Wondering if it was a bad idea doing wli

[Applecrumble133]

I started taking mounjaro as I was desperate, my weight kept going up and up and I was obese. I just couldn’t get a handle on it.
i have yo yo’d all my life, and have mostly been overweight and I've got older it went went from hovering at overweight to hovering at near obese until I was.

Im now the slimmest I’ve been in years, finally a healthy weight. I’ve been strength training for a year. I would like to come off mounjaro. A friend of mine came over and has gained two stone back in three months.

i would like to come off, but the evidence is showing im going to gain it back even if i stick to a calorie deficit and the gym.

I don’t want to go back to being overweight, im also terrified of potentially relying on this drug.

I originally said I’d try it for 3 months. It’s now a year later.

sometimes I wonder why couldn’t I just do it the natural way and resort to this. Because now I wonder if I’m tied to always taking this. I don’t want to be reliant.

I apologise for the ramble, im panicking and apart from my friend, no one else knows in my life so have no one to talk to

I guess what I’m asking is, is it possible to come off after significant weight loss and keep it off? I’ve lost 24% body weight according to shotsy app.

What dosage are you taking at the moment?

5mg

Can you try micro dosing or whatever it’s called to see how you go? So down to 3.75 then 2.5 then 1.25 etc. I think if you’ve kept to the lower doses and you come off it slowly you’ve more of a chance than it you’d been at 15mg for months. I do think people will probably have to take it for a long time tbh but not everyone puts it all back on.

If you stick to a calorie deficit why would you gain weight? That would be impossible surely.

I’ve been on Mounjaro for 20 months now and will be to a while longer as I’m not quite at my goal (I had a lot to lose). I’m not terrified of taking Mounjaro long term, I’m not sure what there is to be that afraid of. Taking medication long term is better than yo-yoing or regaining a lot of weight.

You could try gradually reducing your dose and see how you get on and adjust to less medication in your system.

Try not to compare yourself to other people, your friend who has regained some weight is living a different life in different circumstances with different challenges.

While you are at a healthy weight, have you considered your diet and how you can change it to hold your weight steady?

Any permanent weight loss requires you to modify your lifestyle - smaller portions, moving away from upfs and a high carb/sugar diet to a healthy one. Your stomach should have started to shrink by now so you should be less naturally hungry regardless of the drugs.
Have you switched to wholemeal bread/pasta/ brown rice? Do you cook from scratch? Increased your intake of fruit/veg/fibre? Cut right back on alcohol, sweets, cakes, biscuits?

I don't understand the thought process of thinking it would be better to still be obese and not have lost the weight at all?
If you stick to a calorie deficit you won't gain weight. That's impossible. You don't need a calorie deficit to maintain your weight though. We all have to find a way to stick to our maintenance calories somehow with or without Mounjaro so why don't you try titrating down and see how you get on?

I think it would be helpful to do this one step at a time, so that you aren’t so focused on a binary choice between regaining weight or being on it for life.
Why don’t you just drop down to one dosage lower for 2 months with an aim to maintain. If that goes well, reduce down again for another 2 months and see how you go.

I lost 21% last year, and have kept it off. I think the trick is to adjust your habits, one at a time, so you have a structure to rely on when the food noise returns.

For example, I don't eat past a certain time in the evening. I'll prep my breakfast so that it's easier to eat well than to eat poorly. Start your day strong. End it strong. Enjoy normal life in-between.

Really well done on your loss.

I’ve read on here that a doctor advised someone taking MJ that there is a very difficult patch after stopping it, but if you can get through that bit, it gets easier to maintain after that. Which made sense to me. Having said that, I’m staying on while I can afford to. I was obese for 30 years, I don’t have much confidence that I could do it alone.

I lost 8stone and stopped taking it nearly a year ago. I was at 7.5g and worked my way back down before stopping completely. I’ve put on 4lbs since then but that is muscle as I’ve been working out a lot. I don’t eat til lunchtime, strength train 4x a week and get my steps in and I’ve had no problem.

Have you worked our your TDEE to eat in maintenance. All the advice to always eat in a deficit is unhealthy. You should be able to eat maintenance calories. Yes it should be impossible to gain on a deficit but you will always be restricting yourself which means binging/sudden hunger etc. We've all been on diets and then fall off the wagon and this why, because our bodies don't want a long term deficit which is why mounjaro helps to stick to that long term. You need a long term sustainable plan, eat at maintenance, keep an eye on your weight as well as natural fluctuations, track calories and make sure you have made long term sustainable changes ro your diet. I've lost 5.5 stone, I know it's not easy, but it's doable.

GLP1’s control the hormones, that’s how you are able to lose weight. Surely, if it’s all about a calorie deficit then you wouldn’t need Mounjaro at all?

