Ozempic didn’t work for me because I kept making this big mistake. Then the doctors told me the incredible little-known secret to using slimming shots correctly – and staying slim when you stop

My patient was in pieces. A 52-year-old mother of three, who we’ll call Lisa, told me through sobs that she felt like a failure. Like many women, Lisa had struggled with her weight for years.

It had made her self-conscious. And worst of all, no diet or exercise program had worked.

Then hope finally arrived in the form of revolutionary weight-loss shots – originally an off-label use of the diabetes treatment Ozempic and later including Wegovy and Mounjaro.

Lisa started taking the weekly appetite suppressant injections at the beginning of last year, which she bought from an online pharmacy. And for six months it worked – she ate smaller, healthier meals and managed to lose about three kilos.

But once she reached a weight she felt comfortable with, Lisa made a big mistake: she stopped taking the shots. And within months, her weight skyrocketed.

She had come to us in desperation and said she needed the medicine again.

It’s a story we hear often at Slimmr, the private weight-loss clinic of which I co-founded. Patients reach their target weight and feel good about themselves. Then, because of the initial success, they decide that the drugs have done their job and simply stop taking them.

In almost all cases their weight goes up again. Then they start the injections again and the whole cycle repeats.

We call it ‘the Ozempic yo-yo’ because it resembles the long-standing problem of yo-yo dieting, where people go through a pattern of repeatedly losing weight and then gaining it back again.

Those who cannot get a prescription for weight loss shots on the NHS often turn to online pharmacies, but receive no specialist advice. So they decide for themselves when it is good to stop taking the injections, which leads to weight gain.

It is demoralizing, unhealthy, psychologically damaging and often an expensive waste of money. It’s also something I personally feel strongly about, having gone through a similar experience.

In my twenties, I was naturally tall and slim and didn’t have to worry about my weight at all.

But when I was thirty, things changed. Although I live in London, I come from a large Welsh family, where food was so much more than just fuel: it was used for comfort and celebration.

I used to love a drink, especially pints of lager and pale ale, and as the years went on the weight started to pile on.

At my heaviest I weighed 16 stone and was a size 18. I was officially obese and my GP warned that my cholesterol was too high.

I tried my best to diet and exercise, but nothing helped. So I panicked and looked for a quick solution.

In January 2023, I found an online pharmacy that sold me Ozempic without any questions. I started taking weekly injections and gradually increased the dose.

It cost between £180 and £280 a month, but it was well worth it. The ‘food noise’ disappeared – all those maddening thoughts about food. Within a year I had lost three and a half stone and dropped down to a size 14.

I still had more weight to lose, but I felt like I could do it myself.

That’s why I stopped taking the injections. But within weeks I felt myself falling back into old habits, into comfort eating and procrastination.

By the end of the month I had regained about half a stone so I started the jabs again. And that was the cycle. I would lose weight, stop treatment, gain it back, and repeat.

In recent years, drugs like Wegovy and Mounjaro have transformed the treatment of obesity. They work by using an appetite suppressant known as a glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1). Research shows that obese patients who use GLP-1 injections can lose up to 20 percent of their body weight within a year.

However, research also shows that more than half of people who stop taking the drugs regain at least two-thirds of the weight they lost. Nearly one in five regains their weight – or even exceeds it.

This is in large part due to patients stopping the medication and seeing their appetite return with a vengeance. This is thought to happen because, after dramatic weight loss, the body thinks it is starving, causing intense hunger pains. There’s even a term for it: rebound hunger.

Now many experts warn that GLP-1 patients will need to continue receiving injections for the rest of their lives. The doctors I work with at the Slimmr clinic think there is a solution that will eventually allow patients to stop taking the jabs.

Once our patients have reached their desired weight, they are switched to a much lower ‘maintenance dose’, which is approximately half of their previous dose. It means that they stop losing weight, but they also stop gaining weight.

Crucially, it gives the body time to adjust to its new weight so it no longer thinks it is starving. Most of our patients continue on this maintenance dose for about a year and then stop the injections completely.

We combine this treatment with exercise lessons, psychological guidance and the option of specialized dieticians and psychotherapy.

It is important to note that using these small doses is still an experimental practice as there are no clinical studies on their effect. And it’s certainly something patients should never try without medical supervision.

However, our patients have had fantastic results. And I also benefited from the approach.

In February I started with the weekly injection of Mounjaro, and gradually increased the dose. Not only did I lose the weight I had regained, I lost more – and now weigh nine and a half stone. And in October I switched to a weekly maintenance dose, which I want to continue for six months.

It means I can stay the same weight without having to think about it very hard. I enjoy food. I enjoy cooking. I like to eat out. I’m just not hungry.

It’s wonderful when people say, ‘Oh, you look really great,’ and I feel more confident. But the real benefit is my health.

• Rhiannon Doyle is co-founder of the private slimming clinic Slimmr (getslimmr.co.uk).