Skipping a week of WeGovy or Ozempic to eat more on Thanksgiving is a bad idea, doctors say

• Semaglutide is a drug used to lose weight and treat diabetes.
• The drug decreases hunger in patients, but some may want to eat more during the holidays.

Americans are increasingly turning to diabetes and weight loss injections like semaglutide, sold under the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy.

Lack of hunger is a day-to-day reality for those on the drug — they replicate a hormone that tells our bodies when they are full — so someone looking to go all-out on all their favorite foods during the holidays may have considered skipping the drug for a bit.

For example, one woman recently told Bloomberg that she was planning on forgoing her weight-loss injection for a week to fill her plate and enjoy her Thanksgiving meal.

Dr. Alyssa Lampe Dominguez an endocrinologist at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, told Business Insider that she's previously seen patients who expressed similar desires.

"I have had patients talk about wanting to either delay starting these medications prior to, for example, going on vacation or wanting to delay a dose increase until after they went on vacation or a holiday," Dominguez said.

Three doctors who spoke to Business Insider about the practice, however, said it isn't advisable, and can result in a range of health effects that include weight gain and increased blood sugar levels. For diabetics taking Ozempic, the effects can be much more severe.

Dr Holly Lofton, director of the Medical Weight Management Program at NYU Langone Health, said that diabetics taking the drug could experience a significant glucose level increase. This could be aggravated by the high-carb, fatty diets that most people take on during the holidays. If the semaglutide user does not have a backup plan — like an insulin shot or an alternative diabetes medication — to keep their glucose low, things could get scary.

"Let's say you go to grandma's house for Thanksgiving and take don't take your medication and you eat a lot, if your glucose gets too high, you could go into a diabetic coma," Lofton told Business Insider. "I mean, these are just extreme possibilities, but it is possible, and that's not how you want to spend your Thanksgiving."

For those using semaglutide only for weight loss, there is little risk of issues arising from an increase in blood sugar levels. However, patients do run the risk of slowing their weight loss timelines, especially if they are off the drug for an extended period, doctors told Business Insider.

Dr. Zhaoping Li, Director at the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Business Insider that patients looking to maintain their weight should focus on having more vegetables and lean meat while limiting carbs and fat — which may run against holiday plans of stuffing your face with ham and pumpkin pie.

Lofton also added that for both diabetics and weight-loss users of semaglutide, skipping two weekly doses or more would mean that doctors would have to start administering smaller doses and slowly build them back up. This is to avoid severe vomiting, which Lofton said could be exacerbated by the "usual fatty meals" of the holiday season. This could mean a further reduction in weight loss progress or higher glucose levels over a longer period.

And all of the hassle to get off and back on to semaglutide may not even be worth it in the first place. Depending on the person, it could take days or weeks for the medication to degrade in your body, meaning that the effects of increased satiety and decreased hunger may linger, Lofton said.

Not being able to eat your favorite foods can be frustrating, patients previously told Business Insider. Dominguez said she understood the difficulty of having to forgo food traditions.

"Food is not just our energy source," Dominguez said. "There are a lot of cultural, traditional, relational aspects of foods that are important to many of us. That's important to consider. I think with these weight loss medications, it is, in some ways, a commitment to eating differently."

However, doctors told Business Insider there are still ways to enjoy your favorite foods on semaglutide.

"I probably would try to find a sort of compromise of saying 'Let's still try to enjoy some of these foods.'" Dominguez said. "Maybe pick the ones the ones that you really like and just have a little bit of those to try and find a balance between still trying to reach weight loss goals and get to that improved health while still facilitating the relational, traditional connections that people seek out during the holidays."