Did you lose weight on WLI and then ‘pile it back on again’?

[scatterbrainy]

I’ve been on MJ for 11 months now and it’s been slow and steady losses - 3.7 stone and another 2 to go. When people ask me how I’m doing it, I’m open about the fact I’ve overhauled my diet and have had some help from medicine. However, I keep seeing (and occasionally hearing) this everywhere - ‘you’ll only pile it back on again’. Nice, eh!

So while the studies seem to indicate that’s likely, surely it’s only like every other diet and only happens if you return to your old ways of eating? I will always have to watch my weight and so my plan is to get to goal and give myself a healthy buffer of around 7lbs. If I start gaining, I’ll cut back for about a month or so and get back down to goal. For me, I forever sabotaged my own weight loss because losing 5 stone seemed utterly insurmountable whereas 7lbs seems so much easier.

I know there’s a maintenance thread but just wondering if anyone did lose a lot and then have a big regain? Am I being naive to think I can avoid it? For you, how did you tackle the regain or are you still struggling?

Just trying to get a realistic idea of what might be ahead.

According to the stats… more likely than not, you would pile it back on.

However that doesn’t mean happens all the time. There will be some that buck the stats. And the others will just go on a maintenance dose for their rest of their lives.

There is a lot of confusion out there.

so in trials people lost an average of 8kg, and they gained it back four times faster after the trial.
Real life data shows people lose a lot more and they are keeping it off, studies coming out of the USA,
then we have the fact at least 80 percent of people who lose weight regain it, after dieting, within 5 years. All of it and often more.

obesity is a relapse disease, and the reality is when you come off the drugs, your body goes back to normal, they don’t work when you don’t take them, and so over time, yes for most people they will regain,

however you can always go back on them if you do, or you can consider staying on a maintenance dose. The drugs are recommended for long term usage, to maintain, as obesity is a lethal disease, the leading cause of cancer for starters, and it is importing for health people don’t relapse.

Depends on the person I think. I lost close on 5st on mounjaro, switched to wegovy for a short period for maintenance and have now stopped completely. 2 months without now and my weight is steady at just under 10st. I don't feel like I have to battle to stay there either, but I am fairly active which helps

I came off last September due to the price increase
Admittedly I did gain 11kg back in 3 months but my life went to shit. I was dealing with the loss of a parent and lost my job so it could've been more my fault as going to the gym and fueling up on protein was the last thing on my mind

Jealous people gleefully predicting the future!

Regain is frequently a probability with any method of weight loss, even surgery and yes wli but wli really seem to annoy people and bring out the most nastiness and discouragement.

The drug works whilst you take it.

This enables users with large amounts of weight to lose to do so.

What you do after stopping wli dictates regain which is fairly much the same as when you stop any concerted method of weight loss.

I have lost 9 stones which I could not have managed without wli.

I have changed my eating patterns for the longest time I have ever managed on any previous diet.

I may regain a bit even with my newly established habits and routines, it is too soon to say as yet but I am streets ahead of where I started and I have no regrets.

I lost 3 stone in 6 months. Have put 10lbs back on since stopping 8 months ago. Its hard.

I lost just under 3 stone in 3m on monjourno, then had a linked health scare and came off at Christmas cold turkey. I continued to lose weight but much slower than on the jabs as I had used the jabs to help reset my eating and drinking habits, awareness and relationship with food. I continued (mostly) with the diet I was on, though now will have a takeaway or bottle of wine etc whereas whilst on MJ I didn’t dare.
I’ve maintained since end of January where I had to work hard to get some of the Christmas weight back off

I’ve only listened to a snippet but follow Ben on social media and he’s usually reliable - he and his wife did a recent podcast about diet and weight regain
open.spotify.com/episode/3sccQT25ig6fDCYCTsuGJp?si=Kgf3iC7-QXCD2-QXE4cnSg&pi=_2TGPHMdRJ-tc&t=0

In the past when I’ve lost a big chunk of weight it’s usually been through very low calorie (soups/shakes etc). When I’ve come off them I’ve regained quite quickly mostly because I’m beyond delighted at eating real food again. And when I have regained, I’ve felt utterly miserable at the thought of returning to powdery meals in a packet.

I’m hopeful that WLI is different anyway! At least I know if I tip back into ‘overweight’ I can stop it by going back on to WLI and catch myself before it becomes too big a problem again. It’s the only thing that’s ever given me hope that a slim and healthy life is actually possible.

