Well I can confidently report back that my prescriber is clueless about maintenance advice apart from saying stay on your current dosage for two months and then let's review. No advice whatsoever on titrating down, on how to gradually introduce more calories, nada. I'm with Juniper (I had real problems getting anyone to prescribe with a starting BMI of 25.7 even with a doctor's letter flagging that they were recommending it because of fat/waist/diabetes issues) - they're really expensive compared to other providers, but try to justify the cost with a load of bells and whistles. None of which have been in the slightest bit useful, so I'm now really annoyed that their maintenance advice is so basic.
So here's what I think I'm doing, based on what I've read elsewhere, which is a mix of dose adjustments and diet/lifestyle adjustments.
In terms of range - I'm giving myself an acceptable range of 2lb either side of goal as a weekly fluctuation, but with the aim to always return back to goal within 2 weeks of any gain. Never gaining isn't realistic, there will always be weeks when some weight goes on, so the focus needs to be on consistently returning back to baseline rather than accepting the new slightly higher weight.
I will weigh daily. I know I need that as an important tool in my toolbox - not least because it will allow me to track any weight I need to put in the bank ahead of social occasions or weekends away etc.
I'm going to introduce calories back at the level of approx 100 calories removed from deficit per week over a 5 week period. It seems that people who immediately start eating all their calories back, getting rid of the deficit in one go, have had harder problems maintaining at the beginning than people who gradually introduce more over time. If I start doing that now, I shouldn't go too much beyond the 2lb below goal bank weight.
That means I'll have to go back to tracking again for a few weeks, I'm good at estimating calories by sight, but I think for a few weeks MFP will be my friend.
I'm going to remove two cardio sessions a week from my exercise routine and replace them with weights sessions.
I am not going to change much about the nutritional composition about what I'm eating, I've actually really enjoyed most of my meals on this journey, and haven't really denied myself much. So the extra calories will come in slightly larger portion sizes of what I've been eating anyway.
I will continue to photograph all my meals, because it's an easy way for me to track whether I'm being honest about how much I'm eating, and understand why any gain weeks happen.
I'll stay on my current 7.5mg split dose until I'm down to 2lb below goal, because almost everybody seems to have a small bounce when they start to titrate down.
Once I've hit that 2lb below, I'm going to drop down to 5mg once a week, so no second dose, and see if that works at keeping my weight steady (bar that 2lb fluctuation) for 4 weeks.
And then will make a plan for titrating further down, probably first reducing dosage and then increasing time between jabs.
Based on that conversation though, this feels like this is all going to be a bit of an experiment to see what works for me!