Piling the weight back on when stopping MJ

[Richtea67]

Hi all....I'm so disappointed. I lost 3 and a half stone, have been off injections for a month and regained nearly 7lbs 😩. I was a slow loser (1-2lb per week) and focused on changing habits and reducing portion size rather than diets/calorie counting (this has led to binging previously). I have kept up with a lot of the habits (smoothie for breakfast, cutting out alcohol and healthy high protein snacks). But portion sizes have definitely gone up as I'm hungrier! And I've been more tempted by the biscuits at work and the kids treats! Any advice?? I'm considering re starting if I put too much weight on, but financially this would be a struggle, which is part of the reason I came off them. My starting weight was 14.5 stones, weight when stopping injections 11 stones and at present nearly half a stone back on!! Help!

When we lose weight our fat cells shrink, they don’t disappear.

A slim person will have less fat cells in their body and it’s easier to fill up a shrunken fat cell than it is to create one.

We also all have different metabolisms and some people are more prone to putting on weight than others.
someone who is overweight is going to have that same metabolism even after they’ve lost weight, so would find it easier to put the weight back on.

There is also a lot of emotional eating and other issues involved.
These are mental conditions which the person had before they lost weight and will often still have after they’ve lost weight that a slim person doesn’t have.

I also think just the act of being restrictive leads to overeating.
If you’re naturally slim and have never had to really restrict your eating because you’ve always ate normally, then you’re never going to feel like you’re restricting yourself.
Whereas when you’re overweight you get into a cycle of being restrictive and then overeating and then being restrictive again and it’s a never ending cycle.

Honestly, it's not worth the risk to my mental wellbeing.

I love this analogy ❤️

That’s true yes. Im just starting my 3rd week of Mounjaro so really trying to get my head around things.
im drastically dieting- very restricted and not sustainable long term but im absolutely starving. Really hungry and thinking about food a lot.
it’s the novelty of a new chance to change my life that’s keeping me going.

I have suddenly developed serious and life threatening health issues. It’s a massive shock but I’m feeling unwell but trudging through

I don't know about anyone else but personally I have never in my life really felt full until trying Mounjaro.

Before I could eat until I felt sick and assumed that was a full feeling, but it's not the same.

I used to carefully count calories and always felt hungry, but I would try and remind myself that I never felt full either way so I might as well stick to the set amount. This worked most of the time and I have managed to keep my weight between BMI 24 and 30 for most of my adult life, but I would have periods where I would lose control and binge. I was already exercising a lot pre-Mounjaro (16-20k steps per day plus other exercise) but you cannot out exercise binge eating.

I suspect that I have something going on with my hormones and taking a small amount of Mounjaro makes me like a normal person. I have stayed on the 2.5 dose and am hoping to keep on it. It allows me to eat 1200-1400 cal/day and lose 1.5-2lb/week. I also had bad blood sugar issues before but have not gone hypoglycaemic since taking this.

So I think whatever hormone or whatever it is that I am missing that caused my old insatiable hunger would come back if I stopped, and so I am resolved to using this for the long-term and know I will never be like a naturally thin person without medication. I may be able to decrease my dose further and on the plus side I haven't had any side effects (apart from possibly insomnia/weird dreams). I feel much healthier than I was.

I’m not sure why people who’ve never taken MJ are commenting tbh

Exactly!

There are various factors. One is that by 'stretching' the fat cells through obesity they become damaged and prone to retaining more fat. The body tries to maintain homeostasis so if you cause your fat cells to grow they will seek to revert to their larger state. Possibly by maintaining a lower weight for a long time we may be able to repair our fat cells but it's not really known yet.

I've never driven a Porsche or snogged Harry Styles but I'm still allowed to express an opinion on both.

I love this too. I’m just a big old Labrador. Oddly enough my hair has started to curl. My hair has been dead straight for 60 years. Maybe I’m turning into a labradoodle. I’m happy with this

This is really interesting. Depressing, but interesting.
how about liposuction would that help?
when I had surgery recently I wished they would cut some fat away too. Trim a bit. They must have been talking about me in that theatre.

There's also the set point that neuroscientists have identified – a 10-15lb window that your body has for optimum weight and if it spends a long time at the higher set point – i.e. you are overweight/obese for ages – the minute you stop dieting the brain does everything it can to make the body go back to it.

Obesity is a complex disease. I started mounjaro 8 weeks ago with a BMI of just under 40 so very obese almost morbidly obsese. I've now lost a stone in 8 weeks. It's life changing. I e tried slimming world weight watchers etc in the past and never lost weight so quickly and so easily so clearly mounjaro is working in a different way to just being on a diet it is literally changing the way I see and think about food, there is no emotion involved with food anymore.

