Lost and found: Life after Ozempic and other weight-loss drugs was just the start for these four people

Editor’s Note: Watch “Dr. Sanjay Gupta Reports: Is Ozempic Right For You?” at 10 p.m. Saturday, November 23, and 3 a.m. Sunday, November 24, on CNN.

Research shows that 1 in 8 adults in the US has used one of the popular GLP-1 medications, most of them trying to manage chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease and others to help them lose weight.

But nearly 60% of the people taking these drugs – including Ozempic and Mounjaro for diabetes and Wegovy and Zepbound for obesity – stop treatment before 12 weeks, before the medicines can provide clinically meaningful weight loss, studies also show.

Side effects such as diarrhea, vomiting and nausea can prompt some people to quit the medication. Others stop because they don’t feel like the drugs are working or because of concerns over price. Although manufacturers offer assistance programs, they can cost around $1,000 or more without insurance.

“We call them anti-obesity medications because we are treating the chronic disease of obesity, and that means that you usually have to stay on these medications indefinitely,” said Dr. Eduardo Grunvald, medical director of the weight management program at UC San Diego Health. “If people want to stop or try to stop taking them, I have no problem supporting them. But most people will regain the weight if they stop it.”

Here’s what people found after they tried the medications.

Finding confidence: Alexus Murphy, 22

Alexus Murphy is still nervous. She paused her Zepbound injections for a few weeks and is watching her weight like a hawk, worrying about any hint of weight gain.

“I’m looking for a scale everywhere I go,” she said with a laugh.

The 22-year-old content creator approached her doctor about weight loss medication in March, before she had breast reduction surgery.

It was her first surgery, and she wanted to lower her BMI to minimize health risks during the operation and in recovery.

She lost almost 50 pounds over the course of 23 injections – a five-month journey.

Murphy shared her milestones in several videos that went viral on TikTok, fielding questions about side effects and how she got access to the drug.

“This medicine changed my life for the positive in all aspects of my social life, in my personal life and just how I show up for myself. It’s allowed me to be more confident in the spaces that I walk in,” she said.

But there were downsides, too.  She felt fatigued and had nausea and brain fog while she was on the injections.

“Once I take the medicine, I have to take two days to myself because it’s just like your body’s working out. Your body’s working out without you [physically] working out. So even small things like me going up the stairs or like me carrying things, I will be super overly out of breath rather than like me now, I’m able to move around, get up, not feel groggy,” she said.

Murphy also battled hormonal acne for the first time in her life. And perhaps most frightening, she had several fainting episodes while she was on Zepbound.

Doctors warned her that her blood sugar was low and that she was letting herself get dehydrated, so she tried to be more mindful about her food and water intake.

Murphy now weighs less than she did in middle school and says it has improved her mental health.

“The breast reduction was a big step, but the weight loss put a little cherry on top,” she said.

The Houston college student got her medicine at no cost through her health insurance in her home state of California, Inland Empire Health Plan, a program for people with Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program.

“In this economy, I don’t think I would be able to afford it, and at that point it would be considered a luxury,” she said.

Still, just before hitting her goal weight, Murphy decided to stop using Zepbound for a few weeks to see if she could make it the rest of the way on her own.

“I wanted to prove to myself that I could lose the last 10 pounds towards my goal weight naturally, just so that I wouldn’t be dependent on the medicine,” she said. “I don’t have any habits or anything that I’m addicted to besides social media. So I wanted to kind of keep it that way.”

She’s been fasting, eating one meal a day and working out three or four times a week.

But after hitting her weight loss goal while off Zepbound, she felt she was backsliding and took another dose of the medication.

“I felt swollen, and I was worried about how much I was eating,” she said. “I couldn’t control eating sweets. I was falling back into my food habits.”

Murphy feels sure that this latest dose of Zepbound will be her last.

“It’s not worth it because of the acne, and I had other hormonal side effects,” she said.

And although she hasn’t yet shared her decision to stop taking Zepbound with her TikTok followers, she hopes her audience will stay with her.

“I’m hoping that my audience follows me outside of just my [weight loss] journey and I’m able to encourage people to continue to just care for their wellness. Whether you’re on the weight loss medicine, whether you’re not, but just overall being more conscious of your health, especially girls transitioning from being like a teen to a young adult,” she said.

