Life after weight loss jabs ?

My post said UPF and high sugar foods are the problem. By sugar I meant refined sugars. But from personal experience, once I start eating sugar I crave all white carbs: bread, pasta, rice etc. I have to cut sugar and white carbs to pretty much zero to get rid of food noise. I can eat complex carbs though: beans, pulses, root vegetables, fruit - without triggering food noise. Alcohol also messes with appetite - I crave bread or toast after drinking. Normally I don’t eat breakfast but need toast after booze. I did the Zoe blood sugar monitoring and discovered this is not psychologically driven! My sugars crashed after drinking.
 
Lois Lame said:
Just one thing about carbohydrates: we all need carbohydrates. They are fuel for our bodies. But 'carbs' are somehow in the black books because they are equated with sugar I suppose. Complex carbohydrates are what we need. We can't lump all carbohydrates together.
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But often people need a lot, lot less than they are eating. We had to overhaul our cooking when I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and started weighing out rice, pasta etc. My OH was probably eating double the RDA at a meal but now is eating 70g dry weight and not missing the extra. He's also lost a tonne of weight.

The measured out amount for 2 people looks tiny so it's very easy to see how people over eat.
 
Lois Lame said:
My guess is that the issue is: is this drug going to prove to be dangerous?

I know almost nothing about it. I didn't even know its name until I read it on this thread. I don't know what it feels like to take it. I can't imagine that it stops a person from overeating but that's because I find it hard to imagine, that's all. I'd love someone who takes it to explain all this to me.
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from ChatGPT:
GLP-1 medicines work by copying the action of a natural hormone in your body called GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1). This hormone is released from your gut after you eat and helps regulate blood sugar and appetite

Here’s what they do, step by step

🍽️ 1. Reduce appetite & increase fullness
  • They act on appetite centres in the brain, helping you feel less hungry
  • They increase feelings of satiety (fullness)
  • Many people find they naturally eat smaller portions and snack less
⏳ 2. Slow stomach emptying

.Food moves more slowly from the stomach into the intestine
  • This keeps you feeling full for longer after meals
  • It also helps prevent sharp spikes in blood sugar

🩸 3. Improve blood sugar control

GLP-1 medicines:
  • Increase insulin release when blood sugar is high
  • Reduce glucagon (a hormone that raises blood sugar)
  • Do this in a glucose-dependent way, which is why the risk of low blood sugar is low when used alone
🧠 4. Affect reward and cravings


  • They reduce activity in brain pathways linked to food cravings and reward
  • Some people notice reduced interest in ultra-processed foods, alcohol, or overeating

⚖️ Result: weight loss & metabolic benefits


Because of these combined effects, GLP-1 medicines often lead to:

  • Weight loss
  • Improved insulin sensitivity
  • Better blood sugar control
  • Reduced risk of heart disease in some patients
For me personally, I have no negative side effects. It’s like my body is stable and balanced. I eat a normal amount of food and still lose weight. Before I would have to reduce my calories severally or go low carb to lose even the tiniest amount of weight.
I have insulin resistant PCOS.
 
Last edited:
ecb89 said:
from ChatGPT:
GLP-1 medicines work by copying the action of a natural hormone in your body called GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1). This hormone is released from your gut after you eat and helps regulate blood sugar and appetite

Here’s what they do, step by step

🍽️ 1. Reduce appetite & increase fullness
  • They act on appetite centres in the brain, helping you feel less hungry
  • They increase feelings of satiety (fullness)
  • Many people find they naturally eat smaller portions and snack less
⏳ 2. Slow stomach emptying

.Food moves more slowly from the stomach into the intestine
  • This keeps you feeling full for longer after meals
  • It also helps prevent sharp spikes in blood sugar

🩸 3. Improve blood sugar control

GLP-1 medicines:
  • Increase insulin release when blood sugar is high
  • Reduce glucagon (a hormone that raises blood sugar)
  • Do this in a glucose-dependent way, which is why the risk of low blood sugar is low when used alone
🧠 4. Affect reward and cravings


  • They reduce activity in brain pathways linked to food cravings and reward
  • Some people notice reduced interest in ultra-processed foods, alcohol, or overeating

⚖️ Result: weight loss & metabolic benefits


Because of these combined effects, GLP-1 medicines often lead to:

