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Taking medications such as Ozempic and Wegovy may result in weight loss, but there’s a catch: At some point, they will no longer help you shed pounds.
In other words, your weight will plateau—or reach a point when it becomes more difficult to lose more of it, experts say.
“Everybody hits a weight loss plateau,” Craig Primack, MD, founder of the Scottsdale Weight Loss Center, told Health. “No one loses 100% of their weight. Just like when you give medicine for blood pressure, the pressure falls but not to zero. It stabilizes at some point.”
That you won’t keep dropping pounds while taking these drugs might be unwelcome news if you’re taking or considering them to help you lose a substantial amount of weight. However, doctors say they can still offer health benefits, including helping you slim down overall.
Here, we break down why you’ll hit a weight-loss plateau on these medications, whether it makes sense to still take these drugs, and what to do if you do hit a plateau while taking them.
“A weight loss plateau is when a person reaches a certain body weight and has difficulty losing additional body weight,” Alyssa Lampe Dominguez, MD, an endocrinologist with Keck Medicine of USC, told Health.
These weight loss plateaus can happen, regardless of how you’re trying to lose weight—from dieting to weight loss medications to bariatric surgery, at some point, your body will eventually not lose weight as quickly as it did in the beginning.
This is because the body doesn’t necessarily want to lose weight—it wants to hold on to the extra weight to protect itself from starvation.
According to Lampe Dominguez, the weight loss process actually increases your appetite and forces you to use less energy (i.e., burn fewer calories)—this is in an attempt to regain any lost body weight or prevent additional weight loss.
With medications like Ozempic and Wegovy (semaglutide), people are still likely to hit weight loss plateaus.
Semaglutide aids in weight loss by decreasing appetite, which it does by delaying the emptying of the stomach. This results in eating less—ultimately kickstarting weight loss.
In one clinical trial, people taking semaglutide hit weight loss plateaus about 60 weeks after starting the medication. There’s no evidence, however, that people will regain weight while on the medication.
“Our long-term data is limited at this point,” said Lampe Dominguez. “There’s no data showing that people regained when they stayed on the medication.” However, another study found that people who stopped taking it gained back about two-thirds of the weight they had lost.
Though it’s best to discuss with a healthcare provider whether to take these medications, Eduardo Grunvald, MD, an obesity medicine doctor at UC San Diego Health in San Diego, CA, told Health that the idea of hitting a weight-loss plateau shouldn’t be a reason not to consider them.
These drugs can still benefit you by reducing appetite, regulating blood sugar, and helping you feel fuller for longer. “What these drugs are doing is working in the brain to change drivers that make it very difficult for people to adhere to lifestyle interventions like diet,” said Grunvald.
Being on them, he explained, can give you an opportunity that you wouldn’t have otherwise had to create healthier habits. You may be more willing to eat a more nutritious diet, for example, or exercise more.
“It really enables a healthy lifestyle,” said Grunvald. “I don’t like to talk about these drugs as weight loss drugs. I like to talk about these drugs as treating obesity.”
If you hit a weight loss plateau on semaglutide, the medication will likely still allow you to maintain your new weight—according to Lampe Dominguez, no data show that people who continued taking the drugs post-plateau regained the weight they had lost.
The best thing to do is to get advice from your doctor if you seem to stop losing weight on Ozempic or Wegovy, Priya Jaisinghani, MD, an endocrinologist at NYU Langone Health, told Health.
One option would be to stop taking the medication, but Lampe Dominguez doesn’t advise it because evidence shows patients will likely regain any weight loss.
“If you go off it, you’re going to have cravings, same as before,” said Grunvald.
It’s also possible that you can still lose weight even after you notice your weight has been at a standstill.
“You may need optimization of medications and lifestyle interventions,” said Jaisinghani. “Make sure you are building sustainable habits to give yourself the best chance of succeeding in losing weight and maintaining your weight.”
She explained that these habits may include making dietary changes (including ensuring adequate protein), increasing exercise, adding resistance training, or improving sleep quality.
