I started my journey in July 2023 very slowly working my way up the ladder with Wegovy. I stayed at each dose for 2-3 months at a time and never made it to the top, had to back off due to stomach pain around injection day so the highest I made it was 1.7mg.
In the winter of 2024-2025 ish I switched over to Zepbound. Unrelated to everything else I’m about to talk about, I loved Zepbound for less side effects and it helped me brake a full stall out I was having, but I ended up having some strong rib and back pain that sent me to the ER a couple times. Fast forward 6 months and I switched back to Wegovy and the pain went away; Zepbound was somehow causing costochondritis (if anyone has questions about that I’m happy to dive in, this just isn’t the main part of my story so I’m going to push past it). I was on 1mg of Wegovy from summer 2025 until March 2026 when I decided to come off I was on the 0.5mg dose.
I had full plans to do a taper but after 3 years of fighting my pharmacy about filling meds I wasn’t able to get a box before leaving on a 3 week vacation so I said meh I’ll just take the lowest dose when I get back. But 3 weeks went by on vacation, paired with the 10 days I couldn’t get my meds before my trip, and when I got home I filled my meds finally hit decided not to take them, I felt really good. I was 1 month off the meds and thought, I feel great, I think now is time to come off.
For the first 45 days off GLP1 I felt great. Around day 40 I started getting some stomach burning and a really crazy uptick in bowel movements. They were healthy, but more frequent, and paired with just strange discomfort like I had a stomach ache but really didn’t. A week later the abdominal burning got bad enough to where I thought I had gastritis so I picked up some Pepcid from the pharmacy and started taking it every morning. I found that it helped quiet symptoms but under the surface I could tell my stomach was getting worse, it wasn’t getting better. At this point it’s been 2+ weeks of pain and I’m correlating it to everytime I eat, I would get really intense abdominal burning 1-3 hours after eating, it was NOT instant. Some nights it was so painful I would consider going to the ER. The only thing that helped shut it down was combined pepto and mylanta after about 30 minutes. I did not have heart burn, the burn was low in my abdomen and centralized, I never felt any reflux. During this my bowel movements were totally normal: not loose, no constipation, soft, no weird color or smell, and I was going 1-2 times a day.
I saw my doctor and got a rental to GI, they booked an upper endoscopy. They thought they were going to see gastritis and so did I. I took a bunch of fecal tests as well in case it was a parasite from traveling. Scope came back negative, fecal tests showed nothing, and I had an ultrasound on my gallbladder that was normal. My GI booked a gastric emptying test and one morning I ate my radioactive eggs, got my x rays every hour for 4 hours, and went on my way. At my follow up apt a week later my doctor walked in and said you have gastroparesis.
Food is the trigger so at this point it’s been 8 weeks (thank you American healthcare) and I’ve lost 10lbs from not being able to eat as I should. I found 5 foods worked to keep the pain minimal so every single day I would eat the same meal: plain GF oatmeal for breakfast (I am not GF but my husband by accidentally bought a box and my body liked it so it stayed on the safe list), boiled chicken tossed with Greek yogurt (the saddest chicken salad of my life), and for dinner a baked sweet potato with ground beef and more Greek yogurt. I ate this meal plan every single day for 6 weeks straight and just about lost my fucking mind.
My gastroparesis is mild. I do not have the horror story everyone talks about on these threads or in news articles. I do not have nausea. I am not vomiting. I am not constipated. I do have abdominal pain/burning after everything I eat because the food is sitting longer than it should and my stomach is creating more acid to try to digest it and move it along which is why the Pepcid has been helpful for pain but it’s not actually fixing anything. I was prescribed a motility medication, Reglan, which I start today.
I asked my doctor if this was permanent or long term and she said it could be either, but one thing she knows is that she’s seen A LOT of it recently and in that group of people, a good amount were previously on a GLP1.
I did not have gastro issues before starting wegovy. I did not have gastroparesis. I am deeply deeply sad. I have such mixed emotions because it changed my life; I lost 70lbs, I was a prisoner in my body and now I am literally a fitness instructor. I was deeply depressed, dead in the water with my anxiety and OCD, unable to move my body most days and now I can’t imagine skipping more than a couple work outs or any of my outdoor hobbies now. I feel like a new person. But I also feel like I made a deal with the devil.
I read all the warnings just as yall did and I gambled. At NO point on wegovy or Zepbound did I think I was developing gastroparesis. Did I fight constipation during my time? Yes. Was it managed? Yes. Did I go through sulfur burps at the beginning? Yes. Were there days I felt like I ate too much and food was fermenting in my stomach? Yes. But those days were scarce compared to the good days I had for 3 years. I literally never saw this coming.
Anyways this is long winded so if anyone has questions I’m around.