Ozempic for life?

[curiousfurious]

This drug seems to be all the rage at the moment and gets good results. If you are not diabetic and lose enough weight on this to get down to a normal healthy weight do you stop taking it? Will the NHS continue to prescribe it if you are a normal weight after however long it took to reach your goal weight? If you are getting it privately because you don't meet the NHS prescribing criteria will your provider continue to provide it if you are no longer overweight?
I've read threads on here recently and there doesn't seem to be much focus on lifestyle changes or addressing the causes of being obese in the first place. I wonder if there's a danger in this being perceived as a wonder drug cure for obesity but that it's only short term. Diabetics will be on it for life perhaps but what about those who aren't diabetic? It's very expensive, prohibitively so to many, so what happens to those who can't afford it any more?

Fancy being that nosy you will demand a stranger share their weight or bmi. You've got issues. But then no one's perfect.

You sound angry… calm down, dear

I’m fine I just been gym. When did you last go ?

I’m fine I just been gym. When did you last go ?

@S70V12 there's no need to be so personal to posters or antagonise them. You are derailing the thread.

Ignoring the slapfight!

I used injections for 6 months last winter/Spring and lost 2 stone. It slowed right down by the last two months to only .3 to .5 of a pound a week and I decided to have a break. After lots of summer events and two Italian holidays I had put one stone back on. Whilst on Ozempic too much food made me feel a bit sick and once that had stopped I didn't try very hard to resist restaurant pasta and deserts on holiday.

I have now got a "balloon" and the stone came off in 6 weeks.

It's stopping me from eating too much but this time I'm feeling very different about food. I have really understood the meaning of nutrient dense finally. I am also concentrating on flavour, something I only associated with rich calorie dense food before, but I am learning to add flavour to SPINACH and eat a lot of it instead of salty chips!

Weird. I feel like I've changed.....

Humans don't need very much food and we can't keep storing the excess forever. Shut the cake hole!

I don’t know @Scyla the idea of the ballon or the sleeve scares me more than the needle. We can agree on the spinach though - yummy 😋

I went for the new swallowable balloon. It's seemed a bit scary before but now it's my lovely Alan, the amazing balloon. He's helping me with the spinach/chips dilemma.

It will deflate after 4 months. I've an option to get a second one next winter for another stage of downhill dieting. I have some injections in the fridge for afterwards, I am in it for the long haul. I won't stop till I'm all the way down.

I have read that it takes 3 years to achieve your target weight loss, half in year one, then two years of a quarter each year. We apparently overestimate the speed, get demoralised and eat cake.

It's a long term project.

@Scyla can you tell me more about swallowing ballon you have.?

How much was that.? Was it uncomfortable to get.? Any side effects.? It sounds interesting.

Thank you

As obesity is a chronic disease, I k ow several people- before the shortage we are having now (I'm in Australia) who were feint proscribed it as an ongoing medication at a therapeutic dose of .25 to maintain, with an option to increase again if required. You wouldn't stop taking blood pressure medication because your BP normalised. I see this as no different as do many HCW.

@Ricco12

It is called Allurion and seems to be taking off this year, it's quite new. I've paid 6 k for 2 balloons with a reset gap in between.

I swallowed it okay but the next two days were not nice while my stomach got used to the unexpected guest.

There's a Facebook group called The gastric balloon support group where we chat about dealing with them and newbies get prepared.

Thank you I will go and look x

It may well be a chronic disease but it is one of our own making and it's up to individuals to tackle it, mainly, alongside help from the NHS. It's not like it happens overnight. We all know when we have been eating too much and doing too little exercise and have put on weight and know when we need to dial it back. If someone ignores health advice and ignores their clothes getting tighter then that's up to them. The problem is it's not as simple to fix as it is to get with food additives and modern lifestyle and takes a hell of a lot of self-discipline and most of us can't be bothered. It's too much hard work and the rewards are slow to appear. I look at the overweight/obese kids now and feel so sad for them that they will likely have a lifetime of issues. At ds's school the overweight/obese kids have parents that are also obese. It's very sad.

