What happens when you stop

If most people regain most of the weight after stopping, then this is not a three-month purchase. It is a multi-year one, and that changes which price matters.

The honest answer is that most people regain a substantial share of what they lost. A 2026 analysis published in PMC modelled the trajectory and identified a regain curve in which roughly 60% of the weight lost during treatment is regained within a year of stopping. Harvard Health, AARP and several academic medical centres have published similar guidance through 2026.

The five-year number

A $200 monthly difference is $2,400 a year and $12,000 over five. On a treatment clinicians increasingly describe as ongoing, choosing on the monthly figure rather than the multi-year one is the most expensive mistake in this category — bigger than any membership fee or dose tier.

Why it happens

These drugs work by changing appetite signalling — that is the whole mechanism. Stop the drug and the signalling returns to roughly where it was, including what many people describe as "food noise" coming back. It is not a failure of willpower; it is the medication no longer doing the thing it was doing.

If you need to stop

• Talk to your prescriber first rather than simply not reordering — particularly if you take other medications that were adjusted around the GLP-1.
• Do not restart at your old dose after a long gap. Tolerance fades, and restarting high is how people get very unwell.
• Expect appetite to return before the weight does, which many people find the hardest part.
• A planned taper with support is a different experience from running out of medication because a supplier failed.

This is general information drawn from published research and clinical guidance, not medical advice. Decisions about stopping, tapering or maintenance belong with the clinician who prescribed it.