Is it confirmed that jabs are for life?

[RoundandSad]

Hi

I posted here a year or so ago thinking of trying this but I had a terrible experience with Saxenda so decided against it

Still big have lost about 5lb

over the last year, it looks like you have to take it forever

Reconsidering you guys will understand,. I feel like being fat is a problem in every walk of life.

But that's an expense that has to be paid forever, isn't it?

Agree, and having ‘no willpower’ is made out to be such an awful character trait, like it makes you a failure as a person.
Well I may not have any willpower, but I have a lovely family, lots of friends, a very successful career, I give up my time to a charity close to my heart etc. I’m sure I’m a nicer, more successful person than some people who have willpower aplenty!

For the majority of us it's because we have a hormone deficiency and these drugs just level the playing field.

We still have to make the choice about what we put in our mouths but now we aren't at a disadvantage because our bodies aren't working in quite the way they should.

maate absolutely

I've lost 9 stone ..if I want to be thin ,I need to loose another 5 stone .
I won't be able to stay on this for life ,no matter what the recommendation is .when your morbidly obese ,as I was ,you move round less,so burn less calories.
I'm already moving around more .
At some point I plan to come of the jabs and I'm going to join a gym and go every day instead of taking jabs ..in the spring when I'm near to my target.
Some people will definitely stay on them for life ..but it's not what I plan to do

I get really frustrated when people say once youve lost the weight on WLI then all you have to do is "change the bad habits that made you put on weight" or "simply keep going with the good habits and eating less after you've stopped the WLI".
Perhaps that might work if you just had a stone or so to lose.
But it simply doesn't apply to the condition of obesity and anyone who says this as a blanket statement doesn't understand obesity as a disease.
For the obese, WLI are for life in order to maintain weight loss.

https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-025-04200-0

« In the subgroup analyses that used a BMI cutoff of 35 kg/m2, significant weight regain was only observed in the subgroup with lower BMI when compared to the control group (WMD = 1.66 kg, 95% CI 0.87 to 2.44, P < 0.001, I2 = 71%). Contrary to common knowledge, patients in the subgroup with a higher BMI did not show significant weight gain (WMD = 1.21 kg, 95% CI − 1.24 to 3.60, P = 0.33, I2 = 72%) and there were no significant differences between the subgroups (P = 0.73) (Additional file 2: Fig. S3). »

I’m hoping it won’t need to be for life but part of me thinks it may need to be.

in my 20a I had to have my wedding dress altered as I never lost the “few pounds” I was optimistic about when buying in the sale.

in my 30s I quit sugar- not just in drinks but full on in all foods … even making my own ketchups etc

n my 40s it was 5:2 - really successful for a long while

then post Covid it was low carb - lost a lot, but slipped off the wagon with perimenopause and put on 3 stone in a few months….

so now I’m trying again with mounjaro to get back to a healthy bmi and liking what I see in photos, feeling confident to dress up…

I know I tend toward inflammation and my family have all tended to suffer from type 2 as they age so I am hoping this will be a step to dealing with that and improving my overall health too.

Don’t feel frustrated, just ignore it, as said earlier it’s a way to feel superior and I’d bet good money some of the folks who post that nonsense are sitting there fat and unable to access the drugs, so going on line being goady out of jealousy and resentment,

I will say that if you’re looking to stop taking the medication completely then the WLI boards on here may not be the best place for you. I came off the boards when I stopped taking MJ as I was repeatedly told I was deluded if I thought I could maintain the weight, that the data showed I’d regain etc. Although it did make me a bit more determined, and almost exactly a year on I’m 1lb lighter than when I finished on MJ!

Absolutely this. It's just a weird place, like people who want to stay on the injections WANT those who come off to gain the weight. It's so weird. And here I am, 10 months later and 9lbs lighter than when I stopped.

Blimey @SnacklessWonder and @DingDongJingle - ideally id love to
come off them - they’re not cheap and that money could bolster savings/put towards holiday etc, any number of more fun things than medication!
But my medical condition does mean I’d more than likely just put the weight back on. I’ve been reading about insulin resistant PCOS and whether this is seen to reverse it permanently- there doesn’t seem to be enough evidence to support that. It’s the only reason I’m sticking with them, I’ve come so far and don’t want to go back to where I was!!

Completely different situation @TheChosenTwo and I wholeheartedly support you.

The reason I stopped was because I knew the reasons why I was overweight. Again, as I said earlier in this thread, I really was just greedy and lazy 😬 I'd love to say I had some other reason, but I didn't. I just love food and hate exercise, but I've tried so hard to turn it around and I think I am there.

But.

That's me. Not other people. If you need it, stick with it. There's no shame in it. It's life changing.

