Ozempic and extreme hunger that occurs when you come out of it

Tworries are always in the back of your mind,” Suzy Cox says. She’s been at Wegovy for about six months, and on Friday morning, she stepped on the scale to see the number starting with 10 for the first time in five years.

He continues: “It’s exciting. But I’ll be honest – often when I lose weight and a dress size is too big for me, I triumphantly drop them off at the thrift store. This time, I put everything under the bed. Because I’m so scared that if I stop this drug, I’ll go back to a size 16, 18 or 20.”

Cox is one of many people whose lives have been changed by Ozempic and other weight-loss drugs semaglutide and tirzepatide – she has written about it for Independent in June. However, like many who use drugs, Cox now faces a grim prospect. Although the drugs work very well when taken regularly, when tapered or stopped completely, some users report that they have “bad” hunger once they come off it, and high doses bring back most of the the weight they lost.

Ozempic users are now taking to TikTok and Reddit to seek support after stopping the drug to deal with the insatiable hunger they feel. What do we eat to keep us full? I can’t stay full,” influencer and reporter Claudia Oshry shared in a recent post. “I just ate a 12oz steak and I’m hungry so I’m eating popcorn. How do we stay full?”

“It was actually me after Monjauro,” one of the many comments below reads. “I was sad! There are no answers, only prayers.”

Since Ozempic was approved for use for weight loss on the NHS in September 2023, demand has been skyrocketing and rising. Widely used to treat type 2 diabetes – a chronic metabolic condition that occurs when the body can’t use insulin properly – its weight loss benefits are what built its popularity.

The use of the drug, which can now be bought from high street pharmacies for between £149 and £297 a month depending on the dose, is so common that some use it for health reasons “to drop the dress” on the front of the main. event or holiday.

A friend reported that there were so many people taking this drug at a friend’s 50th birthday party that they had to throw away most of the food. Seeing Ozempic’s face among celebrities and influencers has become a national pastime.

In the first 10 months or more of taking Ozempic, users can lose an average of 13-15 kilograms, according to medical studies. Although the amount depends on weight, lifestyle and dosage, this can usually result in a 10-15 percent weight loss during the first year of Ozempic.

However, clinical research limits the drug for weight loss to two years of use. Most users stop after a year. At that point, many run into problems, says Richard Holt, professor of diabetes and endocrinology at the University of Southampton.

“It’s very difficult to avoid putting weight back on,” she says. “Because well, what Ozempic does is to tell your brain that your body does not need to eat and that your weight is normal.

The body has a complex way of trying to protect its weight from the times when food was not as abundant as it is now – losing weight was really a matter of survival when people, so the body naturally has strong physiological processes. make sure your weight stays stable.”

Ozempic blocks those mechanisms, or receptors that tell you when you’re hungry, Holt explains, allowing you to eat less to lose weight. “It does that very, very effectively,” he says.

But the problem is that once you stop taking the medicine, the body thinks it’s in a state of starvation, so those mechanisms to make you start eating go back to it. In studies of people taking GLP-1 semaglutide, people regained weight quickly after stopping treatment. That weight gain can continue for up to one year after stopping this drug. ”

There is a lot of fear about the consequences of quitting, says Sophie Medlin, a nutritionist and chair of the British Dietetic Association for London. Recently he has seen an increase in the number of patients who are struggling to reduce or stop their weight loss medications.

“People will say they feel like they can no longer control their appetite. While taking the medicine, they were not hungry at all, sometimes even realizing that they are hungry again feels very burdened,” Medlin explains. Once the drug is over, and food cravings return and reach a high level, she says people become fearful and don’t trust themselves to make good decisions about their food.

“Because the difference between when you take it and when you leave it is very clear. Once it is out of someone’s system, they start to feel afraid that they will not be able to maintain their weight or the benefits they have seen .”

Mentally, it is very difficult to deal with. For people like Cox, 46, who lost two stone in three months after struggling with her weight since her youth, it’s an unbearable problem.

“I would cancel my gym membership over Wegovy right now,” Cox admits. He says that regardless of what the drug does medically or physically, the benefits to his mental health and life control have been the biggest change.

It is very difficult to try to get off Ozempic and realize that maybe nothing has really changed mentally and now they have to try to do weight loss work.

He says: “Everybody I know, the one thing we talked about was what it did to our minds. “I feel like the best version of me. I would hate to lose that.”

Like many addicts, Cox has found that his drinking naturally decreases as he drinks, something he’s been trying to cut back on for years — and other studies back this up.

“It’s very difficult for people who have had a hard time controlling their appetite and consumption,” says Holt. “We might be talking about people who, their whole lives, woke up thinking what they will eat next, or those who are concerned about food—then find a drug that gives them relief from the experience.

“It’s amazing, it’s so hard to try to come out of it and realize that maybe nothing has changed mentally and now they have to try to do weight loss work. It’s so hard.”

Holt argues that in most cases, using drugs like Ozempic that give people a better quality of life and reduce a lot of stress should not be limited to two years (“If you used drugs to treat a condition something like high blood pressure. , you wouldn’t stop it after two years, would you?”

She adds that the shame and stigma in society surrounding weight has a lot to do with this, despite the fact that many people are just genetically unlucky to be overweight. of the body.

“What doesn’t help is that most of the people we see on Ozempic or others are eating healthy foods,” says Medlin. I’ve worked with people who basically eat crisme and a few snacks here and there, because they don’t like to make full meals.

Would a body “starved” of food for a long time make up for lost time?

To some extent, says Medlin. “When we experience a lack of nutrition in things, or our body thinks that there is a real lack of food around it will control our appetite and force us to try to eat more than.”

Medlin’s advice to patients is to build up healthy habits and habits before they start to decline – otherwise, as we know from every fad, a restrictive diet in one- have to change the way of life will end up with the weight of the pendulum.

He adds that those who use Ozempic and Wevogy by mistake – to reach an inappropriately low BMI – or people who use it secretly from friends and family are often at greater risk of this.

He says the latter “will be praised for losing weight. And that can make it even harder because people think, ‘Losing my weight has made me important to my friends and family and now I can get it back – it will make sense. how?’

But there is good news. “Often you will find that the final measurements that people achieve after stopping Ozempic may still be five to 10 percent of what they were when they started. start as an average,” Holt says. “So it’s still lower than before, but it’s not as low as it was when they were taking the drug.”

Cox says she has a friend who is currently cutting her weekly budget — and she’s anxiously watching to see what happens next. For many, the issue is this: it’s a new drug that hasn’t been used as widely as it is now, so we don’t know yet. But there is hope that the clothes of the bag can stay under the bed.