Weight coming back after stopping is well established and covered elsewhere on this site. This review is about something narrower and less discussed: what the returning weight is made of.
What it gathers
A narrative review searching three databases from 2005 to mid-2026, assembled under a standard framework for this kind of review. [1] Every number in it is drawn from other studies rather than measured, and a narrative review chooses what to include — so these are figures it found, presented as it read them.
On treatment, lean mass fell by 6 to 7 kg on average, alongside reductions in bone mineral density. After stopping, weight rose by 5.6 kg on average within one year, described as fat-preferential, with observational reports of dose-dependent cardiometabolic worsening.
The persistence figure
The review cites 85% of patients discontinuing within the second year of real-world use, which is the premise of the whole paper: if most people stop, what happens after stopping is most of the story.
That figure comes from the literature the review surveys rather than from its own data, and persistence estimates vary considerably depending on how long a gap counts as stopping. The direction is not in dispute; the exact number should not be quoted as though it were measured here, any more than a multiplier quoted without its base should.
What it recommends, and what this page will not
Structured exercise, on the grounds that exercise and pharmacotherapy produce fundamentally different body composition outcomes — exercise preserving lean mass where the drug does not.
The review offers prescription guidance. This page does not, because what is appropriate depends on age, joints, cardiac fitness and what somebody is already doing. What is safe to say is that the cessation transition currently has no established framework, the authors say so, and nobody selling a subscription is planning one — it is not among the things sellers publish.