Cold turkey from Mounjaro was brutal – I completely lost control,
A TikTok user has gone viral after sharing a brutally honest video about what happened when she was forced to stop taking weight-loss drug Mounjaro—and the overwhelming return of her appetite.
Freya, a content creator from the UK who posts under the handle @freyatheblondieee, is in her mid-twenties and has been using the weekly jab to help manage her weight.
But in a recent post, she revealed she had to temporarily stop the medication while waiting for a new injector pen to arrive — and the effect was immediate.
The clip, which has been viewed almost one million times and racked up more than 20,000 likes, shows Freya gleefully demolishing a stacked cheeseburger. ‘Take this as a sign to NEVER go cold turkey from Mounjaro,’ she wrote.
‘I would have done very sinister things for this burger. My hunger is out of control—I want to punch everyone who is not food in the face.’
In the comments, she explained: ‘Having issues with getting my next dosage, which is the only reason I’m cold turkey right now.
It’s not by choice—I think drastically dropping is far too risky for weight gain.’ She also confirmed she had been on a ‘high dose.’
The post sparked hundreds of comments from fellow users of Mounjaro and similar weight-loss jabs, many of whom shared their own experiences of the return of ‘food noise’—the constant, intrusive hunger signals the medication is known to suppress.
‘Food noise’ is the term used to describe the near-constant stream of thoughts about eating that some people struggle to switch off—often leading to cravings for calorie-dense, low-nutrient foods and episodes of bingeing.
And judging by the comments on Freya’s viral post, many of her 12,000 followers know exactly how that feels.
One wrote: ‘I gained three stone in six months after I stopped it. Went to Turkey, had the [gastric] balloon.’
Another admitted: ‘The hunger that comes after it is awful—I’ve put on a stone in six weeks. Waste of money.’
A third added: ‘I forgot to order my jab in time and was a literal feral person. This made me laugh so much but equally terrified to come off.’
However, others pointed out that medications like Mounjaro aren’t intended to be permanent fixes, but tools to help users develop healthier long-term habits.
One follower shared an inspiring account: ‘I was absolutely starving when I came off it.
‘Took so much willpower for a couple of weeks, but now I’m eating just like I was when I was on it.
‘Lost three stone with Mounjaro and another two since stopping. You just have to push through until the hunger passes.’
Another said: ‘Been off it three days and I’m definitely eating more. But this is where willpower comes in. I’ll never be the 26 stone I was last year.’
Doctors advise that anyone planning to stop Mounjaro—whether because they’ve reached their goal weight or for other reasons—should do so gradually.
Tapering down slowly, under medical supervision, can help minimise withdrawal effects and reduce the risk of rebound weight gain.
Professor Giles Yeo, a geneticist at Cambridge University and an expert in obesity and the brain’s control of food intake and body weight, previously explained the science behind food noise to the Daily Mail.
He said: ‘Food noise is a manifestation of appetite and appetite is rather complex. I like to conceptualise it as a triangle.
‘Appetite sits in the centre and the three points are: hunger, fullness and reward. All three talk to each other but use different parts of the brain. If you tug on any points of that triangle, you’re going to change its shape.
‘If you are really hungry, then the simplest foods—bread, rice, cheese—are going to taste delicious and will be enough to trigger the reward element in the brain.
‘But if you’re really full, then the food will need to have a seriously high reward element for you to want it, and that’s going to be something sugary or fatty.
‘This is a phenomenon known as the “dessert stomach”.’