@Applecrumble133 , I don’t think we yet fully understand the disease of obesity. Some people can put a bit of weight on and go on a ‘diet’ and lose it and then go on to maintain their weight fairly easily, my husband is like this. Some people who use Mounjaro will be able to go on and fairly easily maintain their reduced weight.
There is compelling evidence however that of those who use this medication and stop taking it for many their weight steadily and rapidly goes back on. Given the BMI restrictions for prescribing this drug I’d say mostly those who’ve used it probably fall into the same category as me, I’ve lost and gained weight so many times each time weighing a bit more than before. This time I’ve lost six stone, I’m only 5’1”.
It is my belief that some of us are suffering from a lifetime disease called obesity, we’ve now got a medication to treat that disease but like other lifetime diseases we need to take that medication for life, you don’t give an person with hypothyroidism Levothyroxine and then take them off the drug when their TSH falls into the ‘normal’ range. I got to 15mg, I’m coming back down the doses and was hoping I could maintain on 5mg but am currently on 7.5mg and the food noise and hunger has really hit me. I’ll stay where I am for now and if my body allows I’ll hopefully get down to 5mg, we’ll see but I don’t expect to ever stop. With luck in time as newer more effective drugs come onto the market prices will fall and I’d be glad to move to a tablet form which is more easily portable.
I hope that’s of some help.

Not really answering your question but don't be too hard on yourself for not having "managed to do it the natural way". There is absolutely nothing natural about the abundance of high sugar, high fat UPFs that we are surrounded by.

There is no evidence to suggest you gain it back in a defecit. Thays humanly impossible. If you’re in a defecit you continue to lose. If you eat to maintainance, you maintain if you gain you over eat, your body isn’t biologically changed, you’re still human and function like one when you come off the drugs.

@Nopenousername Mounjaro doesn’t make you lose weight regardless of whether you’re in a calorie deficit or not. It mimics two hormones which control your appetite and feelings of fullness. That enables you to be in a calorie deficit, which is why you lose weight.

I was also referring to when the OP stops taking Mounjaro, and her idea that she would actually gain weight even if she was in a calorie deficit, which isn’t true.

It is possible not to eat them though.

There is compelling evidence however that of those who use this medication and stop taking it for many their weight steadily and rapidly goes back on

there is no evidence, never mind compelling. The human body works as the humans body has always worked and always will. Weight gain, loss or maintainance is about consumption.

there was a report which looked at the trial participants, who lost 8kg on average and gained if back 4 times faster. There is also now real life data, which shows people lost a lot more than on the trials, few go on the meds to lose 8kg, and they keep it off much longer.

‘over 80 percent of people who diet regain the weight within 5 years, we know this. Coming off mounjaro is no different, if you eat too much you gain weight, if you don’t you won’t.

tbe drugs don’t work when you don’t take them, nor do they biologically change us permanently so our bodies behave differently to other humans.

You’re not meant to stop and go cold turkey.

You’re meant to take a maintenance dose for up to 2 years AFTER you’ve reached your goal weight to allow your body adequate time to adjust to your new size, especially if you’ve been seriously overweight for years.

This is what my GP advised before I started taking MJ and I’ve seen it mentioned elsewhere too.

I've been on MJ nearly 2 years, loosing the majority of my weight in the first 6 months. I'm not ready to come off yet so plan to continue for a while.

It all depends why you became obese in the first place . If you had become insulin resistant through yoyo dieting for over a decade - then the answer is that you would need to have iron will . If I tell you the actual statistics for losing weight through diet and exercise for one of the largest research trials (2015 BMJ) . You will completely understand why it is going to require an unbelievable amount of will power and even then it’s an uphill battle with every statistic against success.
The research was conducted on 275k primary care patients across the UK. Dieting with calorie control and exercise alone. From a point of type 1 obesity (30-34.9 BMI to a BMI >23.9
8:1000 patients achieved this over a 2 year period.
Of those incredibly tenacious 8 - 6 had put it all on and more within 5 years. Making the chances of diet and exercise alone as being an effective means of weight reduction, less than 0.02%.

I am the same as you OP. I have lost a lot of weight. Nearly 10st. However my attitude to the drugs is different. I am more than happy to remain on them for life and struggle to see why this is an issue for those of us who were previously obese or morbidly obese.
For those of us who were in that category the chances that you were already on some sort of medication ‘for life’ is pretty much a definite. I know I was on BP, Cholesterol and Thyroid medication ‘for life’ not to mention the CPAP machine for sleep apnea and steroid injections into my knees for weight related osteoarthritis. All were ‘for life’ as a fat person. In my mind - if I have to take life long medication, I would rather it was to ‘keep me healthy’ than to keep me fat and alive .
Now I only take a lower dose of thyroxine and 5mg Mounjaro and no longer visit the gp monthly for various ailments which all lead back to obesity .

I lost 2 and a half stone on mj and came off it in December. I have lost just over half a stone more since. I used the time I was on it to change my eating habits and my relationship with food and, added exercise into my lifestyle. I was worried I would gain it all back too. And , while it is not as easy I have been able to carry on weightloss because of the habits I formed.

I am hopeful that I can now maintain, I'd be so annoyed with wasting all that money and effort and that is a major help on the days I just want to get a takeaway and bottle of wine to make my emotions go away. I remind myself it didn't and made me feel worse after.

I am on MJ but a friend has lots the same amount of weight in the same time frane by re hauling her eating and fitness regime - with professional help. Then she stopped and now she has regained… i havent regained because i am on a very small dose… like you i feel i wont be able to come off it…

The question though is how long can you do that. Hopefully forever, but the fact remains 80 percent regain within five years,after normal dieting.