Finding inner peace: Steven Ray, 37

Life after weight-loss medications has been smooth sailing, Steven Ray says.

In fact, he just got back from a cruise where he was able to walk around confidently without a shirt – a first for a man who, growing up, felt so self-conscious about his weight that he wore a t-shirt in the pool.

Ray, 37, used compounded semaglutide through a wellness clinic. Compounding is the process of making copies of drugs that are commercially available. It’s allowed by the US Food and Drug Administration during a shortage – which, until recently, applied to the GLP-1 drugs due to unprecedented demand.

Ray lost over 40 pounds in four months and quit the medicine cold turkey after hitting his goal, with his prescribing doctor’s blessing.

The Houston-area father of two said he’s been able to maintain his weight loss, hovering at around 168 pounds since his last injection in May.

The FDA doesn’t review compounded versions of GLP-1 drugs for safety, effectiveness or quality, and the agency has received reports of adverse events in people who used compounded semaglutide.

Ray was willing to take his chances.

He was “tired of being fluffy” and wanted to be a better role model for his kids, so Ray checked out a wellness clinic to learn more about whether weight-loss injections were for him.

“At the end of the day, you have to take care of yourself,” he said. “You have to be healthy to help people.”

Aside from a little acid reflux and some stomach cramping, Ray says, he’s grateful he didn’t notice many side effects from the weight-loss drugs.

His blood sugar, cholesterol and testosterone levels have improved. And maybe just as important, he now feels great about himself. His kids have noticed the changes, too.

“I make it a point to make better decisions for them so they can live a healthier life,” Ray said.

To maintain his weight loss, Ray prioritizes portion control, making swaps like ordering a kids’ meal at fast food restaurants and eating off a small plate instead of a regular dinner plate.

“The way that I see this medication is, it’s a lifestyle change. And this is the crutch that is helping you to adjust to your new lifestyle,” Ray said.

Finding strength: Becky Bell, 69

Becky Bell used to tell people that she would never run, even if someone was chasing her with a gun.

Now she’s got two 5K race bibs and has signed up for another race on Thanksgiving Day.

Bell, who lives in Woodstock, Georgia, said she had tried to lose weight using different diets over 25 years. But after her husband died in 2014, she says she practically “fell apart.”

“I just didn’t want to do anything but eat,” she said.

She was living a solitary – and sedentary – life. In 2020, her doctor prescribed Ozempic to help her lose weight and prevent her prediabetes from progressing.

“I was very close to being 300 pounds. I knew I had to do something because I have some bad heart history in my family that told me I needed to do something to keep from dying of a heart attack,” said Bell, 69. “I needed to get my health back on track.”

Ozempic was the first step toward her goals, but she had some reservations. She didn’t want to take it forever. And while taking the drug, she lost her desire to eat.

“It was really too good at suppressing my appetite, to the point where I was told by my doctor that I was almost malnourished because I wasn’t getting even a thousand calories in daily while I was on Ozempic,” she said.

Bell felt very sick while on Ozempic, she says, with nausea and low energy. She wanted to sleep all the time. She would often have dizzy spells, especially when she was getting up from sitting or lying down, and even fainted a few times.

In October 2023, after losing 70 pounds, she stopped using Ozempic because of the side effects. Then, when gym owner Max Nazaire approached her about joining Safe Haven, a fitness studio for adults over 50, she decided it was worth a shot.

“I lost the weight, but I felt like I was still fat, because I wasn’t working out,” she said.

Now, after a year of mountain climbers and squats at the fitness studio, Bell has more than just muscles to show off.

“Working out here, the people that come here give you so much encouragement,” she said. “I feel like it’s my family now.”

The sense of community is important for her, and joining the gym has given her a place to go and a reason to get out of the house.

Nazaire says he sees a lot of clients like Bell: people who had to stop using weight-loss medications, due to the side effects or because of the cost, and are now looking to maintain or continue with their weight-loss efforts.

“The first thing we do is, we make sure that they’re practicing really great lifestyle habits. And when we talk about lifestyle habits, making sure that they’re getting enough nutrients to be able to facilitate sustained weight loss. It’s always about sustainable weight loss,” he said.

Bell can be found at Safe Haven four or five days a week. She’s lost 25 more pounds in the past year, for a total of nearly 100 since she started Ozempic in 2020.