The trial evidence shows that on average people do regain. Not all, but most of them.

So far as I understand it (not a medical expert so don't take my word for anything) this is a mix of factors:

1. absence of synthetic GLP1 (ie the jab) which is what controls your hunger and lets you know when you're full,

2. there is some suggestion that the body is evolutionarily designed to claim weight back when it's lost and that the metabolism adjusts to make that happen. On regular diets people who regain are often not eating meaningfully more than when they lost weight when they begin to gain back (then after that they are because there's a 'fuck it what's the point' effect) and they end up heavier than they started. Not clear whether this is true when WLI are involved but seems to me as a non-scientist to be plausible,

3. behavioural factors - where the WLIs give you a period of support to relearn habits with which some people have success and some don't.

I am considering WLI as I have a lot of weight to lose.

At the moment I'm undecided, but thinking

A) if I go on them, I need to assume I'm on them (at least a maintenance dose) for life. I don't especially mind this in principle - right now I'm on statins for life etc. I'm lucky enough to be able to consider this financially but not everyone will be

B) The thing that has so far stopped me cause I can cope with A....there is some emerging suggestion that some people begin to tolerate the drug over time and need to increase and increase the dose to have the same effect and get to the point where even the max dose isn't working. This might be part of the metabolism-adjusting thing described in 2) above.

There is -well, WAS until WLIs - very little evidence that significant long term intentional weight loss is possible for the majority of people (I can't tell you how despondent that makes me feel but it is my reading of the evidence). I am desperately hoping that WLIs are the game changer for this but I dont think we know enough to be sure, and we do know that losing and gaining weight rapidly, and ending up a higher weight than you started (which is what has happened to me with every other diet I have ever done) is more damaging to your health than staying at your starting weight no matter how high that was.

Which makes me feel pretty glum, I have to say!

The other thing to recognise is sometimes people don’t recognise the help the drugs are giving them. Or the extent of it, and feel that as they’ve changed their diet etc, then a lot of it is them, without recognising that they were unable to do that without the meds, and that when you come off, hunger will return as normal, cravings will return as normal, food noise will return as normal, any sluggishness and inflammation will return as normal and hunger may feel more extreme as you’re not used to it. It won’t be more extreme, but it could feel it.

so it’s important to recognise and prepare yourself for that, it won’t be the same as when you’re on the drugs,

due to the half life it takes 3o days for the drugs to fully leave your system, but after a couple of weeks you will start to feel it slowly. Some quicker some longer, as your body returns to normal. There is a thread on here for people who have come off and are maintaining, have a look at it, it is taking a lot of daily work and focus.

No. As with any diet you can’t just go back to old habits when you stop. Unlike with other “diets” MJ actually helps you change your habits. I put 5lbs back on over a year, then took it off again plus another 5lbs. When I get bored with food now I stop eating it; I’d never had done that before.

I’m on MJ and yes I do believe if I come off of it I will struggle to not gain weight. My switch that tells me I’m full seems to be broken and I’m hungry a great deal of the time even with prioritising protein, staying hydrated, tracking calories and staying active, I still seem to get hungry quicker than other people. I have no idea why or the science behind it, all I know is that I have a much larger appetite than a lot of other females of the same height and age.

OP it’s like you’ve said, it will happen with any diet, if people return to old habits they will put it back on, if they don’t they won’t. It won’t go back on if someone sticks to their maintenance calories and exercise. The problem is when the food noise comes back it’s hard to do this.
Like everything with weight loss, we all know what to do and how to do it, we know if we stick to things they work, it’s just hard in practice.
I lost all my weight 7 years ago and it’s stayed off because I fight it every day. Basically every day is like when I was losing weight but i can enjoy the feeling of confidence and happiness alongside it. So it’s worth it but the struggle never ends. So many people think the change of lifestyle is a temporary thing until they lose the weight, they think it’s something to tolerate for a set amount of time, but it’s forever. Being at target weight actually means even less calories. Keep doing what you’re doing OP and the weight won’t go back on! It didn’t magically come off and won’t magically go back on. It sounds like you know how to manage it.

