Saxenda for weight loss: what day-one TikTok posts get wrong

What did @jonnosunshine actually say?

Not much, honestly, and that's fine. This is a day-one check-in. He says he's starting "sixth tender" (almost certainly a speech-to-text mangle of Saxenda), weighs 115 kilos, wears 38-inch trousers, and has a waist measurement of 116 centimeters. That's it. No dosing claims, no miracle promises, just a starting-line selfie in video form.

The baseline metrics he gives are actually useful data points. A waist circumference of 116 cm in a male sits well above the 102 cm threshold that clinical guidelines use to flag substantially elevated cardiometabolic risk. He's not just sharing his weight journey for content; whether he knows it or not, he's documenting a genuinely high-risk metabolic starting point.

Does the science back this up?

He didn't really make scientific claims, so there's nothing to fact-check against the literature here. But starting Saxenda (liraglutide 3.0 mg) at a BMI that almost certainly clears the prescribing threshold is clinically appropriate, and the evidence base for liraglutide at this weight range is real.

The SCALE Obesity and Prediabetes trial (Pi-Sunyer et al., 2015, New England Journal of Medicine) found liraglutide 3.0 mg produced an average 8.4 kg greater weight loss than placebo over 56 weeks in non-diabetic adults with obesity. That's meaningful but not dramatic. Importantly, around 63% of participants lost at least 5% of body weight, meaning a meaningful minority don't respond strongly. For someone at 115 kg, 5% is about 5.75 kg. Realistic, not transformative on its own.

What did they get wrong (or right)?

He didn't get anything factually wrong, because he barely made any factual claims. Credit where it's due: not over-promising on day one is actually better than most GLP-1 content on TikTok, where creators routinely inflate expected outcomes or treat these medications as effortless fixes.

The one thing worth flagging is the speech-to-text rendering of "sixth tender" for Saxenda. It sounds trivial, but misspelled or misheard drug names in viral content do contribute to confusion, especially when people search those terms. Saxenda is liraglutide; it is a different molecule from semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro). They work on overlapping but distinct receptor pathways, and they are not interchangeable. His content doesn't claim otherwise, but it's worth stating plainly for anyone landing here from a search.

What should you actually know?

Waist circumference matters more than most people realise. The 116 cm measurement he mentions is above the threshold where visceral adiposity independently predicts cardiovascular and metabolic disease risk, separate from total body weight. Lean mass, where fat sits, and how metabolically active that fat is all matter. Waist-to-height ratio is increasingly favoured over BMI alone in research settings (Ashwell et al., 2012, Nutrition Research Reviews).

Saxenda requires dose titration over several weeks, starting at 0.6 mg and working toward 3.0 mg. Side effects, primarily nausea and gastrointestinal discomfort, are common in early weeks and are the main reason people discontinue. The SCALE trial recorded GI adverse events in around 40% of the liraglutide group. Anyone watching this and considering starting should know that week one rarely looks like the results reels they've seen elsewhere.

• Liraglutide is injected once daily, unlike weekly semaglutide
• It works by mimicking GLP-1, a gut hormone that slows gastric emptying and reduces appetite signalling
• It is not a cure for obesity and does not work the same way in everyone

The bottom line

This video is a nothing-burger in terms of medical claims, which is actually a compliment in the GLP-1 content space. He's documenting a real starting point with real numbers. The metrics he shares reflect a genuine cardiometabolic risk profile, and Saxenda is a regulated, evidence-supported medication for his stated situation. Follow the journey with realistic expectations: 5 to 10% body weight loss over 6 to 12 months is the realistic range, not the transformation content that tends to dominate this hashtag.