They aren't even that awful in maintenance -- just expensive. The unpleasant part is when you're increasing the dose. After a while at the same dose, it's more or less unnoticeable IMO.
As I stated, I originally tried semaglutide with no luck. I didn't try tirzepatide. I've been taking a very low dose of retatrutide - about .5mg twice a week. It seemed to be waning in effectiveness a bit so I upped the dose to 2mg/week for now. It's a night and day difference. Most days I go to the bathroom maybe two times, as opposed to the maybe 5-10 times I would need to unmedicated.
To be clear, this isn't an approved use of the medications (and retatrutide isn't approved at all yet, though it pretty clearly will be). However, they slow down gut motility - and as a bonus for your refusing to eat during week-long work trips, they'd probably at least help with that too, in terms of hunger.
My lowest sleeping heart rate is now at least 10 beats higher than before starting (it comes down during the week to about 10 over)
The night after taking the injection my sleep is crap, and the heart rate is 5+ higher again
I have lost 20lbs since mid March with no real effort, and we’re about to do some blood tests for specific cholesterol numbers, which was one of the reasons to try this out.
I notice no ill effects, I just had my three month checkup with the doctor and he thinks I’m good on maintenance mode at max dose, I’ve still got about 34 pounds as my total weight loss goal. Really an ideal case.
For my wife on the other hand she just has constant diarrhea which she blames on the drug, and is only on 5mg. She also gets headaches from the medicine. She’s lost only 20 pounds, even though she needs to lose another 120 or so to be “healthy weight”.
However, before she started taking Zepbound she was only able to walk a few hundred feet at a time, because her back hurt so terribly. The anti inflammatory “side effects” she’s experiencing have massively improved her quality of life, even without huge amounts of weight loss.
Like if your stomach really hated taco bell and you start taking a pill and now you get the same effect from artificial sweeteners you don't care because you're still within what's normal.
That's the level of side effects these things have.