In order to come off injections and not gain weight id have to resist the food noise/ urges to stuff my face which the injections take away, and I dont know how to resist them any more now than I did before mounjaro as they just haven't been there to resist!

I'd imagine id be one of those who regained any lost weight rapidly.

Luckily as an nhs patient i don't have to worry about cost.

I am still on my weight loss journey on MJ but my friend who came off 2 months ago after getting to target has been steadily gaining weight since. Her experience is she’s intensively hungry now. That said she did come off cold turkey as she had horrendous side effects that never went away so thay may have something to do with it.

I’m experiencing a lot of positives on MJ besides weight loss, my perimenopause hot flashes have disappeared along with other symptoms so part of me wants to stay on a low maintenance dose long term. The cost is a factor but the amount I’m saving each month on takeaways and snacks, it pretty much covers it 😆

I probably could maintain the weight loss if I obsessed over it constantly.

I’m taking 2.5mg and will titrate down a bit but it agrees with me (and has sorted out disordered eating) esp at a low dose so why not?

So not a lot of people have come off

Really not sure what to do, especially with all the stories about hair loss

with such a bad reaction to Saxenda, it seems like I could pay a lot of money and have a really bad experience as well - side issue I suppose

Ive come off it since the cost increase and have put give or take 4lbs on which isn’t bad. It fluctuates up and down around 2lbs so maintained since August so far

Hair loss is nothing to do with the drugs and everything to do with weight loss. It’s also temporary, So unless you plan to stay fat for ever, then you risk this.

and isn’t it better to be slim and worry about maintaining than be fat and worrying about what would happen if you became slim?

@Thelankyone I don't know anyone who lost weight and lost hair I'm just reading about it here with the injections

I’m 42 and have been obese since primary school, by 11 years old I was over 11 stone and had joined weight watchers for the first but not by far the last time. In the 30 years of obesity I tried every diet going, and lost some weight but then couldn’t sustain the diet plan and couldn’t maintain the weight loss.

I am now 9 and a half stone lighter than my highest weight, I’ve lost the equivalent of an entire person off of my body, I can’t even comprehend how I was walking around every day carrying a whole adult human being with me. I’ve lost 50% of my body weight and am wearing size 10/12 clothes, a size I have never before in my life been, by the time I moved into adult clothes I went straight into size 14s. I weigh less now than I did in primary school, how insane is that???!!!

Mounjaro is what has made this possible. I truly think it is a medical marvel and a medication that will change the lives of so many people. But you need to want it to work, you need to work with it and ensure you make sensible choices to get as many nutrients as possible, to eat high protein, fibre and fat to support your body in retaining muscle, to assist the medication in regulating your blood sugar, to be as healthy as you can be.

If you think you can stick with a traditional diet and get the results you need then go for it, it is possible and many people successfully make it work. If you’ve tried them all and feel you need some help then Mounjaro is a good option in my opinion.

I have taken MJ for ten months and not experienced any hair loss.

People sometimes lose hair when dieting but that’s using a range of methods, not really about WLI

So like an alcoholic or any other addict. Surely they don't take medication for life but learn how to mentally control their actions in order to stay healthy. I could argue that it's harder for someone using drugs to stay clean once they stop medication. Yet many can do it. If you consider overeating as a drug habit then surely it's possible to resist with willpower? Especially since you don't have the physical dependance as drugs give you. It's about not giving in to desire.

I’ve lost weight before and put it all back on. Maintenance is somehow more difficult for me than losing weight, possibly because while losing I have a sense of achieving something when a pound, or even half a pound comes off. Staying the same doesn’t have that connotation. So I will be staying on WLI when I get to goal, but most likely switching from MJ to Wegovy for cost reasons, and trying to use the lowest dose possible to keep cravings away.

It depends what it was providing for you. For some people, it’s purely appetite suppressant and so they can maintain their loss through improved diet when they stop. For others, it silences severe food noise and cravings so when they stop taking it, those come back. I’m in the latter group. As soon as I came off the jabs, my food noise and cravings returned and I was the same as I was before taking them in terms of eating. So for me, yes they’re a cost to be paid long term.

But they’re a treatment for a medical issue, so I don’t know why people are surprised that they’ll need to stay on them long term. Or why other people use that as a reason to disparage the idea of taking them. “Ugh, if you take that blood pressure medication, you’ll be on it forever and your blood pressure will just go up if you stop!”

Hopefully they become cheaper as they become more widespread and patents expire.

Some people will be able to maintain and some won't. Exactly precisely fuck all to do with will-power or developing new habits. I highly recommend Diet, Drugs and Dopamine if you want to look into the science behind it all. That's science, not anecdata. It's written by a former head of the US FDA who struggles with obesity himself.