When you keep going back and forth with diets, it’s like a roller coaster for your body.
Summary
When you keep going back and forth with diets, it’s like a roller coaster for your body. Every time you gain weight back, your body has to deal with spikes in blood pressure, heart rate, and the way your body handles sugars and fats. This can stress the heart and cardiovascular system as a whole, as it must respond to larger-than-normal fluctuations.
Drugs like Ozempic are very effective in helping most people who take them lose weight. Semaglutide (sold as Wegovy and Ozempic) and tirzepatide (sold as Zepbound and Mounjaro) are the best-known in the class of drugs that mimic hormones to reduce feelings of hunger.
But does the weight return when you stop using them? The short answer is yes. Stopping taking tirzepatide and semaglutide will result in weight regain in most people.
So are these drugs just another (expensive) form of yo-yo dieting? Let’s see what the evidence shows so far.
It is a long-term treatment
For obesity, taking tirzepatide or semaglutide can help the body get rid of fat. However, it does not address the main reason for weight gain, as obesity is a chronic and complex condition. When you stop the drugs, the weight returns.
Perhaps a more useful comparison is with high blood pressure, also known as hypertension. Treatment for hypertension is lifelong. It’s the same with obesity. Drugs work, but only as long as you take them.
Therefore several simultaneous approaches are needed; Taking medications can be an important part of effective management, but alone is often not enough. And, as an unwanted side effect, stopping medications can compromise other weight loss strategies, such as eating less.
So what happens when you stop?
When you stop using tirzepatide or semaglutide, it takes several days (or even a few weeks) for them to leave your system. While this is happening, several things happen:
• You start to feel hungry again, because both your brain and your stomach no longer have the medicine to make you feel full;
• Blood sugar levels rise because the medicine no longer works on the pancreas to help control it. If you have diabetes in addition to obesity, you may need to take other medications to keep these levels within an acceptable range. Whether you have diabetes or not, you may need to eat foods with a low glycemic index to stabilize your blood sugar levels;
• Over the long term, most people experience a return to previous levels of blood pressure and cholesterol as the weight returns;
• Weight regain will be primarily in the form of fat, as it will be gained faster than skeletal muscle.
While taking the drug you will have lost proportionately less skeletal muscle than fat; Muscle loss is inevitable when losing weight, regardless of whether you use medications or not. The problem is, when you stop taking the medicine, your body gains weight instead.
When you keep going back and forth with diets, it’s like a roller coaster for your body. Every time you gain weight back, your body has to deal with spikes in blood pressure, heart rate, and how your body handles sugars and fats. This can stress the heart and cardiovascular system as a whole, as it must respond to larger-than-normal fluctuations.
Watch the video with commentary by André Forastieri.
André Forastieri is a journalist and entrepreneur, founder of Homework and the content and connections agency Compasso, as well as a mentor to professionals and executives. Find out more aboutandreforastieri.com.br
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Source: Terra
Ben Stock is a lifestyle journalist and author at Gossipify. He writes about topics such as health, wellness, travel, food and home decor. He provides practical advice and inspiration to improve well-being, keeps readers up to date with latest lifestyle news and trends, known for his engaging writing style, in-depth analysis and unique perspectives.