Hopefully I will get to a target healthy weight on mounjaro and I'm expecting to be on them long term as I know that when I come off them all the food noise will return etc as it's only mounjaro that's gotten rid of it. Obesity is so complex it's not a case of obese people just need to eat less and move more there are so many complex emotions and factors at play as obesity is a disease. So just like I have under active thyroid I take daily medicine for and it's not not under active it's stable, I can't stop my thyroid medication as if I did then it would become under active again and it's the same with obesity, even when I hopefully get to a healthy weight the risk of becoming obese again will still be there so hopefully I can minimise it by remaining on mounjaro or similar long term if I can afford it.

Me too! I'm definitely a Lab.

It did show that, but a man eating 1561 calories doing manual labour (the study put them in a 1700 daily calorie deficit they needed 3200 to maintain) isn't comparable to a woman with a more sedentary lifestyle eating 1600 calorie. Calorie are contextual.

I don't take MJ, so please ignore this advice if it's not relevant but, as PP have said, can you speak to them about maintenance doses ASAP and then start doing bootcamp style weight training work outs. There are loads of good ones free on you tube if you need to cut costs. Just ask on Freecycle for some weights and a kettle bell.

2-4 of those every week helped me lose weight without any change at all to my eating habits and the weight has stayed off even though I no longer work out as often. ( Not at all for several months for various reasons)

Doing tough workouts speeds up the metabolism and releases happy hormones, so although you do feel hungrier after working out, it's really hunger, not food noise. And ime it was a craving for protein, eggs, chicken or tuna, to build the muscles rather than carbs.

It's worth trying to establish this routine for free if you know you Can't afford the maintenance dose long term.

They walked three miles a day and entered into light exercise around the lab – chores we do ourselves every day such as cleaning and making dinner. They were not doing hard manual labour.

Have you tried Wegovy for maintenance? It’s much cheaper where I live. Aaand you can buy the 2.4 pen and count the clicks. So if you want 1.1 instead of 2.4 the pen would last you for 2 months instead of one.

its something my doctor (who is extremely well qualified) has recommended.

OP have you tried fasting? Honestly protein does help a lot, try for 1.6g per kilogram and make sure you are doing some sort of exercise.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/oby.21185

In this study kids who were given a 35g protein breakfast lost weight over 12 weeks. No other changes. I would drop the smoothie unless it’s a protein shake smoothie.

I would also say most people coming off a diet will have a little wight gain due to glycogen stores being refilled so I wouldn’t worry too much.

WLI works (brilliantly) by suppressing the hunger hormones but that only last as long as you are taking the jabs - as you all know. It doesn't reeducate the way you eat, which was formed in your subconscious mind in childhood.

Think about how you were encouraged to clear your plate (and offered more food if you did), how special days - birthdays, Easter, Christmas - were all centred around food, and how biscuits, cake and chocolate were used as rewards, bribes and comfort. If we didn't get fat as children it was down to being physically active and parents who could get the balance right. Disclaimer - I was a fat child thanks to a loving grandma next door who didn't know the word 'no'!

All these food related habits are absorbed long before you have the mental capacity to question whether they are a good idea long term. So, when you're an adult and you've had a bad day, the part of your subconscious that learned that biscuits make you happy will encourage you to self soothe. Except that's a child's solution to an adult's problems. It's NOT your mind trying to sabotage you; it's simply working on outdated information.

I've worked with people - including a few on my AMA thread - who've completely changed the way they think about food because they've updated their emotional connection with food.

Did you titrate down? Or just stop taking it?

I’ve been reducing every few months and am now on 7.5mg. Am not sure I can go much lower as am gaining/losing 3-4lbs each month. I discussed the fact that I may chose to remain on it, cycling between 5-7.5mg permanently from the outset, though. I definitely have to be disciplined - no biscuits/crips etc as I find myself fancying those more and still have them in the house as I have teens at home for another year.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7539343/

There really is no magical solution even on weight loss surgery people gain back if you don't continue to work on your eating habits at the root of emotional overeating. The body always tries to go back, be it teeth shifting back or weight shooting up again and it's a conscious effort to make the body not revert to its previous status. Basically you're going to have to diet or stay on maintenance dose which everyone knows you have to do.
edit to add: alongside working on your psychological and emotional connection to food but it's a lifelong effort.

They more than halved their calories to starve them that was the point of the study, no? Your point that 1600 calories isn't much is right for the context of this experiment but if you are say a 165cm woman, 1600 calories is near maintenance, you can't compare the two.

Well this article that's just popped up on the Guardian is very pertinent to the discussion. Clearly these are drugs people will have to take for life.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/may/14/people-who-stop-weight-loss-drugs-return-to-original-weight-within-year-analysis-finds#:~:text=Analysis%20of%2011%20studies%20of,10%20months%20of%20stopping%20them.