that vast majority of people taking are informed and trying to improve their long term heath.

Wow, they are about to be approved for treating cardio vascular disease. You got some bad advice there,

you can google. But so far cardio vascular, kidney, liver health improvement, and reduced cancers.

they also think reduced dementia, now in testing.

anti ageing also in testing, as they have found the anti inflammatory effect allows our cells to regenerate, (internal organs) as ageing is effectively inflammation, whenever we get ill through our lifetimes, be it a cold or a virus, or a cut or bruise etc, as much as we recover, our cells always carry a marker of that, that’s ageing, and by reducing the inflammation the cells are able to regenerate, and they have seen ageing being reversed, stopped or slowed, so now testing is being done on this, so they can know definitively.

I’m curious as to why a consultant discouraged medication with huge cardiovascular benefits?

Yes I’m surprised too, it’s over 60 percent reduction in heart events I think, likely just anothee doctor who hasn’t bothered to educate himself.

20% reduction in heart attacks. Obviously obesity is a major risk for heart disease too. I’m not sure what your consultant is reading. The NHS is starting to prescribe wegovy for heart disease prevention.

I started on 2.5mg and am continuing on that. I’ve lost 5 stone so far and would like to lose another 1/2 stone.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/oct/weight-loss-drug-helps-heart-regardless-amount-weight-lost

I know my dad’s cardiologist said he was recommended them (as a cardiologist!!!) but he decided not to because there were reports of temporary worsening of diabetic retinopathy. Seems you can be a doctor and still be a bit silly!

I think it’s a tricky one as obesity is so multi-faceted. Some people have struggled with being overweight/obese their entire life and have never really been a healthy weight, I think for those people then WLIs are probably a long-term or lifelong mediation. But for others, weight gain has been something situational, related to other health issues, a result of an emotional trauma, and for those people then maintaining without may be possible.

I wasn’t obese till after I had kids, I found it very hard to lose the weight during lockdowns and after and my mum had stage 4 cancer (and subsequently died from it) so I wasn’t mentally in a great place. When I had my maintenance talk with my provider, we discussed my weight history and that I had spent 30 years at a healthy weight previously, and decided that being off WLIs was probably possible for me. It has proved to be the case, I’m a year in and still 7lbs down on what my weight was when I stopped them.

So I think advice needs to be more tailored, really.

“Weight-loss jabs will be offered on NHS for people at risk of further heart attacks”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz90595pgzlo

I agree that people should understand that it’s a lifelong drug Unfortunately many people are using the drug as a quick fix , not exercising & not learning how to eat healthily ( my own experience of the dozen or so people that I know who are using it
) .
Of course there will also be those that are doing it properly but I imagine they’ll also be relying on it for a long time . Either way the NHS need to build life long dependency into their calculations when budgeting for its use with patients and pharmaceuticals need to ensure the costs involved in lifetime use are communicated to users when starting out

I think the medical community has really shown a shameful under belly with these medicines. So many anecdotes now coming out about doctors giving misinformation and personal bias. Of course there are many who are also knowledgeable and work in the patients benefits, my gp was one, she recommended them even thou she couldn’t prescribe. And they all go through training on them at that surgery. As they feel they are responsible for the overall health of their patients, and should be in a position of knowledge.

however it’s now become apparent, many doctors don’t know anything about them, make erroneous assumptions, give bad or dangerous advice, use their personal biases to discuss them ie your fat so eat less and move more, and won’t help their patients unless they are paid more and see the cash.

up until now there was a misconception that Doctors were knowledgeable. Worked in the patients best interests, and wouldn’t give misinformation, they’d decline to comment or read up first. And we have now all realised it’s far from the truth, and I suspect this is because it is fat people they are dealing with.

I was offered a heart scan as part of research for over 55's. Although I'm obese, my heart is healthy and my cancer risk low. It isn't as clear as obese = worse health outcomes. He is a research cardiovascular consultant, at the time he was working out of Liverpool Royal hospital. All you mention is true, but with just Statins and a lifestyle that we are supposed to follow, will do the same. He felt there are risks to lifelong medication and we shouldn't be medicating at the lower end of obesity. He likened it to medicating lung conditions in heavy smokers. You are just putting off the inevitable early death, unless the addiction is given up.

I think it’s quite widely accepted that obesity = worse health outcomes. I’d be looking for a new consultant!

Have you got a link to that? I mentioned this, my heart is healthy so it doesn't apply to me, but he said the research isn't that clear and it's around 20%, but for some categories and a by-effect of WLI was many people stopped smoking.

He isn't reading anything, he's part of the research. As my pp said, WLI do stop other addictions, such as smoking and paying for WLI spurs people on to exercise. Interestingly so did paying for other forms of weight loss, even slimming world.