lowest effective dose — 2 things I got wrong before I got it right
The title is the argument: lowest effective dose — 2 things I got wrong before I got it right. Here is the rest of it.
Stretched from seven to ten days and then to twelve over about four months. Appetite told me where the limit was before the scale did.
Been at maintenance for 17 months on 12.5mg. Nothing happens. That is the whole report and it took me a while to accept it as success.
On stopping, since it is the question underneath most posts here.
Withdrawal studies in this class show substantial regain after discontinuation, consistently, across compounds. Appetite returns first, typically well before the scale moves. That is a statement about the pharmacology of a chronic condition, not about anybody’s character, and the framing matters because people quit in shame over an entirely predictable result.
If you are going to stop — for cost, for supply, for any reason — the useful preparation is deciding in advance what you will watch for and what your plan is when appetite comes back. Doing that in advance is much easier than doing it in a panic, and it is a conversation to have with someone who knows your history.
Not medical advice, obviously, and nothing here is approved for human use. One person with a spreadsheet.
best — the order this archive was captured in
Dose reduction and interval extension are different interventions. Halving the dose keeps the rhythm and lowers the level; stretching keeps the level and lowers the frequency, with a lower trough.
Push back: that is not a plateau, that is maintenance. You have arrived and you are describing it as a failure.
Correction: that trial measured regain after withdrawal, not failure of the drug during treatment. Very different claim.
The habits from the losing phase are what carry it now. That is not inspirational, it is just what happened.
That is a range, not a trend. Two weigh-ins 8 days apart cannot distinguish them.
Two years at maintenance. The logistics are the only remaining work — ordering, storing, remembering.
Chased the last three kilos with a dose increase and got a fortnight of reflux and no change in the number.
Standing reminder that regain after stopping is a documented pharmacological outcome, and posts framing it as a moral failure get edited.
Small fix — you have described interval stretching and called it a dose reduction. The exposure profiles differ.
Appetite returning before the scale moves follows from the mechanism: the appetite effect is the proximal one and weight is the lagging integrated outcome.
Withdrawal studies in this class consistently show substantial regain after discontinuation. That is a pharmacological finding about a chronic condition, not a statement about anyone’s discipline.
Body weight varies by a couple of kilos over days in stable people through fluid, glycogen and gut content. A range is not a trend.
find the dose that holds, then stop optimising
Did you decide what maintenance would look like before you got here?
That reads like a taper schedule and this board cannot hand those out.
Weigh monthly now. Best change I made in the whole run and it cost nothing.
Maintenance is the phase with the least published guidance and the most individual variation, which is precisely why board consensus here is worth less than usual.
Maintenance is the phase with the least published guidance and the most individual variation, which is precisely why board consensus here is worth les
nikhil_lindqvist is right that stretching and reducing are different levers. Worth separating in every one of these threads.
Agreed. Lowest effective dose is the actual maintenance question and it gets almost no airtime next to the escalation threads.
Agreed that a few kilos of drift is ordinary. Weight is not a fixed number even for people who have never taken anything.
Drifted up 17kg over a winter and panicked. It came back off without any change, which is apparently just what weight does.
Stretching the interval, reducing the dose, or both?
boring is the objective now
do not chase the last two kilos with a dose increase
Drifted up 17kg over a winter and panicked.
Disagreeing with this bit: a two-kilo range is not drift and treating it as a problem creates one.
Wrote down what maintenance would look like at about week 62, before I needed it. Having decided in advance made the transition boring.
- 1Chased the last three kilos with a dose increase and got a fortnight of…12 comments in this branch · started by u/nils_tulloch
- 2Agreed. Lowest effective dose is the actual maintenance question and it gets…8 comments in this branch · started by u/vitamin_d_void