stalled for 3 weeks at 0.5mg and I refuse to panic this time
Thinking out loud about this: stalled for 3 weeks at 0.5mg and I refuse to panic this time.
3 weeks and 0.5mg — those are the numbers, and they are the ones I am willing to defend.
Drifted up 8kg over a winter and panicked. It came back off without any change, which is apparently just what weight does.
None of this is a taper plan. What dose holds for you is a question for somebody with your history in front of them.
Happy to answer the boring questions. Those are usually the ones worth asking.
best — the order this archive was captured in
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.
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Small fix — you have described interval stretching and called it a dose reduction. The exposure profiles differ.
Interval stretching changes the exposure profile: with a week-long half-life, moving to ten or twelve days lowers trough concentration more than it lowers average exposure. That is why appetite return is often the first thing noticed.
stretching the interval is not the same as reducing the dose
regain after stopping is the expected outcome, not a personal failure
Push back: that is not a plateau, that is maintenance. You have arrived and you are describing it as a failure.
What does your weigh-in frequency look like at this point?
Careful — a dose reduction plan is a conversation with someone who knows your history, not a board consensus.
a few kilos of drift is not a relapse
a few kilos of drift is not a relapse
Disagreeing with this bit: a two-kilo range is not drift and treating it as a problem creates one.
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.
the habits are the part that has to outlive the dose
do not chase the last two kilos with a dose increase
Wrote down what maintenance would look like at about week 54, before I needed it. Having decided in advance made the transition boring.
Appetite returning before the scale moves follows from the mechanism: the appetite effect is the proximal one and weight is the lagging integrated outcome.
Standing reminder that regain after stopping is a documented pharmacological outcome, and posts framing it as a moral failure get edited.
Yes. The habits have to outlive the dose or the maintenance phase is just a countdown.
the trials that looked at withdrawal are unambiguous about what follows
Has appetite changed, or only the scale?
Has appetite changed, or only the scale?
This reframing is the most useful thing on the board for anyone approaching this phase.
boring is the objective now
monthly weigh-ins are enough at this stage
The habits from the losing phase are what carry it now. That is not inspirational, it is just what happened.
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.
maintenance is where the logistics finally get boring, which is the point
plan the maintenance phase before you need it
the lowest effective dose is a real target and nobody talks about it
That is a range, not a trend. Two weigh-ins 3 days apart cannot distinguish them.
- 1What does your weigh-in frequency look like at this point?6 comments in this branch · started by u/laila_almeida
- 2the trials that looked at withdrawal are unambiguous about what follows6 comments in this branch · started by u/zaid_eriksen