NurseAsh_DET said:

Almost every unanswerable question in these threads is unanswerable because three things changed in the same fortnight, and no amount of subsequent…

All true, with one condition: that curve is for people who reached the dose on schedule. Anyone who slowed the ladder for tolerability is on a different, flatter curve, and comparing yourself with the published mean will make you feel like a non-responder when you are not.

Ask again with the specifics and you will get a better answer than this one.

One thing that is still open after BenResearch_OR’s answer:

Whether anyone has held at a sub-maximal dose long term and kept the result, or whether the maintenance data only exists at 2.4mg?

maya_sedona said:

All true, with one condition: that curve is for people who reached the dose on schedule.

Filing a mild objection. Mild because I might be wrong; an objection because nobody has addressed the case that does not fit. The trial means are being read too generously in this thread. STEP populations were selected, supported, and titrated by protocol, and the real-world curves are consistently a few points worse. That difference is not noise, it is what happens when you remove the study infrastructure.

maya_sedona said:

All true, with one condition: that curve is for people who reached the dose on schedule.

Agreed, though "tolerable" needs defining. A dose you tolerate by eating almost nothing is not tolerated, it is being paid for somewhere else — usually in lean mass, sometimes in adherence three months later.

Worth separating that from semaglutide, which this thread keeps folding into the same question. They behave differently and the advice does not transfer.

Moderator note: leaving this open. It is being argued well and the disagreement is the useful part.