BP won't return to normal with lifestyle interventions. It will lower slightly but once it's high/very high it needs medications because the effects of high BP are more immediate than obesity. I don't think the two can be compared as similar and I think it's a marketing ploy by the makers of weight loss drugs. They take the locus of control away from the individual.

@S70V12 - you have no idea how much I really really really don’t want an online coach/PT! Honestly the feeling of panic and dread that that idea inspires.

I have a plan. I am taking Ozempic. I have lost 3 stone. I am about to go to Australia for a month and will be staying with a friend in a building with a gym so I am going to start some strength training. And going to aqua fit classes with my friend. And lots of walking. I will then keep that up when I come back.

I will join a gym here and may book some sessions with a PT. But I am reframing it all in my head from exercising to lose weight or for fat loss to exercising because my body needs it. I need to move because our bodies are designed to move. I need to do strength training and some flexibility work to remain mobile as I get older. I might try Couch to 5k. Tried it a few years ago and actually liked it. I also did spinning classes and loved them. I am looking forward to that and not being the fattest person in the room.

I will keep track of my food intake but not in an obsessive way.

I really can’t go back to how I was feeling.

@Scyla - good luck with Alan. I’ve read about the balloon and considered it at one point but decided it was a step too far for me.

@SD1978 - it’s funny you make the comparison to blood pressure meds. I read an article in the FT a few months ago where the CE of the drug company who make Ozempic etc said exactly that. I’m not sure about that as obviously that’s what he is going to say but it’s definitely interesting.

@curiousfurious - it can be really hard reading posts like yours and some others. It all sounds so simple. But it’s really not for some people. I’ve been doing this for YEARS. I’m almost 59. I’ve successfully lost the same 1-2 stone many many times. Every obese person has different issues. There are different causes. Education. Poverty. Food addiction. Trauma. Binge eating disorder. And different physiological issues. It’s very hard to read posts saying just get an online pt/coach, fat loss is easy or it’s up to you to tackle it and you would if you could really be bothered. It comes across to me as if you are saying I am just fat and lazy. I can’t be bothered to keep at it. Have you read the Andrew Jenkinson book? “Why We Eat (Too Much). He’s a bariatric surgeon. If you are interested in this subject please try and read it. It goes some way to explaining why some people can’t just “keep at it”.

In the US where the drug has been used for weight loss longer than in the UK, the general consensus seems to be that obese people prescribed it by their doctor are told they will be on it for life.

Its true that if someone doesn’t maintain the lifestyle changes they make on ozempic they’ll end up back exactly where they started - that being said, the drug does seem to treat insulin resistance (which most obese people have, to some degree).

I am on ozempic currently, had/have insulin resistance, and losing weight in itself helps with this hugely. Whenever I have been at a healthy weight my appetite has been normal. I unfortunately gained a few stone due to medication which I was on, which I have struggled to shift, so I am hoping once I get back down to a healthy weight my insulin resistance will be under control, and as I have done previously for many years, by sticking to a lower carb diet I can maintain that healthy weight.

this is all mainly unchartered territory, I’m sure more research will come out about the long term impact on weight, but for now I’m happy to have something which takes away all the symptoms of insulin resistance which have a huge impact on appetite/overeating. Ozempic isn’t a magic pill, you still need to be in a caloric deficit to lose fat, but it makes it far easier.

I second this book recommendation, it’s brilliant. The obesity code is also a really informative book.

People have choices. I'm not saying those choices are easy but they are choices and people can either choose to live a healthy or healthier lifestyle or continue to eat too much nutrient poor food and be sedentary. I've been overweight. It was entirely from eating too much and doing too little which was my choice at the time. Now I'm a healthy weight and keeping it that way with healthier eating and lots of exercise. I'm going to add in resistance training too. That's my choice for my health.

The problem with the mindset of ‘blame/shame the individual’ for having obesity, is that it does absolutely nothing to change or improve anything. The amount of shame associated with being overweight and obese in our society, yet the number of people who classify as being within these categories going up consistently, shows how ineffective it is.

