Thread for those no longer using Oz/sax/wegovy

[Menora]

I couldn’t see a thread sorry if this is a double up. Might help some of us stay on track?

I stopped Ozempic in August. From April to August I had lost 13kg. Since then I have lost another 2kg but am pretty static. It was great and worked well but I just can’t afford it anymore and was sick of trying to source it.

However I do need to lose another 10-15kg to be out of the obese range closer to a healthier weight.

I am struggling with my willpower, I am generally managing to eat well in meals but snacking has crept back in and this weekend it was someone’s birthday and there was cake and all kinds of nice foods so I did take part but tried not to over eat. I can feel I am close to falling off the wagon yet again as I always do and going back to my old binge eating ways. I’ve not even managed to keep up with my gym routine and have only been going twice a week!

For anyone who has stopped weight loss aids how are you doing?

I am going to try to get my head down and get some more weight off by the end of the year. I think the only way is to count calories now and up my exercise

I started resistance training recently and I have gained weight again.

But I have been trying to look at it in other ways by using a tape measure and I have compared myself to the last time I was a similar weight and luckily I took measurements then. My waist has dropped to 32.5inches now (started out at highest weight was about 38 inches or more) and my hips are 5inches smaller than when I last took a measurement. I put it into a body fat calculator says my body fat is good - the machine at the gym says otherwise… if I lose another inch off my waist I will be in the healthy zone according to the British heart foundation so maybe that should be my goal and not weight now

Trying to just ride out the gain as perhaps muscle weight and water and hope for the best? I can’t explain how frustrating this is becoming and I feel like I have no support or anyone to talk to who has been through this? I know I should not get hung up on scales but when I am working so hard it is really demoralising

Keeping this going since I started the thread on 3rd Oct 8 weeks ago I have lost 6lbs. So it’s super slow going. I have 20lbs ish still to go to goal. I assume it’s going to take a few more months. I was ready to give up and go back to ozempic but I stuck with it. It’s hard I won’t lie! I have got to the point of acceptance about how my life has to be to keep the weight off for good, sometimes you feel like this is a temporary state and you look forward to eating ‘normally’ but my eating was never normal. I am perpetually turning down food offered due to my never ending diet, at least now people offer it to me less as they know I will say no. I still have difficult days, yesterday was a falling off the wagon day but I got back on this morning and it was less demoralising as it was just 1 day and easier to let it go

Yes, that realisation that you can't eat 'normally' anymore because you're 'normal' isn't good for you really sucks.

I'm developing better behaviours, and I crave sweet things less. But I HATE that I can't just get a store bought snack, but have to make my own in order to keep it healthy and within my eating guidelines. It takes a lot of effort, or seems to right now. Will it get easier??!! I hope so..,

I keep reading the wegovy threads a bit like 🙈. I really hope that people do work out how to deal with being moderately hungry and what normal eating looks like. The panic when they get breakthrough hunger worries me! When I had ozempic doing the work for me it was wonderful. Now I am doing the work and it’s hard!

I swear by the hunger satiety scale now though, I think it is good to learn about intuitive eating as well. I have to allow myself to experience hunger at times but as I am eating consistently during the day I am not getting to the shaky stage and I have not binged for a long time. I know where my next meal is coming from. I can walk away from treats after 1 or 2 because I will tell myself it’s fine I can eat it, just got to always remember to stay in a deficit with volume and that biscuit will not fill me up for long. I have never in my life craved a nice piece of salmon like I do now.

Tbh the best thing I have done so far is take up resistance training. Not only do I enjoy it, it has really changed my body shape, I can see and feel muscles and I feel great. I am getting lots of good sleep and having no side effects, no IBS, no reflux, no nausea.

However. I have been here before 10 years ago i got into the best shape of my life and then I had an accident which caused me depression, pain etc and I gained 5 stone. I am nervous about hurting myself or being thrown off course by an event that will spiral me.

