Considering Injections - experiences wanted!

[MrsKurz]

Hi everyone, I have found reading through these forums so helpful in people sharing their experiences so openly. I’ve spent my whole life fluctuating up and down in weight, never able to maintain a healthy weight; and I’m now the heaviest I’ve ever been after my second baby. I’m 34 and don’t want to wait to finally sort myself out and live more healthily through my 30s and the rest of my life.

im currently breastfeeding so obviously won’t start anything yet, and won’t rush stopping just to lose weight, but i am looking forward to having my body back and finally doing something for myself.

what I’m interested in is… for those of you who have gotten to a healthy weight and stopped the injections… have you been able to maintain? That’s my biggest fear. I want to actually retrain my brain, get over my sugar addiction and life my life eating healthy portions of food for my size, and not snacking emotionally.

and wegovy vs mountain - where I live only wegovy is potentially covered, but I could pay out of pocket for monistic it’s just very expensive. Is one really loads better than the other, or is wegovy also ok?

I really think it depends on your start weight. I’ve lost 4 stone since January. My start weight was 15.12 The freedom from “food noise” -hate the phrase- is unbelievable.

to Add that was Mounjaro. Previously I had taken saxenda before it stopped. It’s wasn’t as good as Mounjaro.

It’s a diet op. You need to diet on the drugs to lose weight, the drugs just help you do that. And you can’t really eat too much unhealthy food or you will be unwell. When you stop if you go back to your old eating habits you will gain weight. The drugs don’t melt the fat off and you don’t magically gain it when you stop.

it doesn’t matter how you lose weight, you always have to maintain it, the difference is mounjaro users can stay on, to ensure it, if you chose not to, then you need to exercise discipline to not regain, no different to stopping any other diet.

i dont really get the worry about maintaining being slim, surely you deal with that when there, do you avoid all diets as you worry about maintaining it?

no drug works when you don’t take it, so yes your appetite will return to normal. You will have eaten healthy and in a deficit to lose weight, like any other diet. Maintaining it when you stop is the same for any other weight loss method.

Wegovy is effective, it’s just a bit less effective than Mounjaro on average according to the research trial data. People on the highest dose of Mounjaro lost around 22% of their starting weight, whereas for Wegovy it was around 16% of their starting weight, on average. But, if you can get Wegovy via insurance of some kind (I guess you’re not in the UK?) then it may be a sensible choice to give that a try.

I also would not fear the idea of maintaining. It’s just like any other diet in that respect. I’d much rather have the issue of maintaining whilst being at a healthy weight rather than remaining obese. It’s something to plan for and to be aware of. I view maintaining as the same kind of challenge as losing the weight in the first place.

Maintenance is an issue however you lose weight. The majority of people will put some or all of it back on again afterwards when they 'finish dieting'.

I plan on staying on mounjaro indefinitely at the moment. I've read some stuff about body set weight point which suggests that the body may adjust to a lower preferred weight over time. This gives me some hope that I may be able to come off it at some point but I'll be giving it plenty of time.

I actually reduced from 12.5mg to 10mg last month and found the food noise creeping back. I didn't lose any weight on it either. I guess 10mg may be my maintenance dose but I've gone back to 12.5mg and thankfully the food noise is gone again. But it shows me how tricky coming off it could be.

There's a few maintenance threads on here you could have a read through, and definitely some success stories of people who have come off the medication and maintained, but many of us have found we need a maintenance dose, or come off and gone back on again. I lost my excess weight using mounjaro and am maintaining with it now.

Meds are likely to help you cut down the sugar and eat healthier, but it's not just about banishing bad habits. (If it was, people would have been successful at just "eating less and moving more" already.)

We don't have the data yet on whether maintaining for a few more years and then coming off will make a difference. But it's an exciting time with new medications coming out and science being done.

I've put on a kilo since stopping but much to my surprise my new eating habits did stick - essentially a high fibre diet. The first Christmas Post cessation is going to be a challenge though I must admit.

I’m 4/5 months in. Determined to stay on 2.5 mg so weight loss is slow compared to others, I’m still hungry as normal but with very little food noise which has been by far the biggest change. The second change has been the ease at which I stop eating meals once I’m full, over eating past fullness has been another poor habit I’ve had. That drive to keep on eating has past. I’ve lost 11kg which I’m very happy with almost 3kg per month. I could do with losing another 10-20ish kg. I was extremely active and in the gym most days before so I do have a high muscle mass but a few months before I started the WLI I got a diagnosis that meant I had to step back from that so I am pretty healthy in spite of the weight.

WLI have been absolutely life changing and if I need to I will stay on it forever at an even lower dose.

Totally concur with this, freedom from food noise. I have more time in my head and in my life without obsessing over food. Have lost 4 stone since Feb, from 14 stone ish. Life changing! Currently moving back down doses.

Thanks all, this is helpful. I’m well aware the drugs themselves don’t cause the weight loss, but I’m hoping to use them as a tool to help me eat less, stop emotional eating and build better habits I can stick to long term, whether I were to stay on them or not.

anyway thanks for the replies :)

They do cause the weight loss. It’s hard to describe. You won’t want to eat at all. And the weight dropped off. Whilst I have changed what I eat, this is just due to the drug not mindful eating or effort on at all.. I’ve been dieting since I was 11! This is a different thing. I lost 3 stone between jan and June. It dropped off me. The last stone has been stickier! I think I will take it forever.

Well yes, if you’re in too high a dose and don’t want to eat at all then you will lose weight as a direct result of taking it. But that’s really not how they are supposed to work. Amd is really inadvisable.

Yeah that’s not true for everyone. Not wanting to eat at all is disordered use of WLI for sure. I can eat loads, I don’t, but I definitely can. I still have to make good choices, the ‘food noise’ is minimal but not zero. I still get hungry. I also only take 2.5mg because the intense suppression I felt in the early days was horrendous, god knows why people chase that feeling. It terrified me that I didn’t want to eat.

It has served me well and I have managed to lose over 7 stone whilst eating a pretty healthy diet, but in no stranger to cake and coffee

Yeah that’s what I’d understood… that a good dose means you’re able to make good choices, not so high you don’t want to eat at all. I guess I’m hoping to use them on a low enough dose to get the effect but still have to learn good habits myself, enough that they could stick long term, even if I take a low dose forever

I started 18 months ago and have been pretty much maintaining for the last few months.

I have stayed on a lower dose and will happily stay on it as long as I am allowed to as the lack of food noise is just so liberating. I'm not constantly hearing the siren call of the yummy stuff in the kitchen. I actively choose to exercise rather than it being a punishment for eating crap.

I've lost just shy of 8 stone, BMI of 39 to BMI of 21.