If I stop taking Mounjaro, will I gain the weight back

More than likely, yes. Research is being done to learn more about results and recommendations when used for weight loss. Anecdotally, I haven’t met any trial participant yet who has said that they kept the weight off once removed from the medication that helped them lose the weight on the trial.

 

On the other hand, there is research showing that patients on semaglutide (Ozempic/WeGovy, another GLP-1RA drug) who stayed on a maintenance dose after achieving their weight loss maintained it for 2 years after the weight loss they achieved was reached.  Studies are ongoing to answer these questions, and the clinical trials website has lists of these trials that are either in the recruitment stages or already in process, so we can learn more soon.

 

In studies regarding Semaglutide, when Trial participants who experienced weight loss were quietly switched from 2.4mg of Semaglutide to placebo, they gained weight back while others who weren’t moved to placebo continued to lose weight on their maintenance dose.

 

“With continued semaglutide, mean body weight change from week 20 to week 68 was −7.9% vs +6.9% with the switch to placebo.”

Effect of Continued Weekly Subcutaneous Semaglutide vs Placebo on Weight Loss Maintenance in Adults With Overweight or Obesity: The STEP 4 Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA. 2021 Apr 13

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2777886 

 

“Doctors say patients will need to take the medications for years—and probably for life—to avoid having the weight come back. “We talk about diabetes remission, and, in the same way, patients have obesity remission,” Dr. Jastreboff says. 

“Patients are not ‘cured’ once they lose the weight,” Dr. Jastreboff adds. “They need to continue treatment with anti-obesity medications in order to maintain the weight they lost, just as they would need to continue taking diabetes medication to maintain blood sugar levels.” 

 

…about 13% of individuals with obesity in the semaglutide clinical trials didn’t lose any weight, Dr. Jastreboff says. That doesn’t surprise her, because there are different kinds—or subtypes—of obesity, she says. “We just don’t know what they are yet.”

“We don’t yet have biomarkers where we can subtype obesity, similar to what’s done for cancer or other disease,” Dr. Jastreboff says. “There are no blood tests that could let someone know they’re going to respond to a given therapy or medication, such as a GLP-1 analogue like semaglutide.”