Why Does Ozempic Stops Working for Weight Loss, and What Happens When You Quit?

"Why Does Ozempic Stop Working for Weight Loss and What Happens When You Quit?" People may not understand the potential limitations of the new class of Ozempic-like anti-obesity medications, especially given the wide hype these drugs are receiving. For example, the drugs don’t work for everybody, and even when they do, weight loss stalls out after a year. The drug insert included in every package of the high-dose Ozempic used for weight loss shows these graphs. Here’s weight loss on high-dose semaglutide, also known as Ozempic, and sold as Wegovy, versus placebo. As you can see, after about a year, weight loss stops, even if you keep injecting yourself with the drug. Is it because you’ve plateaued at a normal weight? Sadly, no. They started out obese, and they ended up obese. Why does the weight loss stall out? Because of what’s presumed to be a near-exponential rise in calorie intake, as the same amount of effort to cut calories, whether through willpower, drugs, or surgery, is met with increasing resistance, as ongoing weight loss activates your feedback-control circuit, stimulating your appetite. So, at first, the massive GLP-1 activity triggered by the drugs lowers your appetite, but as you lose weight, your body fights back, ratcheting your appetite back up; so, the same amount of massive GLP-1 stimulation causes less of an appetite suppression. Within 12 months, this resistance, together with the decreased total energy expenditure from being lighter, matches the persistent effort to cut calories, and with calories-in matching calories-out, weight loss plateaus. Here it is, graphically. The same thing happens whether you’re restricting calories on a diet, injecting these fancy new GLP-1 Ozempic-type drugs, or going under the knife for bariatric surgery. Take high-dose Ozempic. After the three-month ramp up in dose, people are eating nearly a thousand fewer calories a day. No wonder they’re losing weight. But then, the body fights back, pushing against the high GLP-1 signaling and jacking their appetite back up. Not all the way back up, because they’re still injecting these drugs every week; so, they still appear to be eating 400 fewer calories a day than what they used to. So, if they’re eating less, why aren’t they continuing to lose weight? Because they’re expending 400 fewer calories simply because they aren’t dragging 30 extra pounds (13 kg) with them wherever they go. What happens if you stop the drug? In this study, everyone was started on high-dose Ozempic for five months and started to lose weight. Then, some were randomized to be unknowingly switched to placebo injections. Those who continued taking the drug, continued to lose weight, until the plateau. Whereas, those who switched to placebo started to regain all the weight they had lost. It’s the same with tirzepatide, sold as Zepbound. As soon as people stop taking the drug, the weight starts coming back, and any benefits that had been achieved start to evaporate. Check it out: here you can see what happens when people stop taking the drug after being on it for more than a year. The pounds pile back on, two thirds regained within a year, and here are some of the evaporating benefits. Blood pressure came down with the weight loss, but then climbed right back up as if they never even took the drug in the first place, and inflammation and blood sugars start creeping back up too. So, not only does weight loss stop as soon as you go off the drug, but the weight you had lost before comes back. So, like in this study, you may have started out obese, and ended up obese, and to maintain your less-but-still-obese status, you have to keep taking these drugs, presumably every day or week for the rest of your life. So, these are forever drugs, the golden goose for Big Pharma, drugs for lifestyle diseases that you may have to take lifelong, since you aren’t treating the underlying cause, a fattening diet.