  • Weight loss
  • Improved insulin sensitivity
  • Better blood sugar control
  • Reduced risk of heart disease in some patients
For me personally, I have no negative side effects. It’s like my body is stable and balanced. I eat a normal amount of food and still lose weight. Before I would have to reduce my calories severally or go low carb to lose even the tiniest amount of weight.
I have insulin resistant PCOS.
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Of course, AI is fully qualified on all medicines. Who needs professional advice when you’ve got ChatDPT
 
Ambers Echo said:
I think UPF and high sugar foods have payed havoc with hormone regulation, and so GLP-1 meds replace the GLP-1s that should be there naturally but have been stripped away by diet. I'd like to see UPF mostly banned - or at least very heacily taxed, when in fact it's cheap. And education re food massively improved but that will hever happen. Modern diets are making people sick and fat because if you take away hormones that regulate appetite, then weight management become alost impossible. No-one has enough willpower to switch off appetite or resist the cravings to eat in response to 'food noise' (another word for appetite). But that is a societal problem. It's almost impossible to avoid UPF these days. And sugar is in EVERYTHING. I eat a very low sugar diet, with minimal UPF most of the time. It takes 1 biscuit to wake up the sugar-monster again. It takes about 4 days of white knuckling it before the urge to eat carbs switches back off. And it really is like a switch. But it is so, so hard to get the switch turned off in modern life.
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I agree wholeheartedly with 99% of this but food noise is not just hunger. For people who struggle with their relationship with food, 'food noise' is overwhelming almost obsessive thoughts about food constantly. I have a friend who has struggled with her weight for many years, she has issues with food and admits that she had a difficult childhood where food essentially became a main source of comfort and she has always struggled to overcome that. She described it to me as finishing a big meal and where your average person would feel full and satisfied, she would be panicking once her plate was empty about when she would next eat. When should she have a snack? What would we have for dinner? etc. It was never a physical hunger but an emotional urge to seek food and satiety constantly. The thought of going without food or feeling hungry even temporarily gave her genuine anxiety. She actually had a gastric sleeve in the end (this was before drugs like mounjaro were available) and said it completely changed her life, it just took the desire to eat away and broke the cycle and food just became 'fuel' rather than anything emotional. I believe, from what people tell me, that GLP-1's act in a similar way on quieting the noise in your brain (though nobody seems to know why). In some ways I think it's a bit sad as they say it removes the enjoyment from eating and so they stop eating for the sake of it, whereas I think for most people food SHOULD be enjoyed. But if you genuinely cannot manage that desire to seek out enjoyment through eating without it becoming obsessive, then I can absolutely see how drugs like this can free you psychologically from the grip that food has on you and help you to make more rational, healthier choices.

But again, I think this is a relatively small % of our society who can really benefit it from a solution much less invasive than the traditional surgeries used to help these patients. And of course as others have said, people who have genuine health conditions that make losing weight very difficult. They shouldn’t be used as a vanity tool.

To answer the original question of what happens if/when you stop the meds then I don't know, as the root cause has obviously never been addressed, perhaps as others have said for some people they will stay on the drugs for life. For others, it may just be enough to break the mental cycle and help them to form better habits long-term perhaps.
 
Surely it's a (bit) like metabolic horses?

The majority of average horses can cope fine with access to average-good grazing, good forage & some exercise is beneficial but probably not essential. Sure, some better doers might need to be monitored a bit more closely in the Spring but the majority are fine.

Having a metabolic horse, is a totally different ball game. Sugars in grass have to be closely monitored, hay has to be soaked before feeding, straw bought especially to eat and exercise is a huge commitment. Just one of the those factors need to be slightly out of whack and we potentially have a big problem.

And some metabolic horses just don't have an 'off' switch.

Medication can hugely help in the managent of many metabolic horses.

Why would it necessarily be any different for people? 🤷‍♀️ There just seems to be less criticism and shame around suppporting horse weight management with medication than people weight management from.what I can see.
 
SEL said:
But often people need a lot, lot less than they are eating. We had to overhaul our cooking when I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and started weighing out rice, pasta etc. My OH was probably eating double the RDA at a meal but now is eating 70g dry weight and not missing the extra. He's also lost a tonne of weight.

