Your body naturally produces an appetite hormone known as glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) that helps to regulate your hunger. Medication, such as Saxenda and Wegovy work like GLP-1 by regulating your appetite, which can lead to eating fewer calories and losing weight.

Large-scale clinical trials show that those people who take the medication alongside diet and lifestyle advice have the greatest long-term weight loss. That’s why CheqUp recommends that everyone participates in our holistic weight management service consisting of dietary advice, physical activity recommendations, regular check-ins with your health coach, and the provision of medical / psychological / sleep management / stress support as is recommended by your CheqUp doctor.

You should begin to see an impact within four weeks. Wide-scale clinical trials show an average initial weight loss of 2% within four weeks for both Wegovy and Saxenda.

There are different types of GLP-1 medication - your CheqUp doctor will help you to determine which is most suitable for you.

Broadly, the weight loss in clinical trials lasting about a year ranges from 10% (Saxenda) to 15% (Wegovy) to 20% (Mounjaro).

At present only two GLP-1 agonist receptor drugs are licenced for weight loss in the UK - Saxenda and Wegovy, However, Wegovy is not yet available due to supply shortages which we hope will be resolved later in the Spring of 2023.

The active drug in Wegovy is Semaglutide, which is also offered for patients with Type 2 Diabetes as Ozempic.

A third drug, Tirzepatide, which is marketed under the name of Mounjaro, is likely to be available towards the end of 2023,

Obesity is a chronic, long-term disease. Like many types of medication, the disease will likely return if you stop taking the medication. The duration will be individualised to your weight loss maintenance and your health by our weight loss professionals.

There are two principal GLP-1 agonist drugs licensed in the UK for weight loss: Saxenda (whose active drug is liraglutide) and Wegovy (whose active drug is semaglutide). Although Wegovy is fully licensed in the UK and has been approved by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE), supply shortages mean that it won’t be available for UK clients until later in the Spring of 2023.

The average expected weight loss with Saxenda is about 10% after a year, for those clients who remain on the drug and take it as part of a holistic weight management service, such as that provided by CheqUp. For Wegovy, the expected weight loss is about 15% over 68 weeks.

However, a comparison by CheqUp of the wide-scale clinical trial data, shows that initial weight loss of the two drugs is almost identical. After 12 weeks, clients had lost about 6% of their body weight on both drugs. After 12 weeks the weight loss from taking semaglutide begins to diverge.

The implication of this is that clients in the UK should consider taking liraglutide for the three months until Wegovy is available with no likely difference in weight loss over those first three months before switching to a higher dose of semaglutide.

Your chances of successful long-term weight loss are dramatically improved if you take the medication under the support of experienced professionals. That’s why the National Institute for Clinical Excellence has licensed the use of semaglutide in clients only if taken under the supervision of a full weight management service, such as that provided by CheqUp. We recommend that you choose our Transform or Empower support packages for the best possible outcome.

Both Saxenda and Wegovy are called GLP-1 agonists and the great news is that it is possible to switch from one type of GLP-1 weight loss medication to another; for example, from Liraglutide to Semaglutide. This would be done under the supervision of your CheqUp doctor, a specialist in obesity treatments and GLP-1 medication.

When switching to a new medication for obesity control, it's important to consider the your past experience with similar medications. If you have had problems with side effects, the new medication should be started at a lower dose and gradually increased. The length of time before increasing the dose can also be adjusted based on the severity of past side effects. Additionally, consider how long you have been taking your current medication and what dose you are on to guide the starting dose of the new medication. The first dose of the new medication should be given at the same time the next dose of the old medication would have been taken.

A clinical trial has looked into this very issue and you can find the resulting article here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7900946/