[Results] 64 weeks, 11kg, and lowest effective dose was the hard part
64 weeks, 11kg, and lowest effective dose was the hard part. Full detail below, and I have tried to keep the editorialising out of it.
Figures up front so nobody has to dig: 64 weeks and 11kg.
The habits from the losing phase are what carry it now. That is not inspirational, it is just what happened.
Drifted up 24kg over a winter and panicked. It came back off without any change, which is apparently just what weight does.
Sceptical readings welcome. The confident ones are the ones I distrust.
best — the order this archive was captured in
Weigh monthly now. Best change I made in the whole run and it cost nothing.
What dose are you holding, and for how long now?
What maintenance actually looks like, from the people on this board who have been in it longest.
You find a dose or an interval that holds the weight with side effects you barely notice, and then you stop optimising. Weigh monthly rather than daily. Expect a couple of kilos of range and do not act on it. Keep the habits that did the work in the losing phase, because they are the part that has to outlive the dose.
The most common mistake described here is treating arrival as a plateau and pushing the dose to chase a number chosen at week one by a person who did not yet know what maintenance felt like.
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.
find the dose that holds, then stop optimising
Standing reminder that regain after stopping is a documented pharmacological outcome, and posts framing it as a moral failure get edited.
Standing reminder that regain after stopping is a documented pharmacological outcome, and posts framing it as a moral failure get edited.
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.
Correction: that trial measured regain after withdrawal, not failure of the drug during treatment. Very different claim.
seven days to ten to twelve is the sequence people here describe
That is a range, not a trend. Two weigh-ins 18 days apart cannot distinguish them.
plan the maintenance phase before you need it
the lowest effective dose is a real target and nobody talks about it
Yes. The habits have to outlive the dose or the maintenance phase is just a countdown.
Small fix — you have described interval stretching and called it a dose reduction. The exposure profiles differ.
the habits are the part that has to outlive the dose
Two years at maintenance. The logistics are the only remaining work — ordering, storing, remembering.
Agreed that a few kilos of drift is ordinary. Weight is not a fixed number even for people who have never taken anything.
This. The withdrawal data is not ambiguous and framing regain as a personal failure is both wrong and cruel.
Yes.
This reframing is the most useful thing on the board for anyone approaching this phase.
do not chase the last two kilos with a dose increase
Wrote down what maintenance would look like at about week 32, before I needed it. Having decided in advance made the transition boring.
I would not treat a two-kilo range as drift requiring action. That is ordinary weight variation.
stretching the interval is not the same as reducing the dose
monthly weigh-ins are enough at this stage
Wrote down what maintenance would look like at about week 32, before I needed it.
Adding one thing — decide what maintenance looks like before you arrive at it.
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.
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.
- 1Yes. The habits have to outlive the dose or the maintenance phase is just a…15 comments in this branch · started by u/nadia_nascimento
- 2Dose reduction and interval extension are different interventions. Halving…10 comments in this branch · started by u/laila_almeida