Stuck at the same weight for months and the food noise came back - what am I missing?

[homey_showingup]

Hi! Curious if this rings a bell for anyone else on semaglutide. About a year in now. Lost 20 pounds, then out of nowhere gained 10 back. Stuck at one number for a couple months, and now it's creeping back toward where things started. Kept titrating up the whole time too. Even at the higher amount the food noise is loud as ever, barely any difference from the lower dose. Protein goal's getting hit, workouts are happening, water's covered.

Has anyone else stalled out like this? What's usually behind it? Getting this through a compounding pharmacy and wondering if maybe their formula shifted somehow. Pretty frustrated and not getting much of an answer from where this gets ordered.

 

[apricot-stroller21]

You're definitely not alone in this. I get exactly how you feel since I went through something really similar. Started Mounjaro back in June of last year at 90kg, held at 2.5mg for eight months and dropped 25kg. My doctor said I was responding unusually well, so pushing the number higher while things were already working didn't seem necessary to either of us. This remains a medication, at the end of the day, and I've always leaned toward using the smallest amount that actually does the job. If 2.5mg handled it, injecting more felt pointless. About eight months in though, the hunger and mental chatter around food came creeping back. Bumped to 3.5mg, then 5mg a month after that. Unfortunately even 5mg hasn't restored the suppression. Not really gaining, but managing that daily chatter has become a grind again. Like you, I'm unsure what comes next. Would 7.5mg bring it back, or does this just happen over time regardless? I don't want to drop more weight, just want the mental noise gone so I can get back to enjoying my tracking, my workouts, and feeling steady again. Hoping we both figure this out!

 

[fuzzy-flax]

Like you, that constant mental noise around food overrode everything I understood about weight loss, calorie balance, staying active, knowing my macros inside and out. I could put together a genuinely healthy meal plan in minutes, yet none of that mattered against the nonstop chatter.

All that chatter vanished within two days of injecting for the first time, and hasn't come back since, more than a year later now. Had no clue how loud it had been until the silence hit. Hard to put into words, it just stops. That endless loop about your favorite dish, whether to finish those leftovers before bed, snagging the sweets before anyone else gets to them, deserving that whole tub of ice cream.

Occasionally, maybe once every four months, I'll still overdo it with a sleeve of crackers or a box of cereal, rare enough it barely registers anymore.

I've been the exception for practically every medication I've tried, dealing with a couple of unexplained conditions, so I walked in skeptical, but turns out with this drug class I respond about as typically as it gets. Shed roughly a quarter of my starting body weight that first year, progress has eased up gradually since.

Just go for it. You'll know within a few months whether it's working for you. If it's not, there are other options to test until

 

[Lab_Girl]

A whole lot of this hits close to home for me. That endless cycle of shedding and regaining the same 10-15 pounds, over and over, sounds painfully familiar. Been on a GLP-1 since March and I'm 45 pounds lighter now. What you wrote nails it exactly, the constant background chatter about food just switched off, so eating stopped being something I had to negotiate or fight with myself over. Meals actually feel enjoyable now, more than they ever did before. My own history with weight stretches back a long way too. Lost 100 pounds while I was still in high school. Put most of it back on during college. Took it off again afterward, then watched it creep back over roughly five years. Got it off a second time around 2010 and held that for another five years. After that it was mostly up and down for the better part of a decade. So when you talk about having the willpower, I take that completely at face value. Cycling through that many times isn't something laziness produces. Anyone who repeats a pattern like that is clearly capable of serious discipline, that was never really the missing piece. Rough that side effects turned into such a fight for you. Good to hear the overall trade is still worth it for you though.

 

[Mix_Babe]

It happened to me too. My compounding pharmacy altered the strength of my semaglutide and I assumed it matched my earlier bottles. Vomiting was constant until Zofran came to the rescue. About 15lbs came off, though I felt properly ill for roughly fourteen days. Sorry you went through this!

 

[tim_burke]

Yes, exactly this. Im genuinely cutting calories but the loss has stalled anyway. Mine does this thing where I bounce within a five pound window for weeks then suddenly drop. Most posts here show a ski-slope graph, mines more a rollercoaster. The first time it happened I bumped the dose, which erased food noise and appetite entirely, had to set phone reminders to remember eating. Appetite's barely there still, but Im eating, staying in deficit, hitting protein, and per my scan havent lost muscle. Still stalling sometimes, but not chasing a higher dose just for that. Eating is clean, blood sugar looks great, trusting the pace sorts itself out. Suppression fades over time for plenty of us. I only bump the dose when hunger comes back loud or glucose slips, not because the scale stayed flat.