Simple Online Pharmacy 2024 GLP-1 Weight Loss Survey - Creating and Sustaining Healthy Habits
Influences on Developing Healthy Habits
When it comes to creating healthy habits, finding the motivation can be difficult; sticking to those habits when times get tough can be even more difficult. We asked patients about their eating habits, and how they felt after losing weight.
We wanted to understand how many of our patients felt that they were more aware of what they eat, when using weight care medication; 87% agreed with this. Also, we wanted to know how many patients felt they had sustained and improvement in their physical activity levels, and 84% agreed.
These answers seem to suggest that people find it easier to create these habits with the support that comes with a medication regime.
- “Finding exercise easier than before as carrying less weight”
- “It helped me out of a depressive period and gave me confidence to go to the gym”
- “Feel fitter and can exercise more”
When asked about factors that influenced the food that people bought, 38% of people said that price was the most important factor. An even greater proportion selected this in the higher BMI category - 47% of those with BMI of 40 or higher. This differed with Wegovy patients specifically - 35% answered that health was most important.
As far as helping people make healthier buying choices, more affordable healthy food options came up as the highest selected option - 68% said this would make the biggest difference to them making healthier buying choices, followed by 65% selecting “Discounts on healthy food”.
When asked “How much do you agree with this statement: Inflated food prices make it more difficult for me to afford healthy food”, 65% agreed, while 34% strongly agreed.
When asked “How much do you agree with this statement: I am influenced to buy unhealthy foods by offers such as "buy one, get one free", 37% agreed, while 17% strongly agreed.
The Government has proposed banning “Buy One, Get One Free” offers on unhealthy options (this initiative has been delayed until 2025); however, these results imply that, rather than focusing on preventing promotions of unhealthy food, the more impactful action to take is to find ways to make healthy food more affordable.
When asked about other factors that made it hard to buy healthy food, 40% of people selected “being tired”, making it the most popular choice. This is interesting when compared to the improvement in sleep that people found from losing weight; 53% of respondents reported an improvement in sleep when they lost weight, which suggests that there is a strong link between healthy sleep and managing / losing weight.
While using a private service such as ours can be very helpful for some patients, patients have to fund this themselves; when asked what they gave up to afford their medication, 47% said takeaways and fast food, while meals out and nights out were tied at 39%.
Whilst the price of medication was raised as something patients were concerned about, many were able to funnel the savings from unhealthy food and lifestyle choices towards affording the medication.