Life after ozempic…

[Sleepdeprived42long]

Hi I’ve only got a couple of weeks dosage left in my current 1mg ozempic pen and seeing all the issues with supply, the increased cost and the fact that I’m only now about 3lbs away from a healthy weight (woohoo!), I’m thinking of stopping and just trying to lose the rest on my own (ideally I’d like to lose another 10/11lbs). ive been on ozempic since early March and have lost almost 2st so I’m really happy with that-I have PCOS so that weight has been impossible to shift for years!

For anyone who has come off ozempic-how did you find it? Did you feel like you were able to continue with small portion sizes? Did your hunger and cravings come back quite quickly? Just trying to be prepared and make sure I don’t put it all back on 🙈

There's a poster from the I started ozempic threads called Twiglets1 (I think) who stopped taking it and has posted a bit about it. If you have a read of some of the threads you'll find her.

Ah thanks @AutisticLegoLover I’ll go have a search :)

It's definitely @Twiglets1 and I hope she doesn't mind me tagging her. She is very knowledgable and honest about her experiences and talks a lot of sense. Good luck to you!

Oh hi, thanks for the tag @AutisticLegoLover

I was only on Ozempic for about 6 weeks @Sleepdeprived42long but happy to share my experience. I had a very strong reaction to it, almost immediately lost my appetite but after about 3 weeks I think I started getting nausea & then vomiting so I gave up as I literally couldn’t hold any food down.

Your reaction to coming off it may be different to mine as you’ve obviously been on it for longer. But what happened with me was my appetite came back with a vengeance. I think my body was starving and I loved being able to eat normally again without feeling unwell. I quickly regained half the weight I had lost. But then I decided that I had to take positive action to lose weight without Ozempic as I hated the idea that I was powerless without it.

Ive gone back on a calorie controlled diet now and I’ve started swimming & doing Aquafit regularly. I don’t starve myself by any means but I am mindful about what I’m eating and I have been slowly losing weight again. It’s always going to be a challenging time for people when they first come off Ozempic I imagine. It’s easy to make healthy choices when you have little appetite in the first place. Much harder when your normal appetite returns. But you have done so well so get so close to your target weight. You just need to keep the portion sizes small & continue eating healthily. For me, it also helps to weigh myself regularly & be extra careful as soon as I put on a small amount, though I know not everyone agrees with that.

@Sleepdeprived42long I'm in a similar position,.lost 2 stone and have 1 more stone to go. I have just started my 3rd 0.5 pen though after 1 had wanted to go up to 1mg but just haven't been able to get hold of it. I'm going to finish this pen (3 more doses) and see if I manage to lose.any more weight, I have been averaging 1 pound loss a week so far. If it's no longer working and I can't increase my dose I think I'll drop back to 0.25 and see how that goes as would get 12 weeks out of that so could be good for maintenance? will also try to lose the last bit of weight under mostly my own steam but with that little bit of ozempic. I think the 0.25 pens are not as hard to get hold of?

Thanks so much for sharing. I can only see the 1mg available on UK Meds now and not the 0.25mg. I can't see it in stock anywhere else?

I've recently come off. I reached my 'comfortable weight' in July, but since then the 1mg was out of stock so I ended up on 0.5mg which wasn't as effective. By the middle of September I regained 3lbs so I figured if im gaining I may as well come off completely and save the money.

My appetite and cravings are back with full force. I've had to log my calories in my fitness pal to control myself. Last week I managed to lose my gain but it wasn't without a lot of effort and focus.

So whilst I am dealing with cravings, I feel like I'm playing on a fairer playing field. I don't want to gain the weight back so I will fight and focus to stay at the weight I am (which is something I always used to do before I started gaining). When you have already lost the weight its easier to maintain I think rather than the overwhelming thought of how much you need to lose.

I'm thinking about getting some chromium to help with sugar cravings, but I am hoping that if I avoid sugar for long enough the craving will disappear. Fingers crossed my body just adapts and what I am doing at the moment is my new normal.

Hi there,

Fascinating chat re Ozempic so thank you to the OP and everyone's comments.

My story is that I put on loads of weight after I got a mystery "respiratory illness" in December 2019 which had me signed off work for 3 weeks. Subsequently, given my systemic reaction to the Astrazenica Covid jabs ( I could barely walk after the jabs) and having caught Covid last July (where symptoms were identical only nowhere near as bad as those I had in December 2019) I can say with a modicum of confidence, that I did in fact have Covid- 19 in December 2019!

After that my weight ballooned and I got to a stage where I was so heavy (with loads of visceral, dangerous fat) that I decided to try and do something about it.

I tried intermittent fasting during the day and not eating between breakfast and dinner (sometimes 10-13 hours) and doing boot camp on an empty stomach 3 times a week, as recommended by a highly respected dietician. My body at the start of this was 50% fat.
The result: I lost some weight but at a snail's pace.
Then I had foot and mobility issues and I gained all of it back and more.

All the while my blood glucose was increasing and I was in the pre-diabetic range getting closer to being diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes.

In August this year, I decided to bite the bullet and go and see an endocrinologist who put me on Ozempic. I had terrible belching side effects and more recently acid reflux which I've been controlling with Gaviscon (the tablets not the liquid).

I've only just started taking the 1mg dose last week and 2 days before that, my reflux just disappeared.
But I'm also, like the OP, most concerned about what life looks like after I stop taking the drug which I will have to do at some point.

I've been doing some reading around the subject and there are some things that have been recommended:

1. Gradually decreasing the dose and not stopping it straightaway so that you can keep control of increased appetite/cravings
2. Increasing cardiovascular exercise but at low intensity to keep cortisol levels low (raised cortisol causes more fat storage around your middle) so working in the fat burning zone not in the HIIT zone
3. Building lean muscle mass using strength training- the idea is whatever your weight in kg, you should be eating 75% of that in grams of pure protein per day, which is far more than most of us eat generally. As you lose weight, this gets closer to 100%. The increased muscle mass increases your resting metabolic rate, particularly important after the menopause where lean muscle mass falls off a cliff
4. Continuing to eat higher protein with lots of green vegetables as a starter to keep blood glucose spikes down, so that you produce less insulin (which is the fat-storing hormone)
5. Following other Glucose Goddess hacks
6. Keeping alcohol consumption down

I'm a long way from reaching my goal (I have 2.75 stone still to lose) but I'm close to being out of the obese BMI range.

Good luck to everyone on this journey. It's not easy and after being infected with Covid I've realised how hard weight loss is. :)