Still going. Have seen major progress since I started doing weights. my whole body looks different, my legs have a shape not just pasty blobs. Although I am happy with that it’s not my main motivation, I believe I have (and GP agrees) that I have lipodema in my lower half although it’s only about grade 1, so this WLJ was to reduce that and stop it getting worse. The fat on my legs now is still lumpy but far less so. I will always have a cankle I think!

SW: 15st 6lb
CW: 12st 6lbs
GW: 11st ish (tbc)

Amazing progress Menora! Hope you’re still going strong

Well I've just stagnated over the Christmas/summer holiday period. Weight has generally stayed the same (goes up half a kilo, then goes down half a kilo). But I haven't really tracked what I've been eating, just trying to make better overall choices.

BUT - I've still managed to NOT eat chocolate, which for a huge chocoholic like me is all pretty massive. Now to avoid all the rest of the sweets....lol.

Once I'm back at work on Monday I'll go back to properly tracking and working on more weight loss.

Hi can I join? Recognise some names here from the long running O threads. I am 2kg off my goal weight (equivalent to 24 BMI) and need to start work on maintaining. I've lost 15kg and am resolved that I never want to be where I was again. It's a familiar story - creeping weight gain over a decade, then menopause, where like most people I put on a stone out of nowhere. Compounded by stress and anxiety and stuff going on in the family which left me feeling pretty hopeless and like it wasn't worth looking after myself. I'm also realising just how warped the messages I've internalised about body image are - thinner = better and that at the weight I currently am now, which I was up till my mid thirties- I was 'big'.
Currently on 1mg, planning to spend a few months on 0.5 and then 0.25 to bed down the lifestyle changes I know I need to maintain.

How are you doing @Menora?

Hello how are you? I am now about a stone or so from goal weight. Since I started this post in October I have lost another stone. It’s very slow but steady. The biggest difference is my body composition changing with exercise now

I have really got used to managing hunger and enjoy eating well, when I don’t I feel rubbish. I finally have some good habits!

That's fantastic! I've looked at the hunger scale and I don't recognise the different stages at all. I go from not hungry to feeling sick and faint very quickly. I don't recognise the inbetween stages. I'm autistic though so they might be something to do with it.

At the sick and faint stage I don't feel hungry at all and would have to force myself to eat to make myself feel better.

Whatever you do don't read the mourjano thread unless you want to spike your blood pressure. There's been some worrying comments and it reads like the old ozempic threads. The best comment though was about being on Wegovy but having eaten a McDonald's wanting to switch to mourjano 🙈 Lots of comments about food noise and wanting to never feel hungry like it's a normal to feel hungry. There needs to be better consultation processes for these drugs rather than show a photo of you and a photo of the scales and here you are your manic potion to never let you feel hungry again. The doses are being manipulated by those taking it so goodness knows what effect that will have. I believe the fallout from these drugs will be massive in a few years with potential law suits because people thought it would cure them of binging and food noise and it didn't do that and now they have spent thousands just to end up heavier than at the start. I think these private companies are exploiting vulnerable people and that the nhs needs to get its finger out and run proper weight loss clinics with holistic support and weekly appointments for the first few months. Although someone posted that they believed these drugs would be given out as a preventative measure in time. It's crazy.

I try not to read them now as it’s alarming. There is zero consultation process and an extremely limited understanding about how the drug works as a tool for a long term lifestyle change. At some point you have to learn how to be hungry. Either when you run out of money or the drug stops working. Which it frequently does. Or you end up with gallstones or gastroparesis and have to stop. I assume that the controversy will be malnutrition from people who didn’t change their diets and ate 800-1000 calories a day of mostly UPF’s and lost most of their muscle mass and bone density. I wish they would make the consultation part actually valuable and actually provide correct dietary advice

I've come to the conclusion a lot of posters are a word I can't quite find. Expecting results in 3 hours, messing about with the doses, having no clue how it works. It's seriously scary that these drugs are available without a proper face to face consultation that's in-depth. So many want these drugs to cure binge eating disorders. They want their brains rewired and the pounds to melt away with the only effort being spending a lot of money. It's actually very sad. I love your posts Menora because you have experience of the before, during and after and while other people might have different experiences I think from what you've said, and what I've read, that yours is fairly typical. A sane voice in a sea of madness. It will be interesting to read peer reviewed studies in a few years' time. I don't think these drugs are going to cure anything long term.

