Wegovy stopped working — what's actually happening

What the trial data actually shows about Wegovy's results over time

The STEP 1 trial is the clearest window we have. Over 68 weeks, participants taking semaglutide 2.4mg lost an average of roughly 15% of body weight compared with around 2% on placebo. But that headline figure masks something important: the loss curve is steep early on and flattens significantly in the second half of the trial. By around week 60, many participants had effectively reached their new stable weight, and the medicine was maintaining that loss rather than driving further reductions.

That maintenance phase is not Wegovy failing. It reflects how GLP-1 medicines work: they reduce appetite and slow gastric emptying enough to help you reach a lower body weight, and then the body finds a new set point. If you're several months into treatment and the scale has stopped moving, you're probably in that phase. The question worth asking is whether that set point is where your prescriber hoped it would be, or whether there's room to look further.

Separately, the recently approved 7.2mg dose (the MHRA approved a dedicated single-dose 7.2mg Wegovy pen in April 2026) showed around 20.7% average weight loss in trials, suggesting that for some people a higher dose can shift a plateau. Whether that's appropriate is a clinical decision, not something to arrange independently.

Three things that commonly explain a stall, and how to tell them apart

A plateau on Wegovy usually has one of three explanations, and they call for different responses.

The first is metabolic adaptation. As you lose weight, your body needs fewer calories to function at rest. If your eating habits haven't adjusted to that new baseline, loss slows even though nothing about the medicine has changed. A practical check you can do in under a minute: scan a typical day's meals and ask honestly whether portions have drifted larger than they were when treatment started. Small, gradual creep is common and often goes unnoticed.

The second is dose. If you're not yet at the 2.4mg maintenance dose (or, for eligible patients, 7.2mg), there may be clinical room to titrate further. Titration timing is set by your prescriber based on tolerability and response, it's not something to accelerate alone. If you're wondering whether this applies to you, our page on why Wegovy might not be working covers the dose question in more detail.

The third is that you've reached your biological plateau on this medicine at this dose. That's a genuine outcome, not a failure. It's also the point where lifestyle factors (protein intake, resistance activity, sleep) matter most, because they support the new weight rather than requiring further loss to sustain it. The NHS semaglutide patient page is worth reading for practical guidance on what to do alongside the medicine.

What a prescriber review looks at, and why it matters

If progress has genuinely stalled and you're unsure why, a clinical review is the sensible next step rather than stopping the medicine or adjusting the dose yourself. A prescriber will typically want to know: how long the plateau has lasted, whether anything in your routine has shifted, what dose you're currently on, and whether there are any side effects affecting how consistently you're taking it.

There are situations where a dose change is warranted, and situations where it isn't. Someone at 2.4mg who has lost a clinically meaningful amount of weight and maintained it for three months is in a different position from someone who stalled at a lower dose early in treatment. Those two cases look similar from the outside (the scale isn't moving) but need different responses.

If you started on Wegovy elsewhere and are finding it harder to get ongoing support, our guide to accessing Wegovy through a regulated UK pharmacy explains what a proper clinical review looks like and what to expect. For a broader look at how Wegovy compares to other licensed options, the weight-loss treatment overview is a good starting point. You can also read about how long Wegovy typically takes to show results if you're still in early treatment and worried progress is too slow.

Every repeat prescription at a properly run service involves exactly this kind of review. If you're not getting one, that's worth knowing. A GPhC-registered prescriber (not an automated system) reviews every case at nume before any prescription is issued or renewed.

If you're considering whether to continue or switch, this page on Wegovy not working and our semaglutide weight-loss plateau page cover the overlapping questions in more depth. And for context on the licensed options available through nume, the Wegovy information page is the right place to start.