Dr.AddMedPHL said:

The mechanism that matters here is not stomach emptying, it is central.

Pushing back on Dr.AddMedPHL here. The "earlier than weight loss explains" argument is weaker than this thread makes it sound. Blood pressure and inflammatory markers move fast and are downstream of early weight loss, so the mechanism is not as cleanly separable as the summaries imply.

That is the short version; the long version is somebody else's post.

One concrete data point for the thread. For anyone assembling their own picture: Tmax is one to three days, terminal half-life about 165 to 170 hours, steady state at four to five weeks, and subcutaneous bioavailability near 89%. Those four numbers explain most of the questions people ask about timing.

MikeFit_NJ said:

The "earlier than weight loss explains" argument is weaker than this thread makes it sound.

Adding the part of the answer the thread has not reached. The dose-response is real but shallow at the top. Across STEP 1 and STEP 4 the gap between 1.7mg and 2.4mg is a couple of percentage points of body weight on average, and the average is carrying a wide spread — plenty of people at 1.7mg sit above the 2.4mg mean. If a dose is working and tolerable, "working" is the relevant variable, not "maximal".

That is the short version; the long version is somebody else's post.

A narrower follow-up, since the general answer is now clear:

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?

OP back with an update, since a thread like this is useless without one.

Update since I posted: I held at 1.7mg for a further twelve weeks and lost another 4kg slowly, which settles it for me. I was escalating because the number was available, not because I had stopped responding.