It didn\u2019t come up in conversation with her doctor, but when she got home she Googled \u2018Ozempic\u2019 \u2013 the brand name of the drug semaglutide<\/a> \u2013 and bought a course of the drug via an online pharmacy, which she started to use. Ozempic is approved for the treatment of diabetes but is often used off-label for weight loss, too.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t really have any advice on how to approach it apart from the simple instructions on the prescription,\u201d says Doyle, a businesswoman who lives in London. \u201cFor the first few months I was exhausted and had quite a bit of reflux and nausea \u2013 but I kept going. In comparison to the risk of having a stroke or a heart attack due to my weight, I was prepared to deal with some minor side effects.\u201d <\/p>\n Soon, on the advice of a medic friend, she switched to getting her prescriptions<\/a> from a doctor privately and after around a year, happy with her roughly 30kg weight loss, she decided to come off the drugs and lose the last few pounds alone.<\/p>\n Here is where she came unstuck. \u201cAll that food noise that had been silenced came flooding back, and along with it the weight was coming back on, too,\u201d she says. \u201cMy friend suggested I needed to deal with the emotional side of my eating, so I went back on the medication and this time spoke to a dietitian and a psychotherapist, too. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not one to blame stuff on my childhood, but they helped me realise that I had a lot of self-esteem issues and that perhaps there was a sense of trying to hide myself behind food and the fat I put on. Once I\u2019d unknitted all these issues in therapy I came to understand that it had made me invisible in a way that shielded me from a lot of potential pain. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m now down to 65 kilos, I\u2019ve just been taking a very low dose for months now and I\u2019m very close to ready to come off that completely,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n If she proves successful in weaning off entirely, Doyle, now in her mid-forties, will become one of very few patients who\u2019ve lost weight<\/a> on these ever-more-popular medications to come off the drugs and maintain her new weight permanently. But she believes that with psychological help and dietary education, it\u2019s completely possible patients won\u2019t be on the drugs forever. And, inspired by her own experience, Doyle has now co-founded a company that prescribes weight loss jabs alongside professional dietary and mental health support with this very goal.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t want patients who have used these medications to find it becomes just another failed \u2018diet\u2019,\u201d says Dr Courtney Raspin, a psychologist specialising in eating disorders and eating behaviours. \u201cWith help, we hope they can actually address the issues that might have led to their struggles with their weight, and to help them develop a new relationship with food and a more compassionate relationship towards their body.\u201d<\/p>\n However, thoughts among the medical community are mixed, with many experts in the field considering long-term prescription of GLP-1 appetite suppressant drugs to be unavoidable. <\/p>\n Dr Ralph Abrahams is a consultant physician and expert in endocrinology and diabetes who has been prescribing these drugs \u2013 and their precursors \u2013 for more than a decade, primarily to patients with diabetes.<\/p>\n \u201cIn general, the evidence is that when you come off the drugs, you will regain all the weight or more,\u201d he says. \u201cSo I\u2019d not readily recommend anyone do so. That doesn\u2019t mean there\u2019s not one or two people somewhere in the world who have succeeded in doing that. But in general, once someone is at the right weight I would advise them to lower the dose and see if they can maintain their new weight on that lower dose, and to continue to do so on as low a dose as possible. There won\u2019t be one prescription for everyone at which that\u2019s doable, it will vary from patient to patient.\u201d<\/p>\n And yet the fact remains that we still know very little about the long-term effects of staying on these drugs \u2013 at whatever dosage \u2013 for years on end. In trials, patients have only been kept on them for two years, and even now, those who started taking Ozempic <\/a>the minute it became available to them (for diabetes) in the UK can only have been on it for a maximum of six years, while the even newer Mounjaro has only seen UK patients able to access it for less than two years.<\/p>\n In his new book, Food Noise: How Weight Loss Medications & Smart Nutrition Can Silence Your Cravings, Dr Jack Mosley (son of the late Dr Michael Mosley) expresses some concerns about weight-loss medications. In a recent interview he said: \u201cMy dad thought there was huge potential for these drugs, as do I. But the more research I did, the more I was convinced it\u2019s like the Wild West out there. People need to know how to use the GLP-1s and the significant consequences of misusing them.\u201d<\/p>\n He points to research which suggests that 40 per cent of weight lost may be lean body mass (muscle), and when people regain weight, they tend to gain it back as fat rather than muscle. Users can also become malnourished despite losing weight, especially if they are consuming nutrient-poor ultraprocessed foods. What\u2019s more, the drugs are designed for people with obesity or poor metabolic health, not for those seeking to lose a few pounds for aesthetic reasons. Many people are accessing these drugs without proper medical guidance or consideration of their actual health needs.<\/p>\n Dr Abraham is more positive, arguing that for most people on GLP-1 drugs<\/a>. Side effects such as fatigue and nausea are typically short lived (if they\u2019re not, the dose is wrong, says Abraham) while problems regarding muscle loss are believed not to be some unique effect of the drug, but the result of inadequate protein intake due to loss of appetite. This issue will be resolved by eating more protein combined with resistance training, he says.<\/p>\n More importantly, shedding the excess pounds should have the knock-on effect of improving a variety of important health markers \u2013 bringing down insulin resistance in diabetic patients, lessening the load on joints, reducing the risks of various cancers, and lowering blood sugar and blood pressure into a healthier range.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/comp-1744711103-e1744711152163.png\")
Rhiannon Doyle has now lost over 35kg by taking Ozempic<\/p>\n