Most People Who Start GLP-1 RAs Quit Them Within A Year (Here’s Why)

Specifically, 54% quit within one year, with that number rising to 72% within two years.

We first wrote about GLP-1 receptor agonists (i.e. semaglutide drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy) a couple of years ago when popularity was just beginning to take off:

Semaglutide for Weight Loss?

However, as we had room only to touch briefly on the side effects and what happens when you stop taking it, you might also want to check out:

What happens when I stop taking a drug like Ozempic or Mounjaro?

…and:

Considering taking Wegovy to lose weight? Here are the risks and benefits – and how it differs from Ozempic

Notwithstanding all this information, there’s a lot of science that has still yet to be done. If you’re a regular 10almonds reader, you’ll be familiar with our research review articles—this one was more of a non-research review, i.e. looking at the great absence of evidence in certain areas, and the many cases of research simply not asking the right questions, for example:

❝Of the four studies that actually looked at the macros (unlike most studies), they found that on average, protein intake decreased by 17.1%. Which is a big deal!

It’s an especially big deal, because while protein’s obviously important for everyone, it’s especially important for anyone trying to lose weight, because muscle mass is a major factor in metabolic base rate—which in turn is much important for fat loss/maintenance than exercise, when it comes to how many calories we burn by simply existing.

A reasonable hypothesis, therefore, is that one of the numerous reasons people who quit GLP-1 agonists immediately put fat back on, is because they probably lost muscle mass in amongst their weight loss, meaning that their metabolic base rate will have decreased, meaning that they end up more disposed to put on fat than before.❞

Read in full: Semaglutide’s Surprisingly Unexamined Effects ← there are a lot more (equally concerning) items discussed in this article

Why people quit GLP-1 RAs

There was a large (n=125,474) study of US adults. The average age was about 54 years, and about 65% were female.

From the total data pool (i.e. not narrowing it down by demographic), 54% stopped within a year, and 72% within two years.

The factors most associated with discontinuation were:

• age above 65 years
• not having type 2 diabetes

The main reasons given for discontinuation were:

• High costs: self-explanatory, but it’s worth noting that people who stopped for this reason were more likely to restart later.
• Adverse side effects: the most common ones were nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, stomach pain, and loss of appetite. Rarer, but more seriously, side effects included: pancreatitis (severe abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting), gallbladder issues (gallstones, cholecystitis), kidney problems, severe allergic reactions (rash, swelling, difficulty breathing), hypoglycemia, especially if taken with insulin or other diabetes medications, changes in vision (worsening diabetic retinopathy), and an increased heart rate.
• Disappointingly little weight loss: the researchers noted that GLP-1 RA results are “heterogenous”, meaning, they differ a lot. For those for whom it didn’t work, quitting was more likely, for obvious reasons. See also: 10 Mistakes To Sabotage Your Ozempic Progress
• Successful weight loss: while it is widely known that if one stops taking GLP-1 RAs, weight regain is the usual next thing to happen, there are a lot of people who go onto GLP-1 RAs with the rationale “I’ll just use this to lose the weight, and then I’ll keep the weight off with my diet and lifestyle”. Which sounds reasonable, but because of the specific mechanisms of actions of GLP-1 RAs, it simply doesn’t work that way (and, as we mentioned above, there are reasons that you may, after stopping taking GLP-1 RAs, be more disposed to put weight on than you were before you started). So, by the best of current science (which admittedly is not amazing when it comes to this topic), it does seem that taking GLP-1 RAs is a lifetime commitment.

You can read the study itself here:

Discontinuation and Reinitiation of Dual-Labeled GLP-1 Receptor Agonists Among US Adults With Overweight or Obesity

Want to get similar results, without GLP-1 RAs?

Then check out:

5 Ways To Naturally Boost The “Ozempic Effect” ← this is about natural ways of doing similar hormone-hacking to what GLP-1 RAs do

and

Ozempic vs Five Natural Supplements ← this is about metabolism-tweaking supplements

and

Hack Your Hunger ← this is about appetite management

Take care!