It’s not surprising that this meta analysis shows that people regain weight after stopping taking weight loss drigs but actually there are very important cavests not being mentioned in the coverage www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

We don’t know if tapering works, because no one has studied it, and no one could tell me of any study that IS looking at it. It’s possible that long term weight loss might be sustainable on much lower maintenance doses.

There’s no real commercial incentive for Lilly or Nordirsk to see how people can stop using their drugs, so we may not get strong evidence on this.

The second important caveat is that the weight gain stats are an average of all participants. As Susan Jebb said at the SMC, there is a range of experiences. Some people do keep weight off.

This is important because despair is integral to obesity. One reason people don’t try to diet is that they don’t expect it to work. If people don’t think GLP-1s work long-term, why spend money on them?

These incretin mimetic drugs cost money and they have side effects. That’s why the prospect of not taking them and maintaining a healthy weight are psychologically important for users.