'Like a tsunami': What happens when you stop weight-loss drug? Woman says 'there's an addiction'

Anti-diabetic and weight-loss drugs gained prominence as millions of adults across the world live with obesity. While awareness has been raised about their dosage, side effects and cost, here's an account of women who stopped using weight-loss jabs after a while.

"It's like a switch that goes on and you're instantly starving," Tanya Hall, who tried to stop taking weight loss medication multiple times, told the BBC.

Tanya, a sales manager for a large fitness company, had started taking Wegovy. She was overweight, felt like an "imposter" and thought her opinion was not valued by her industry because of her size, the report added.

But after using the jabs, she said, people would come up to her and congratulate her on her weight loss. She felt she was treated with more respect.

However, during the first few months of the treatment, Tanya struggled to sleep, felt sick all the time, had headaches and even started to lose her hair - which might not be directly due to the drug but is a potential side effect of rapid weight loss.

"My hair was falling out in clumps," Tanya was quoted by the BBC as saying. But in terms of weight, she was getting the results she'd hoped for. "I'd lost about three and a half stone."

Now, more than 18 months after taking Wegovy, she's tried to come off the drug several times. The experiment ultimately led to a complete life change.

Within just a few days, Tanya said she started eating so much food that she's left "completely horrified".

She said, "It was like something opened up in my mind and said: 'Eat everything, go on, you deserve it because you haven't eaten anything for so long'."

As per the BBC report, Tanya is staying on the medication and is fully aware of the pros and cons of this decision.

She talked about “addiction”, saying, "For the first 38 years of my life, I was overweight - now I'm six stone (38kg) lighter."

"Therefore, there's part of me that feels like there's an addiction to keep it going because it makes me feel the way that I feel, it makes me feel in control," she said.

Maybe it's the other way round, she muses, maybe it's the drug that controls her.

Meanwhile, experts warned that decisions on dosage of these drugs should be made together with a healthcare provider and that “side effects should be taken into account as part of this.”

"I often see patients who will come off it when they're on the highest dose because they've reached their target and then they stop," Zubaidi said.

According to Dr Al-Zubaidi, that can be like being hit by an "avalanche or a tsunami". The food noise comes back as quickly as the next day.

"Somewhere in the region of 60% to 80% of the weight that you lost will return," he said.

"It's all about having an exit strategy," Dr Al-Zubaidi explained. He said, "The question is: what are these people's experiences once they come off the injection?"

"The environment that people live in needs to be one that promotes health, not weight gain," he said.

The UK's medicine watchdog, Nice, recommended that patients receive at least a year of ongoing advice and tailored action plans after they've stopped treatment.

This would help them to make practical changes to their lives so they can keep the weight off and most importantly, stay healthy.

But for those who pay for the drugs privately, like Tanya, this kind of support is not always guaranteed.

Recently, Novo Nordisk's injectable drug Ozempic entered the Indian market. Apart from Ozempic, Wegovy is another weight-loss drug approved for use in India. It was launched in India on June 24. India's drug regulator also approved the launch Eli Lilly's weight-loss drug, Mounjaro, Reuters reported on June 26, 2025.