The hunger I felt after coming off last year was unlike anything I had ever experienced
All I wanted to do was eat
I was ravenous

The thing to remember with all these recent studies (NB NOT NEW TRIALS) is that they are aggregating and analysing data from trials going back years, including quite a few involving older GLP-1s. One of the studies announced a few weeks ago which got everyone gleefully announcing we'd all pile on the pounds didn't involve any data from MJ trials, IIRC And they also extrapolated long term weight gain over using the limited follow up information available - the original trials didn't keep track of people for THAT long following people coming off.

And in trials there was no titrating down, so people (who, also would have followed the standard trial protocol of going up a dose each month) would just have been dumped off the meds from (the equivalent of) 15mg to cold turkey.

My last jab was June 25 and I have gained a stone since then. In hindsight I should've stayed on a low dose for a while to maintain. I am now going back on MJ and this time I will stay on a low dose so I maintain and make sure I deal with stress and emotional eating properly. X

The thing that has so far stopped me cause I can cope with A....there is some emerging suggestion that some people begin to tolerate the drug over time and need to increase and increase the dose to have the same effect and get to the point where even the max dose isn't working. This might be part of the metabolism-adjusting thing described

this is more complex, so for some people the drug doesn’t work as optimally as it does for others, and there is a placebo effect to an extent, the mind is very powerful, so they believe it will work and thus behave accordingly, then after a period of time diet fatigue sets in, so they start to consume more, and realise the real effect of the drugs, and then increase tbeir dose.

the drugs don’t stop working, or become tolerated where you need more, if it did it would not be used for diabetics, and it would not be about to be approved for cardio vascular health, it would be too dangerous, the drug always works, as it always has, like many other drugs, inc statins.

in addition you can push through and keep eating on the drugs, should you chose to do so. Unless you’re on too high a dose and it’s knocking you sick. And again the mind is both complex and powerful old habits die hard, the desire for the food is not always linked to physical reactions, but sometimes comfort, enjoyment etc,

so it isn’t the drugs stop working, or people tolerate them more,

however due to the very severe risks obesity has on your healthy and longevity, as said it is the leading cause of cancer, before we look at all the other issues, heart attack stroke diabetes joint degradation etc. then my view is it is better to get to a healthy weight, than stay obese worrying about what to do when you’re a healthy weight.

i would caution though, you need to do it when you’re in the right headspace, otherwise you will scupper yourself. Food can be a crutch for some people, and the overeating is about mental health, they get their dopamine hit from it, their comfort, their friendship etc, and food becomes something you enjoy, but in healthy portions, and more a fuel than anything else.

Haven't come off yet but I am enjoying being slim so much I hope it's enough of an incentive to keep the weight off.

I had my last jab of MJ in August 2025 after losing 15.5kg (just under 2.5 stone)

I've put around 1.5kg back on and fluctuate between this weight and my initial goal weight.

This is really helpful explanation about the titration rationale, thank you.

Yes, I have wondered about that. It seems that some drugs we get resistant to over time (heroin!) and some just seem to 'work' at the same dose forever (statins).

My last jab was in August. I came off cold turkey due to the price increases. I lost 4 stone on MJ and have gained 1.5 stone since September. Admittedly I had some unexpected life challenges with ending a relationship and unexpectedly having to take on a uni course for an additional qualification so I’ve definitely been comfort eating. The weather hasn’t helped. But it’s disappointing. The cravings, food noise, all back. With a vengeance. Life was so much easier on MJ.

As I understand it, MJ helps by being an appetite suppressant and therefore stopping MJ means you go back to old ways.

Best way is calorie reduction by changing your eating habits. Analyze/count where and what your calorie intake is now (you will be surprized where an extra 100 calories lurks) and then change it. You will have to manage the hunger pangs though which is the tough part, I found that just not buying the "bad stuff" works then you wont be tempted to drift to the larder,

Why do you keep posting on the wli board?
From what I have read you aren’t on wli and don’t like the idea of them?
Do you just come here to redeem us poor sinners who need drugs?

The other thing to confide is muscle.

muscle is active, it burns calories even when at rest. Fat is inactive. So if you lose muscle during the weight loss phase and didn’t prioritise protecting it, it means your basic metabolic rate drops, which in turn means you can consume much fewer cals before you start gaining.

if you have ate your protein and strength trained you should be good. But body recomp is critical when you come off to rebuild anything you lost, drop any further excess fat. The more muscle you have the higher your bmr and the more you can consume before gaining. This is really Important, as if your muscle is low and you’ve lost a lot them maintaining without the meds will be nigh on impossible. It’s one of the many reasons people regain after dieting.