“I am so tickled that I am into a large. I’ve gone from 3X when I started this journey to a large,” she said. “I don’t even remember the last time I was in a large shirt size.”

Occasionally, she sees a commercial for Ozempic and briefly considers going back on it. But ultimately, she’s not tempted to go back on the medication.

“Aside from the exercise, the confidence that I have in myself is just so much more than I ever thought I would have,” she said.  “It makes me love myself.”

Finding balance: Dustin Gee, 37

Dustin Gee was flipping through vacation photos when he realized that he didn’t recognize himself anymore. What should have been a dream trip to Peru in January 2023 with his husband had been a struggle.

“I love traveling, and I’ve always been really active and been to a lot of cool places, but this is the first time I’ve been to a place where I just felt like – I knew I didn’t feel completely like me,” Gee, who lives in Bellingham, Massachusetts, said.

Gee had gained about 30 pounds, and for the first time, he noticed mobility issues. He found that he would rather stop for ice cream than explore Lima through long, rambling walks.

“It was kind of really in that moment that I went back through family photos and different milestones in our journey from the day we got licensed to become foster care parents and just said, ‘Where did I go?’ And so that really set me on a path to having serious conversations with my doctor and starting to explore serious steps to begin to lose weight,” he said.

Gee, 37, had one big reason behind wanting to lose weight – well, actually, three: his sons, Cristian, Emanuel and Jackson, whom he and husband Alex had been fostering since 2020. The family had an adoption date set for spring, and Gee refused to meet that milestone feeling “bound and drained.”

He talked to his doctor about his concerns and got some tips about managing stress as a parent, ways to cope with emotional eating and how to plan for physical activity. He also got a prescription for Wegovy.

Gee started using the drug in February 2023 and had lost 30 pounds by the adoption date in May.

“It makes it even more meaningful just knowing that at that same time, while we were making such a critical decision in our life as parents and as a family, to also know that, for a set period of time leading up to that, I was also making big decisions and commitments towards my health,” Gee said.

His concerns went beyond his appearance. He was also worried about his blood sugar and cholesterol levels, especially because obesity and heart disease run in his family.

Between February and September 2023, Gee lost about 45 pounds on Wegovy. He stayed on the drug for a full year before deciding he was ready to look at lifestyle changes and possibly quit the medicine.

He started following the Mayo Clinic Diet, which has a health program designed to accompany GLP-1 drugs, in February.

Gee liked how the program helped him build good habits to maintain his weight loss, and he enjoyed tracking his meals, setting his intentions and logging his weight in the app every day.

He decided to give himself another year on Wegovy while using the program to help reshape his mindset.

Gee lost another 5 to 7 pounds in the first two weeks and now works as an ambassador for the program.  He switched to a maintenance dose of Wegovy in September and aims to be completely off it by February.

“For me, at this stage in life, I feel much more confident and really kind of excited to go off of it. … I don’t view it as a challenge but as just this next step of holding myself accountable and continuing to make great strides and be present for my family,” Gee said.

The key to sticking to his routines is structure.

“When you can build routine, you can build consistency, and that’s what results in a sustainable, maintainable lifestyle. But as a family with three active boys and different routines, right, we live our lives off of structure,” Gee said. “So a lot of the choices I’ve made have been things that didn’t need to be a drastic shift to make my lifestyle one way but instead work for the lifestyle that I have and doesn’t allow me to easily get derailed from that.”

He also relies heavily on support from his husband to help keep things on track and his sons to keep him on his toes.

“We can be active. We can go out of the house and kayak all day or go on long walks,” Gee said.

“I try to do my best to talk with them about the changes that I’m making and why, and that’s because we want to be healthy, and that with that comes the ability for us to be a happier family and to enjoy our time together,” he said.

Gee regularly does low-impact cardio and strength training and gets in walks as often as he can through the workday with a treadmill desk.

“I just always try to put on like a sneaker for the day. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a workout shoe, but I find that that just helps me too, because I can do this [treadmill], walking around the house, walking to get the mail, choosing to walk when I can over taking a simpler route,” he said.

He plans to stick with the Mayo Clinic Diet program, which is now a part of his lifestyle.

“At this point, I’m ready, and part of me wants to move into this next chapter knowing that I can rely on myself entirely and not necessarily on the weight loss medication,” he said.

CNN’s Tal Yellin contributed to this report.