Switching to Wegovy - help please!

[Superlambaanana]

I've been on Ozempic for 5 months with great results on doses up to 0.5mg.

I changed my diet and found I just couldn't finish anything bigger than a small portion and completely went off sugary things. The release from constant 'food noise' was absolutely wonderful!!

I took a break for a couple of weeks in March to see how I faired and while I didn't gain any weight and the food noise stayed away, I didn't lose any weight either so decided to order another pen and keep going with the injections to get to a healthy bmi weight.

The online pharmacy which I use has stopped offering Ozempic so I ordered a 1mg Wegovy pen instead. Hoping it would maybe last me more than 4 weeks.

I injected my first dose of Wegovy on Monday of 0.5mg. It didn't have any effect so I injected another 0.25 yesterday. Still nothing and I was craving sugar again big time yesterday so I injected yet another 0.25mg first thing this morning. I've just polished off two huge bakery pancakes with butter and lashings of jam and I could easily eat another two if I had them available!!

I understand Ozempic and Wegovy are both semaglutide so this doesn't actually make any sense?!

Has anyone had a similar experience of Wegovy not actually working?

Sorry I am just trying to work out - did you inject 1mg of Wegovy this week over a few days? After a break of 2 weeks from a dose of 0.5mg? Often with a break people have to go back to 0.25, but it depends on what your provider says

If you took this before then you know it can take a while to settle into your system and have an effect. Please do not inject more into yourself. You could make yourself quite unwell. You are not following the guidelines to titrate up slowly. Maybe contact the provider as they prescribed it to you.

I have taken this drug and I am pretty sure I recall I did have to make active choice not to eat bakery pancakes - you could choose to eat something else if you are hungry? You will struggle to succeed long term if you do not change your eating habits whilst you take this drug. The point of it is to give you a break whilst you adopt new habits and learn how to make good choices.

Yes I have injected 1mg over the course of 3 days after having been on 0.5mg up to mid march! I was fully expecting to feel a bit nauseous after injecting the first dose on Monday because I'd been on a break and so was surprised not only to have no side effects but also no feeling of hunger suppression (which I'd had continuously before). I do know there is an element of willpower but I felt starving hungry during the last couple of days which is completely different to what I've experienced on Ozempic. It is literally as though the Wegovy is having zero effect!

But you had been on a titrated dose up until you stopped, which was what they call a steady state - your body is absorbing at the same rate as eliminating and can take 4-5 weeks to become steady.

You have been quite lucky you have not had horrible side effects as the half life is a week! So you would have had less in your system by the end of the first week, and less by the end of the second week however it’s likely you did still have some in your system which has allowed you to take 1mg with no bad side effects (so far) I would just be thankful you did not have this and you will need to continue on to see what happens. I have seen people say that the 2nd time they restarted it had less of an effect on them but there is little evidence of who and why people do or don’t respond so this will just take time. You need to get back to the steady state, this medication was never intended to be stopped and started so you can’t expect it will have an immediate impact. You might have absorbed the 1mg but not started processing it yet. I have a close friend who had literally no appetite suppressant until 1mg - not everyone responds the same way.

use this time to think about the choices you are making. If you are hungry, eat, you can choose something filling and nutritious

Thanks for your reply. I'm still confused though. Had I not taken a break of 2 weeks, I would have had 0.5mg doses in those weeks so I would have had more residually in my system when I took the 1mg dose this week (the fact I took it over a period of 3 days is obviously a bit 'off piste' but shouldn't make any difference biologically).

So i have less in my system than would be expected for someone going up to the next dose in the usual way (0.5 for 4 weeks, then up to 1mg).

I was a super responder on the 0.25 dose so was able to stay on that for a couple of months before going up to 0.5 and again, was able to stay on 0.5 for more than the recommended 4 weeks. So I cannot understand why 1mg is having absolutely zero effect.

I hope you are right and there might be a delayed reaction. But it's been 3 days now and literally nothing.

I can't help but link it to the switch from Ozempic to Wegovy. I actually feel hungrier than I felt before I started taking Ozempic last November. Which is very worrying obviously. And I am craving very sugary foods.

Could be counterfeit. Where did you get it from?

I am beginning to wonder! but it's from a well known online pharmacy where I've been getting Ozempic for months. Afraid to name it but it has a mathematical ring to its name.

If this is a dud pen for some reason I'm afraid it's not good news for those of us on semaglutide because Ive been 'off' it for no more than 3 weeks and my hunger has rebounded massively. Like really really massively. I could eat and eat and eat. Which suggests that unless we keep taking it for life, we'll all pile the weight back on. And I'm afraid I had made huge lifestyle changes while on it and upped exercise and done everything we are told to do!!

There is a global shortage of GLP-1 products at the moment, so attractive for criminals to produce counterfeits. I'm not saying it's likely but just possible. You could report it to the pharmacy anyway.

I have a thread here, I am someone who did stop taking it and I have not gained weight, I carried on losing weight. Truly changing your lifestyle means you don’t turn back to food whenever things get tough. Yes the food noise comes back, and no one knows if you can keep taking the drug forever so you have to learn to practice mindfulness around the hunger. It’s complex I agree but I don’t think it’s made obvious enough this drug is not a cure. It’s a tool

@Menora could you link your thread please.

I do understand that it is a tool and I had made significant lifestyle changes.

I'm surprised by the fact that 1mg has had (and is still today, 4 days on) having zero effect. That's nearly £50 worth of the drug.

My reason for posting is to try to work out why it isn't working rather than to understand the need to make lifestyle changes.

Ok well I am wishing you all the best with your journey, I do mean this, I do think you need to do some work between the cognitive dissonance between what you are saying, and what you are doing.

wegovy is the same drug as ozempic just packaged with a different name, it has the same active ingredient but it’s not easy to attribute the switch to the drug when you chose to have a gap in between your doses so there is no way of knowing what caused which effect. You will have to be patient during this time and see what happens.

You are not used to feeling hungry like this but again, it might not be worse it’s just different than what you are used to, this is the time while you are being patient to see what happens and it might help you to look at other coping strategies, such as mindfulness to get you through this period