Another brilliant book - Pure, white and deadly, I think? Made the point that it is impossible to exert willpower over a biological function which takes place, every second of every day. You can only white knuckle it for so long - the hormonal profile, satiety hormones etc, of obese people is totally different from individuals who are not obese. Those underlying hormones need to be fixed, through lowering insulin, etc. if that doesn’t happen, the body is biologically set up to regain the weight. Willpower simply does not work sadly.

as ozempic and other similar drugs tackle the hormones, along with lifestyle changes it shows brilliant outcomes. It’s a really interesting area of research and ties in to the literature surrounding obesity, which all supports the fact that it isn’t SOLELY calories in, calories out. The tired rhetoric of obese people just being lazy, gluttonous or greedy has been proved time and time again to be untrue, it does nothing to tackle obesity which is classed as a chronic disease. Not to mention that financially, the cost of treating all of the conditions and health issues which obesity causes over a lifetime is astronomical - it’s possible that for obese individuals who qualify for NHS treatment, money will be saved by not having to treat xyz conditions which their obesity has led to.

Nobody is born obese though. It takes effort over years and years to get there and the damage is done. Yeats of eating too much and doing too little and that is a choice. Far better to take action when you gain a few pounds rather than a few stone. Ignoring it doesn't help and long term it makes it much harder to lose it again. It's possible but difficult.
Naming obesity is not the same as shaming. We tiptoe around fat and it doesn't help, especially when it comes to children.

Unfortunately @curiousfurious some of us are just not as disciplined as you obviously. It’s a real shame.

Have you read any of the books mentioned?

There are actually lots of books on the subject. There is lots of research now and thinking that actually diets themselves make us fat.

You are determined that there is one reason and one reason only for obesity and that if we were only better at dieting we wouldn’t be obese. Many obese people are very good at dieting. They do it often. But there are valid reasons why it is scientifically harder for some people. Repeated dieting is one.

I have had very honest conversations with friends and family about my weight issues. I have had friends and family who spend a lot of time with me where we are staying together so they see what I eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner when I am not dieting and quite a few have expressed surprise that I was as big as I was. Because I don’t eat that much. I have slim friends who eat more than me. I don’t finish my plate if I’m full. And I get full with a fairly small portion. For instance if I was to have fish and chips at a pub for dinner I would probably manage half the fish and about one third of the chips. If I was to have a burger I wouldn’t eat the bun and would again eat about a third of the chips. Probably wouldn’t manage to finish the burger either. And that was BEFORE Ozempic. And no I am not bingeing on a secret stash of crap either.

Please please educate yourself and realise it is just not as easy or black and white as you are making it.

well done to you for losing weight and taking control. Please have some compassion for those of us who have been trying to do that for years. Please don’t be dismissive of our attempts. Please don’t be dismissive of issues like insulin resistance without educating yourself on the topic.

This isn’t true. sadly lots of babies are being born far larger than they should be - if you read some of the books recommended, you would learn loads about all of this.

if a woman is obese during pregnancy, her high insulin will have a lifelong impact on the baby she carries. There is also a huge genetic link to obesity - a certain percent of society are predisposed to becoming obese, it’s a ‘thrifty’ gene which developed as a response to times of famine. This is why some populations, such as Pacific Islanders, have an incredibly high % of obesity - their history involved travelling long distances with huge amounts of famine, so the population who survived all had the ‘thrifty’ gene.

Your initial post seems rather disingenuous, and more of an attempt to slag off fat people rather than actually learn anything, which is a shame. The rhetoric which you are pushing has been promoted for decades now, and has done absolutely nothing to tackle obesity - people are fatter than ever.

My original questions related to ozempic but the discussion has evolved over the course of the thread as these things seem to do.
Babies born now, yes. But the adults who were babies in the 60s, 70s, 80s there weren't as many obese mothers then so you can't use that to explain obesity in that age group now. I was born in the 70s. We had one fat child in our school. One. I went to 3 primary schools and it was the same in two of them. I left the first one too young so can't remember. No one was fat in our year though because I have photos of us all. Do you not think people need to take responsibility for the factors they can control?

There are many factors at play but I hear a lot of excuses instead of taking responsibility.

If you read the books recommended on the topic within this thread, it will definitely clear up all of your confusion.