Drugs known as GLP‑1 medications have changed the way doctors treat obesity and type 2 diabetes. Medicines such as semaglutide, which are sold under brand names like Wegovy and Ozempic, help people lose weight by reducing appetite and slowing digestion.
These drugs work by copying the action of a natural hormone in the body that helps regulate blood sugar and signals the brain that the stomach is full. Because of these effects, many people taking GLP‑1 medications lose a significant amount of weight.
However, the treatment usually requires weekly injections, sometimes for many years. This has raised questions among patients and doctors about whether people must continue taking the medication every week forever in order to maintain the weight they lost.
A small new study suggests that, for some people, it may be possible to take the injections less often and still maintain their weight loss. The research was published in the journal Obesity and looked at patients treated at the Scripps Clinic in San Diego.
The idea for the study began with an observation by Dr. Mitch Biermann, a physician who specializes in obesity and internal medicine. Over time, several of his patients told him they had started spacing out their injections instead of taking them every week. Surprisingly, some of them were still able to keep the weight off.
After hearing similar stories from several patients, Biermann became curious. He wondered whether extending the time between injections might work for other people as well. Instead of starting a new clinical trial, he examined medical records from patients who had already tried this approach.
The study included 34 patients who had previously lost weight while taking GLP‑1 medications. After they reached their weight loss goals, these patients began taking their injections less frequently than once per week.
The researchers followed these patients for 36 weeks, which is about nine months. During this time, the doctors monitored their weight, blood pressure, blood sugar levels, and other health indicators.
The results were encouraging for most participants. Many patients were able to maintain the weight they had already lost. Some even lost a little more weight during the follow‑up period.
The researchers also observed that the additional weight loss mainly came from body fat rather than muscle. This is an important point because preserving muscle mass is important for long‑term health and metabolism.
Another positive finding was that the improvements in blood pressure and blood sugar continued even after patients began spacing out their injections.
The study participants used several different dosing schedules. Seventeen patients took their injections every two weeks instead of every week.
Six people spaced their doses about 10 to 14 days apart. Seven patients extended the interval even further, sometimes waiting more than two weeks between injections. The longest gap recorded in the study was six weeks.
Although most patients maintained their weight, a few did regain some weight. Four participants who gained weight eventually returned to the standard weekly injection schedule.
Overall, about five people in the study regained a small amount of weight while using the less frequent dosing plan.
Before entering the study period, the patients had already achieved significant weight loss. On average, their body mass index, or BMI, had dropped from 30 to about 25.2. A BMI of 30 is considered obese, while 25.2 falls within the overweight range.
By the end of the study, the average BMI had fallen slightly further to 24.6, which is considered a normal weight.
One participant in the study, 65‑year‑old Scott McMillin, had struggled with his weight for many years. After starting weekly injections of Wegovy in 2023, he lost about 20 pounds and saw improvements in his blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
However, when he stopped taking the medication completely, he quickly regained about half of the weight he had lost. After restarting the drug, he later experimented with taking the injections every two weeks instead of every week.
According to McMillin, he did not notice much difference between weekly and biweekly injections. For him, reducing the frequency felt easier and more practical.
He also adopted other healthy habits, including regular exercise and a structured eating routine. These lifestyle changes may also have helped him maintain his weight loss.
Even though the results of the study appear promising, experts caution that the research has several important limitations.
First, the study was small, involving only 34 patients. Second, most of the participants were white and privately insured, which means the results may not represent the broader population.
Another limitation is that the study looked back at existing medical records rather than conducting a randomized clinical trial. In medical research, randomized trials are usually considered the most reliable way to test whether a treatment truly works.
In addition, the patients in this study did not stop the medication entirely. Instead, they continued taking the drug but simply increased the time between doses.
Dr. Fatima Stanford, an obesity specialist at Harvard Medical School who was not involved in the research, noted that patients who successfully reduce their dosing frequency may already be especially motivated or responsive to treatment.
She suggested that these patients may follow lifestyle recommendations more carefully or have a metabolism that responds particularly well to the medication.
Despite these limitations, the findings may still offer useful insights. Stanford said the study helps shift the discussion about long‑term treatment.
For many years, doctors assumed that people using GLP‑1 medications would need to take the full weekly dose indefinitely. This research suggests that more flexible dosing schedules may be possible for some patients once they have achieved their weight loss goals.
This idea could be important because the medications can be expensive, and insurance coverage is not always available.
Although GLP‑1 drugs have become very popular, only about six percent of Americans report using them. At the same time, researchers estimate that more than half of adults in the United States meet the medical criteria that would make them eligible for these treatments.
Looking at the study overall, the findings suggest that individualized treatment plans may be possible for some patients. Instead of assuming that everyone must follow the same weekly schedule forever, doctors may eventually adjust dosing based on each person’s response to treatment.
However, larger and more rigorous studies will be needed before doctors can confidently recommend extended dosing schedules. Future clinical trials will need to confirm whether spacing out injections works safely and effectively for a wider range of patients.
For now, the research highlights a promising possibility: some people may be able to maintain their weight loss with fewer injections, as long as they continue the medication and maintain healthy lifestyle habits.
If you care about weight loss, please read studies that hop extract could reduce belly fat in overweight people, and early time-restricted eating could help lose weight.
For more health information, please see recent studies that Mediterranean diet can reduce belly fat much better, and Keto diet could help control body weight and blood sugar in diabetes.
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