What happens when you stop taking Ozempic (Semaglutide)?

And how to avoid regaining the weight you lost.

As you may already know, Ozempic is a medication approved for the treatment of Type 2 diabetes that is being widely use “off-label” to help people lose weight.

It is so effective that its popularity has grown immensely, and to the point where there is a shortage of the medication and many people are having great difficulty getting their hands on it.

First let’s explore the issue of whether to stop taking Ozempic once you have started and have had success. Some doctors advocate taking it forever. They reason that obesity is a chronic condition and that patients who get off of it will likely gain all of their weight back and maybe even more.  I am not a proponent of that and I clearly see that many patients can maintain their weight loss quite successfully after they stop talking Ozempic (semaglutide), especially if they learn to use it upon occasion, strategically.

Just to back up a bit, let’s address those who are not in favor of taking Ozempic to begin with, because they pessimistically say you will gain the weight back after you’ve lost it. Is important to understand first that if a person does gain their weight back, it is not the action or fault of  Ozempic itself- gaining weight after stopping it would be for the same reason that people regain their weight whatever diet plan they might use to lose weight. It is a well known pattern that people who have successfully lost weight on any weight loss regimen often gain their weight back. This occurs because after the patient quits the better dietary and lifestyle health habits they were following to lose the weight, if they slack off, stop eating well and go back entirely to their previous unhealthy lifestyle, that will cause them to gain their weight back. This will occur whether a patient has lost their weight using any of the available commercial weight loss plans, or if they simply use their knowledge and willpower and successfully do it on their own.

Semaglutide ( Ozempic, Wegovy) can  give  a  person a great advantage for keeping weight off without being on it forever.

Here’s the idea of using Semaglutide successfully for keeping your weight off. I call it Strategic use of Semaglutide. It’s really a pretty simple strategy. When a person has lost their weight and are at their goal, if they try to remain conscious of the proper eating and exercise plan they were following , even if they may not be quite as strict as they were able to be when using the medication, they will not quickly, suddenly regain the weight. As the weeks and then months go on, however when vacations, parties and other things get in the way, regaining some weight will occur. It is then that semaglutide is used strategically! Rather than waiting to regain a lot or all  of the weight back, a person can restart the use of Semaglutide with just a small amount of weight to lose to get to their goal. This way they completely avoid the difficulty of undertaking the weight loss task all over again. They start semiglutide again just temporarily and in no time, because they haven’t gained a lot of weight back, they can relatively  quickly, take off what they need to and be back at their goal weight. They can put aside the medication again and do it on their own once more.  When the time comes again, whether weeks or months later they can use the same strategy again.

They key point to following this strategy is that the person restarts the Semaglutide before they’ve gained a lot of their weight back. The great difficulty that occurs with “yo-yo dieting” is that it is very hard to regain the great amount of motivation and discipline it takes to lose a lot of weight. And so people procrastinate, don’t lose their regained weight back, and before you know it they’ve gained all of their weight back and are discouraged, finding it very difficult to do it “all over again”. So if a person who has  lost 30 lbs for example, keeps in mind that once they have regained between 5 and 10 lbs back they take action and use the semaglutide again temporarily it won’t take long to be at goal weight again.  The medication also helps this type of maintenance plan because although it is used as a weekly injection, the effect lingers for a period of time before it is completely gone. Its metabolic effect and appetite decreasing effect still helps although not as strongly. This strategy works very successfully, and it helps people to train themselves to maintain their weight loss. They know that after a relatively modest weight gain they are able to take it off quickly getting back to their goal weight before ever letting things get out of hand.