The measured out amount for 2 people looks tiny so it's very easy to see how people over eat.
Click to expand...
Weighing rice and pasta is the actual real "one simple magic trick to lose weight". I'm only half joking.
KikiDee said:
I agree wholeheartedly with 99% of this but food noise is not just hunger. For people who struggle with their relationship with food, 'food noise' is overwhelming almost obsessive thoughts about food constantly. I have a friend who has struggled with her weight for many years, she has issues with food and admits that she had a difficult childhood where food essentially became a main source of comfort and she has always struggled to overcome that. She described it to me as finishing a big meal and where your average person would feel full and satisfied, she would be panicking once her plate was empty about when she would next eat. When should she have a snack? What would we have for dinner? etc. It was never a physical hunger but an emotional urge to seek food and satiety constantly. The thought of going without food or feeling hungry even temporarily gave her genuine anxiety.
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This is also me. Having undiagnosed ceoliac as a child meant I was eating as much as a normal grown man and still malnourished and hungry and what your friend describes is exactly how it feels for me too, even now I can process food the psychological anxiety is still there. Not having easy food options available when out and about keeps it going, I think. That mindset means I have struggled with binge eating, gave myself an eating disorder in my 20s, back to binge eating etc etc I've been overweight, underweight, normal weight but mentally hanging on to sanity by my fingernails. I'd consider myself recovered now, but if you'd handed me a magic potion to delete "food noise" I don't think I would be. What worked for me was just... doing the work? Finding out through experimentation what keeps me sated (protein, 3 meals a day, a little treat in the evening), what makes me need to over-eat (stress, alcohol, over-restriction, internalised fat-phobia), just taking time and putting thought into it. Research and thoughtfulness and self-analysis. I should have gone to therapy! Would probably have been a lot easier but that is what it is. All that to say (I'm rambling, really) that using drugs to get rid of food noise (nicotine and cocaine were the old fashioned ones) is just papering over the cracks. I don't have an issue with it being "cheating" in terms of you get to avoid using willpower, but I do think it's going to prevent people actually figuring out what their real issue is, and they're being cheated out of very valuable knowledge.

There is also a point in there about missing VALID signals from your body. Not all food noise is just noise, sometimes there is something wrong or missing.
 
smolmaus said:
Weighing rice and pasta is the actual real "one simple magic trick to lose weight". I'm only half joking.

This is also me. Having undiagnosed ceoliac as a child meant I was eating as much as a normal grown man and still malnourished and hungry and what your friend describes is exactly how it feels for me too, even now I can process food the psychological anxiety is still there. Not having easy food options available when out and about keeps it going, I think. That mindset means I have struggled with binge eating, gave myself an eating disorder in my 20s, back to binge eating etc etc I've been overweight, underweight, normal weight but mentally hanging on to sanity by my fingernails. I'd consider myself recovered now, but if you'd handed me a magic potion to delete "food noise" I don't think I would be. What worked for me was just... doing the work? Finding out through experimentation what keeps me sated (protein, 3 meals a day, a little treat in the evening), what makes me need to over-eat (stress, alcohol, over-restriction, internalised fat-phobia), just taking time and putting thought into it. Research and thoughtfulness and self-analysis. I should have gone to therapy! Would probably have been a lot easier but that is what it is. All that to say (I'm rambling, really) that using drugs to get rid of food noise (nicotine and cocaine were the old fashioned ones) is just papering over the cracks. I don't have an issue with it being "cheating" in terms of you get to avoid using willpower, but I do think it's going to prevent people actually figuring out what their real issue is, and they're being cheated out of very valuable knowledge.

There is also a point in there about missing VALID signals from your body. Not all food noise is just noise, sometimes there is something wrong or missing.
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Absolutely there is a solid argument that there is a massive lack of support for people with food related issues - telling someone with genuine challenges with over-eating to just "eat less" or "make better choices" is essentially the same as telling someone with anorexia to "just eat a bit more". The right answer would be therapy and support for people but it just isn't available sadly and I can't see that changing with our stretched health service.
 
KikiDee said:
I agree wholeheartedly with 99% of this but food noise is not just hunger. For people who struggle with their relationship with food, 'food noise' is overwhelming almost obsessive thoughts about food constantly.
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This had always been my view but the effectiveness of GLP-1 meds shows it to be a lot less important than that. People who have never been able to manage their weight before because of obsessive 'food noise' are reporting that it just switches off, despite no other intervention around attitudes to food. They don't suddenly magic away decades of conditioning. It just goes.

Bariatric surgery was less effective because it did not address the hormonal aspect. People would liquidize mars bars etc to try and eat what they still craved despite the tiny stomach size that made eating more than a tiny amount impossible.

I think hormones are far, far far more important than anyone has ever understood before.
 
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