Everybody knows the weight comes back. What almost nobody publishes is how fast, in units you can multiply — which is why the worth-it question usually gets answered without a time horizon in it. This analysis supplies one, and the number is small enough to be surprising and steady enough to be alarming.
What was pooled
Six studies contributing ten intervention arms and 1,776 participants who discontinued semaglutide or tirzepatide. [1] The analysis was Bayesian and worked from reconstructed aggregate data — trajectories rebuilt from published summary curves rather than individual records, which is a standard technique and an indirect one.
Estimated weight loss at cessation was 15.35 kg, 95% credible interval 11.18 to 19.60. After stopping, weight returned at 1.04 kg per month, 95% credible interval 0.80 to 1.29. Observed follow-up ranged from 4 to 52 weeks.
Why a rate changes the question
“The weight comes back” is a warning nobody can act on. A kilogram a month is a quantity, and quantities can be compared against prices.
Sellers here publish a median of $179 a month for semaglutide by injection, read September 2026. On the point estimates above, each of those months holds off about a kilogram of return. Whether that is worth $179 is a genuine question with different answers for different people, and it is a far more useful framing than the one most buyers actually face, which is a six-month total with no stated endpoint at all.
It also reframes what the purchase is. Nobody buys weight loss outright at these prices. What gets bought is a rate of holding, renewed monthly, and the total cost depends entirely on how long you intend to keep renewing — which is the real cost question and the one product pages are built to avoid.
What this does not settle
Whether regain is inevitable or merely usual. These are pooled averages from trials and cohorts, and individual trajectories vary enormously. Some people hold a substantial part of the loss; the average person in these studies did not.
It also says nothing about people who taper rather than stop, or who stop with structured support in place, because the pooled studies were not designed around those. And six studies is a thin base for a question this consequential, however many participants they contain.
The decision this actually informs
Not whether to start. Whether to start without a plan for what happens when you stop — because on this evidence, stopping is not a neutral event that returns you to where you were before. It returns you there over roughly a year, having spent the money.
Most people do stop, and sooner than they expect. Persistence in this market is poor, and not only because of price — the cost of a course and what a canceled term actually refunds are worth understanding before the first order rather than during the month you decide to quit.