I think it would be amazing if drugs like this could be used to treat addictions and I know some posters have found they aren't drinking alcohol either as much or at all. An injection to quit smoking would be awesome. Heroin and street drugs too. If these injections switched off those neuro receptors permanently it would be amazing for society and on an individual basis too.

Thread update: I’m now 5kg from my goal weight. It’s very slow as I am not using wegovy/ozempic. It will take me another couple of months to lose this weight but I am closer than I was then I can work out maintenance calories.

I started out 100kg I am now 75kg and trying to get to 70kg. I am going to see how I feel at 70 and whether to keep going as it’s still high end of normal BMI but as I am doing weights I’m factoring in body measurements instead of BMI and will be happy as a 10/12. Currently getting into size 12’s a lot more easily now.

Im not really getting cravings for sugary foods as often as I used to but there can be an element of boredom cravings so I have to keep busy

Congratulations on your progress you sound like you are doing immensely well!

How long did it take ?

@doyoulikeflowers I started pretty much one year ago in 2023. So those 25kg has taken me a long time with 5kg more to go.

I’m not happy to eat too little I don’t feel good doing that so the offset is slow slow weight loss but still feeling good in myself so it’s a worthwhile trade off

Menora thank you so much for this thread. I am using the drugs at the moment but I am really mindful of what happens next so reading your experience is so helpful. I'm trying to work on my brain while I've got a bit of a hand and hearing what you're doing helps with that. Well done on making such fundamental changes to your life.

@Menora
I'm about to start on Mounjaro and I,like your posts as I have no illusions about it being a cure-all or that it won't be tricky figuring out coming off it and how to maintain the loss.

I was a healthy weight for the first 45 years of my life and then covid lockdowns and too much cooking (I'm a really good cook if I may say that!) and wine happened at the same time as perimenopause and put paid to that and once I started gaining weight it seemed to quickly get out of control. It does seem to me that there is a hormonal change once you've put on a certain amount of weight that makes it really difficult to not put on more. I had maintained my weight with little (although slightly increasing as I got older!) effort within a 7lb variance for years and years before this, even through pregnancies etc. (obviously I put on weight when pregnant, I just mean that it returned to normal or close to it very soon after).

I've put on 4 stone over the last 4 years and it just became an insurmountable challenge so I'm hoping to use Mounjaro to get it back within the frame of being confrontable and then deal with maintenance. I think that exercise and particularly resistance training will be useful there and very good for me at this stage of my life too. I have a bit of joint hypermobility and weak connective tissue so as I get older do have to be careful with weight-bearing exercise not to injure myself so will take that slow and steady. I'm hoping that my having been normal weight most of my life will mean that it is a little easier on me when I stop but I may have left it too long for that to be a factor!

You sound very like me in terms of starting weight and what weight would be a healthy BMI etc., and I'm curious what height are you if you don't mind me asking?

Can I join please? Really helpful thread thank you. Coming off W soon having lost 35% of my body weight in a year.

@lurkylurk I am 166cm tall

I think it’s really good to have a mindful approach to what it’s going to be like when you come off. I had a very long plateau which was so frustrating but I waited it out and it did move. Take everything slow and steady - some days I just walk, especially if I am feeling like I may have over done the weights a little

I started mid November and have lost 20lbs so far. I am very pleased with it but I am aware I can't use it forever and at some point will have to take accountability.
How that will take form, I have no idea yet or how hard that will be.

I am 5ft 8, and started about 15'11.

Great thread, Menora and contributors. I’m coming off W in a couple of weeks and I have been preparing mentally for this stage from the beginning. Looking for practical approaches now. Thanks for the thread.