Holiday season means meals—and quite a lot of it, from work occasions to social gatherings with family and friends.
“After I speak to my sufferers, as an alternative of calling it essentially the most stunning time of yr, I name it essentially the most difficult time of the yr,” says Dr. Andres Acosta, a doctor within the division of gastroenterology and hepatology at Mayo Clinic.
For the 12% of adults within the U.S. now taking a weight-loss treatment that targets the GLP-1 and/or GIP hormones to limit urge for food or deal with diabetes—suppose Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound—the season is much more difficult.
“We’ve heard of individuals not skipping their injections however pushing them again,” says Michelle Cardel, chief diet officer at WeightWatchers. “So in the event that they usually inject on Wednesday, and Thanksgiving is on Thursday, they could give themselves their injection on Friday as an alternative, to allow them to have a bit extra room to benefit from the vacation meals and are much less more likely to expertise undesirable negative effects in the event that they overeat.” Others cease the medicines for longer intervals in the course of the vacation months, docs say.
Normally, docs don’t suggest altering something about your injection schedule. Not like most earlier anti-obesity medicines, medicine like Wegovy and Zepbound work partially on the mind to dampen starvation alerts and cut back urge for food so that you don’t really feel like consuming. So as to obtain that impact with the fewest negative effects, the dose of the injections that individuals give themselves as soon as every week should be ramped up steadily over 16 weeks earlier than individuals attain the utmost dose that they then preserve. Usually every injection can efficiently management starvation alerts for a couple of week, and simply as its impact begins to wane, you give your self one other injection.
Skipping or shifting injections has a domino impact. For these transferring from a Wednesday dose to a Friday dose, for instance, their future doses will now happen on Friday. And other people skipping doses ought to be ready to expertise the identical negative effects that they felt once they first begin their doses—akin to nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and different gastrointestinal signs—once they restart their doses.
“I counsel my sufferers towards stopping their treatment as a result of we’re managing power weight problems,” Acosta says, and altering a longtime dosing schedule can have extra penalties. If sufferers cease their injections for a couple of week, they should return to decrease doses and work their means again as much as the dose they achieved earlier than they stopped, which additional pushes again any weight-loss targets they could have set.
Learn Extra: How you can Add Extra Protein to Your Thanksgiving Recipes
Dr. Andre Teixeira, medical director of the Orlando Well being Weight Loss and Bariatric Surgical procedure Institute, has seen some critical examples of those spillover results amongst his sufferers. “Some individuals can’t work again as much as the dose the place they had been earlier than,” he says. As a result of these are hormone-based medicines, he likens the impact to what some girls expertise on various kinds of contraception; sure manufacturers are related to extra excessive negative effects that make the tablets insupportable for some.
And naturally, any time sufferers cease taking Wegovy or Zepbound, their weight finally goes again up. “I inform my sufferers that we don’t need to burn all the hassle they’ve put in to drop extra pounds over the entire yr over the six weeks of the vacations,” says Acosta.
As a substitute of messing with their treatment, Acosta advises individuals to plan forward with dietary and health changes. On Thanksgiving or Christmas Day, for instance, don’t eat massive meals earlier within the day. “You don’t must have a giant breakfast or a large lunch,” Acosta says. “Go train that morning—everyone advantages from an extended stroll or a hike. We’re tremendous good at planning meals and dinners with family members; we must also plan to go for a stroll within the park with our family members. And if the climate isn’t good, then go the mall. Do one thing that requires bodily exercise so that you burn some energy.”
He additionally reminds sufferers concerning the penalties of overeating whereas on the medicines, and advises them to not overdo it, even when they could really feel stress to at a household gathering. You would possibly contemplate letting family members learn about your state of affairs. Since these medicine are mentioned brazenly on social media and gaining recognition, “it’s develop into a bit extra acceptable to share that you’re attempting to drop extra pounds and utilizing anti-obesity medicines.”
And it isn’t simply navigating meals—however alcohol as nicely—that could be a problem for individuals taking the medicines. Many expertise nausea, vomiting, and different GI points in the event that they drink whereas on the medicines. WeightWatchers performed a research to chronicle how anti-obesity medicines affected alcohol consumption and located that 45% to 51% of individuals taking GLP-1 and GIP medicine decreased the quantity of alcohol they drank. It wasn’t clear from the research whether or not individuals made this variation as a result of they wished to keep away from negative effects or if they simply determined to drink much less as a part of their general need to be more healthy. However, says Cardel, “my guess is that it’s a mixture of each.”
What’s most essential for navigating the vacations is to plan forward in order that if you’re taking one in every of these medicines, you will discover methods to maximise your enjoyment of long-standing household traditions whereas nonetheless staying on monitor together with your dosing schedule.
