[Regret] went 0.25 → 1.0 in three weeks and learned why that is dumb
Not the compound in my username, for once. Semaglutide, week one 0.25, week two 0.5, week three 1.0, because the scale had not moved and I am impatient and I had decided the schedule was for other people.
Week four was the worst week I have had in years. Vomiting, could not keep water down for most of a day, resting heart rate up 11bpm, and a genuinely frightening afternoon where I could not tell whether I needed help.
I dropped back to 0.5 and stayed there for eight weeks. Total time lost to being clever: about ten weeks. Total advantage gained: none, because the terminal dose was always going to be the same.
That is the bit nobody explains properly. Escalating faster does not get you to the destination sooner. It gets you to the side effects sooner.
best — the order this archive was captured in
This is the clearest statement of the actual argument I have seen on this site and I am linking it from the c/semaglutide wiki.
The trial schedules are four weeks per step. They are not four weeks per step because someone was being cautious with your feelings — they are four weeks per step because the terminal dose is the same either way and slower escalation was better tolerated at the same endpoint. There is no efficiency to be gained. The only variable you are adjusting is how unpleasant the next month is.
And the mirror of this: I went 0.125 increments and took nine months to reach a dose other people reached in five. Same place, less vomiting, and I never had a week I could not work.
The people who go slowly do not post as much because "nothing dramatic happened" is not a thread.
this is survivorship bias in reverse and it is the reason the fast approach looks more common than it is.
six weeks per step, zero heroics, 31kg over 22 months. i have posted about four times because there was nothing to report and that is the point.
and everybody quits at week four, which means the fast escalators and the quitters are the same population at different points.
mechanistically: at week three on 1.0 you were not even at steady state on 0.5. you escalated past a dose you had never actually experienced.
i had not thought about it that way and it is genuinely the clearest explanation of what i did wrong. i skipped a dose i had not met.
the 11bpm is the bit that would have worried me most. mine went up 7 on a normal escalation and settled at maintenance, and 11 on a fast one is consistent with that being escalation-driven.
No "told you so" replies, per community rule. Two already removed. This post is a favour to the community and it will be treated as one.
went up because the scale stalled, not because i needed to, and the stall broke two weeks later at the higher dose so i will never know which it was. edit: which is its own small punishment.
week 3 and i was starting to think about doing exactly this. not any more.
- 1And the mirror of this: I went 0.125 increments and took nine months to…6 comments in this branch · started by u/quarter_dose_queen