Wegovy®

Effective weight loss isn’t solely about willpower or adjusting your diet and exercise routine. While those factors are important, your body’s biology and genetics also significantly influence weight management. If you’ve faced challenges in losing weight previously, consider exploring additional support through weight loss medications

Here are three reasons why weight loss efforts might falter:

1. Attempting drastic changes all at once.
2. Adopting extreme diets that are difficult to sustain.
3. Following generic plans that don’t account for individual biology.

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1. Clean the selected area on your abdomen, thigh, or upper arm with an alcohol wipe.
2. Hold the pen in one hand while you pinch the skin with the other hand. Then press the pen firmly against your skin and hold down the button.
3. You will hear a click when you start the injection, and the yellow bar on the pen should start moving. If the bar does not start moving, press the pen more firmly against the skin.
4. Keep holding the button down for 10 seconds. You’ll hear a second click to let you know the injection is still going. Once you hear the second click, keep holding the button down until the yellow bar has stopped moving.
5. The yellow bar will stop moving right before the end of the window. Once the yellow bar has stopped, you can slowly remove the pen from your skin. Don’t remove the pen until the yellow bar has stopped moving.
6. After you’ve administered the dose, dispose of the used pen in a sharps container (you can get one from your local pharmacy) or a heavy-duty plastic container with a screw-on lid. Because the semaglutide pen contains a needle, it’s important not to throw it into your regular trash.

In the STEP 4 clinical trial, people who combined Wegovy with a healthy diet and exercise lost an average of over 4% of their body weight by eight weeks. Those who reached a steady dose of 2.4 mg per week lost an average of 10.6% of their body weight in the first 20 weeks of medication—and over 17% of their body weight within 68 weeks. Everyone responds to Wegovy differently, and if prescribed, your Good Life-affiliated provider will work with you to get the best results for you.

In clinical trials, patients lost 15% of their body weight after 1 year, on average. This is based on the average weight loss in the three 68-week clinical trials of patients without diabetes who reached and maintained a dose of 2.4 mg/week of GLP-1 treatment, along with a reduced-calorie diet and increased physical activity.

Wegovy dosing starts out low, then gradually increases over the first few months until a steady dose is reached. If prescribed, your Good Life-affiliated provider will work with you to find the schedule and dosing that’s right for you. As an example, your provider may start you out on the lowest dose, 0.25 mg injected once weekly for the first month and slowly ramp you up to the maximum dose of 2.4 mg once weekly over the course of several months. This will depend upon your specific situation and your provider’s guidance.

Where diet and exercise alone might have failed you long-term, Wegovy could be the missing piece of the puzzle for you, as it is for many people.

In one of the most significant clinical trials on Wegovy, participants who took Wegovy combined with lifestyle interventions (lowering food intake and increasing physical activity) lost an average of 15% of their body weight by the end of the 68-week trial. In comparison, the placebo group lost less than 2.5% of their body weight on average with just lifestyle interventions (Wilding, 2021).

What’s most impressive is these results appear to have long-term effectiveness, as long as a person continues taking the drug. One study showed that, over the course of 68 weeks, those who continued taking Wegovy kept losing weight, while those who were switched to placebo at week 20 saw an average of 8% weight gain by the end of the trial (Rubino, 2021).

That’s probably the biggest key, though. To see long-term results from Wegovy, you have to keep taking it. It works very well for most people, but if you stop taking it, you should expect to gain back the weight you lost.

It helps to recognize that obesity and overweight are medical conditions, much like high blood pressure. A person with high blood pressure needs to keep taking their medicine to keep their blood pressure down—and the same idea applies to treating overweight and obesity with Wegovy.

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Wegovy works by mimicking the hormone GLP-1, which slows digestion and helps your brain regulate appetite by reducing hunger sensations. As your digestion slows, you may feel full longer and therefore eat less, which can lead to weight loss.