Wegovy Guide

Mounjaro is labeled for diabetes; Wegovy for weight and cardiac risk. Head to head the tirzepatide molecule wins on weight, but you cannot get it under this brand without diabetes.

Wegovy vs Mounjaro

The same molecule from the same maker under two names, with two labels, two dose ceilings and two entirely different coverage stories. This confusion costs people money every day.

Wegovy vs Ozempic

The strongest weekly injection for weight against the first proper weight pill. About three points separate them, and only one has proven it prevents heart attacks.

Wegovy vs Foundayo

The one comparison in this class that was tested directly: weekly semaglutide against daily liraglutide, -15.8% against -6.4% over 68 weeks. Same manufacturer, two and a half times the effect.

Wegovy vs Saxenda

A weekly diabetes injection against a weekly weight injection. Different labels, different benefits, and which one your insurer pays for depends on which bucket your diagnosis lands in.

Wegovy vs Trulicity

STEP-1 is the reason a weight-loss drug became a household subject. Semaglutide 2.4 mg against placebo in 1,961 people carrying obesity but not diabetes produced −14.9% body weight at 68 weeks, against −2.4% on placebo, and 86.4% of the treated group lost at least 5%. It established the Wegovy dose and the modern benchmark for what a GLP-1 can do. It is also the single most quoted figure in this market, which is why it is worth knowing precisely what was in the syringe and who was in the trial.

See all drug-vs-drug verdicts.

The trials that produced the Wegovy label, taken endpoint by endpoint, with the figures read off the source.

STEP-1

Phase 3 · N=1,961 · Last verified 2026-05-27

SELECT

SELECT enrolled 17,604 adults aged 45 and over with a BMI of at least 27 and existing cardiovascular disease and no diabetes, then followed them a mean 34.2 months on semaglutide 2.4 mg or placebo. Three-point MACE occurred in 6.5% against 8.0% — a 20% relative reduction. It is the largest and most consequential trial in this section, because it moved semaglutide from a drug that changes how people look to a drug shown to prevent heart attacks and strokes.

3 · N=17,604 · Last verified 2026-05-27

STEP-4

STEP-4 is the trial that ended the idea of a GLP-1 course. Every participant reached semaglutide 2.4 mg during a 20-week run-in, then was randomized two-to-one to continue or move to placebo for 48 more weeks. Those who continued lost a further 7.9% of body weight. Those who switched regained 6.9%. Same people, same starting point, one variable. It is the shortest route to understanding why this is chronic therapy, and it is the trial to read before signing a twelve-month prepay or planning an exit.

Phase 3a · N=803 · Last verified 2026-05-27

STEP-2

STEP-2 is to STEP-1 what SURMOUNT-2 is to SURMOUNT-1: the same drug and design, in people who also have type 2 diabetes. Semaglutide 2.4 mg produced −9.6% body weight at 68 weeks against −3.4% on placebo, alongside a 1.6-point HbA1c reduction. Against STEP-1's −14.9%, the five-point gap is the price of the diabetes, and it is the number a reader with diabetes should be working from.

Phase 3 · N=1,210 · Last verified 2026-05-28

Questions people actually asked about Wegovy in named subreddits, each answered from the published trial data.

Semaglutide Side Effects: 10 Questions, Answered From the Trials

10 questions · 15 PubMed citations

GLP-1 Coverage: the 10 Questions People Ask After a Denial

10 questions · 12 PubMed citations

Injecting a GLP-1: 10 Technique Questions, Answered

10 questions · 11 PubMed citations

GLP-1 Plateaus: 10 Questions About Why the Scale Stopped

10 questions · 10 PubMed citations

Wegovy Dose Ladder Cheat Sheet: Shot and Tablet

One-screen references for the dose schedule, what to do about a missed dose, and the side effects that warrant a call. Every figure checked against the DailyMed label.

Wegovy is no longer one product with one ladder. There is a weekly injection that climbs in four steps, a high-dose 7.2 mg strength above the usual maintenance, and a once-daily tablet with a completely separate 90-day schedule and its own rules about food. This page holds all of it against the current label, including the missed-dose arithmetic people most often get wrong.

6 min read · Last verified 2026-08-02

GLP-1 Injection Sites: Rotation, Technique and the Lump to Avoid

Every weekly GLP-1 permits the same three injection sites and every one of them tells you to move around. The reason is a lump called lipohypertrophy — thickened fat that soaks up the drug at an unpredictable rate. When absorption becomes erratic so does appetite suppression, and a stalled month gets blamed on the dose when the cause is a favorite square inch of belly.

4 min read · Last verified 2026-05-28

Saxenda Dose Ladder Cheat Sheet: the Three-Day Trap

Saxenda is the odd one out: liraglutide, injected every day, climbing to its full dose in five weeks rather than sixteen. The short half-life that makes daily dosing necessary also creates the rule most people do not know about — three consecutive missed days and you restart the whole ladder from 0.6 mg, because your tolerance for it is already gone.

5 min read · Last verified 2026-05-28

Switching Between GLP-1s: Why You Start at the Bottom Again

Switching is common — a formulary changes, side effects bite, or you reach the top of a ladder with weight still to lose — and no label tells you how to do it. The rule that surprises people is that you go back to the bottom even though you have been on a GLP-1 for a year. Tolerating one of these drugs does not buy you tolerance of another, because they do not act on the same receptors.

5 min read · Last verified 2026-05-28

The peer-reviewed studies on Wegovy and its neighbours that carry the most weight, gathered into lists. Every PMID was checked against PubMed esummary rather than recalled.

The 10 Semaglutide Weight-Loss Trials That Matter (2026)

Semaglutide has been tested more thoroughly for weight than any drug before it, and the ten trials below are the ones that changed something: the dose we use, the label it carries, what happens when you stop, and whether it does anything beyond the scale. Each entry gives the PMID, the design, and the figure that mattered.

GLP-1s and Bone: 10 Studies on a Risk Nobody Has Measured Properly

Losing weight quickly costs bone density no matter how it is done. Whether these drugs add anything on top of that is unsettled — one randomized trial says they protect bone, another says the drug alone loses more density than exercise alone. The fracture meta-analyses are reassuring and underpowered, and no trial has followed a non-diabetic obesity population long enough to matter.

GLP-1s for Teenagers: the 10 Trials Behind the Approvals (2026)

Adolescent obesity had almost nothing approved for it a decade ago. Three trials changed that — STEP TEENS, SCALE Teens and ELLIPSE — and this list covers them alongside the analyses that shaped how they are prescribed and the bariatric-surgery results that were, until recently, the only real option for severe cases.

How Long Have These Drugs Actually Been Studied? 10 Papers (2026)

Patients ask about ten years. The randomized evidence runs two to five. This list covers the longest trials in the class — STEP-5 at two years, SELECT at 3.3, LEADER at 3.8, REWIND at 5.4 — plus the withdrawal extensions and the large database studies probing rare events no trial was ever big enough to catch.