They help to lose weight without making any effort or fundamentally changing your lifestyle. Exactly lifestyle change – especially changing the diet and including exercise in the daily routine – however, it is crucial for long-term maintenance of a normal figure. If this does not happen, most people will regain much of the lost weight after stopping the preparations. In some cases, they may even be worse than before taking the injections.
The reason is that the injections also break down the muscles, while the yo-yo effect only covers a person with fat. Scientists from the University of Cambridge focused on drugs such as Mounjaro or Wegovy, which belong to the group of so-called GLP-1 receptor agonists. These preparations mimic the GLP-1 hormone, helping to regulate blood sugar levels while suppressing appetite. Originally developed for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, today some of them are also used in the treatment of obesity.
The authors of the research analyzed six clinical studies with more than 3,200 participants. The results show that after stopping these drugs for 52 weeks, people regain on average about 60% of the weight they lost during treatment. Later, this increase usually stabilizes, and in the long term, patients maintain approximately a quarter of the initially lost weight.
However, the authors draw attention to another problem. About half of the weight people lose during treatment can be muscle mass. If mainly fat returns after stopping the medication, the body’s fat-to-muscle ratio may worsen.
“Drugs like Ozempic and Wegos act as a brake on our appetite—they make us feel full sooner, eat less, and lose weight. When people stop taking them, they basically take their foot off the brake, and that can lead to rapid weight regain. If the weight regained is made up of a disproportionate amount of fat, people can end up with a worse fat-to-muscle ratio than before treatment.” warns Brian Budini.
