Thread 2 because we have reached our goal weights and we want to maintain not regain. We might be going cold turkey or titrating down or staying on!

[MargoLivebetter]

Can't believe we filled up a whole thread! Welcome to thread 2.

On a positive note to start us off, I've lost 1lb of the two that I gained from my autumnal apple crumble caper. Filling full of resolve and pleased to know I can gain a pound or two (which is of course completely normal) and then lose them again.

I’ve been lucky and haven’t had many side effects. Bit of constipation and a bit of fatigue on the lower doses but nothing too bad. Lost 5 and a half stone and back to the weight I was from about age 11 until 35 (just spent the 15 years gradually getting fatter).

Think I’ll jab tomorrow, which will be 9 days since the last golden dose of the 12.5. Will have a think about doing 11 or just going straight to 10.

What weight were you from 11 to 35? That's a long time to not gain at all, even through puberty!
You've got plenty of pens so could reduce slowly if you want.
I'm thinking of doing 9 and then 8.5 from my next 10 pen. I've already dropped from 15 to 10.5 so quite a big drop in only 5 weeks.
It also depends if you just want to stay on a dose to maintain or taper off but you will only know how you will respond once you start dropping. Good luck.

Haha. I hit puberty early (period started at 10) and was around 8 and a half stone (give or take half a stone in either direction) until my mid 30s (pregnancy aside). I was absolutely horrified when I finally got on the scales and was 14 stone. I was in absolute denial.

I am currently taking my 7.5mg doses from a 12.5 pen. I used it for a 10mg dose which I had been on for months using 10mg pens. Got a 12.5mg when I couldn’t get my usual 10 mg pen in the pendemic. I also have two 10mg pens in the fridge.

My plan now is to always take smaller doses than the pen size from the pen. So use my 10s for 7.5mg and even 5mg doses. I am not sure if I want to actually come off it in the future. I would be happy to do 2.5mg doses from a 5mg pen long term and possibly chuck it away before using all 8 doses if worried about sterility. But I will see how it goes. I plan to buy another 10mg, a7.5mg,a 5mg and then talk to a supplier about trying to go without and check I can restart if needed but at that point I will have a stash of about four pens to help me if resume if they say no. I want to get an ordering history with a pharmacy that lets you have a break and then resume before I attempt to come off it. Just in case.

I jab weekly, I've been on 2.5 (from a 5 pen) for around 3 months now, I got to my goal on 5 and did some weeks on 3.75. I've one pen on the go and two in the fridge so my plan will be to do 2.5 from those 5 pens until they're gone and then either buy another 5 and continue or try a 2.5 pen and try and come down the doses a bit more. I don't mind jabbing weekly. Maybe if I got to 1.25 and wanted to reduce further I might try spreading them out. I don't plan to come off them at the moment. I'm hoping pharmulous will take me on (I had a maintenance call with them on Friday) and I can buy a pen every other month 🤞

Same plan as me @Choux - I have a couple of pens to use up - currently on 6.8mg from a 10mg pen, then I have 7.5mg and 2x 5mg to come, and then I plan to buy a couple of 2.5s from providers that will let me go back on again after a break if necessary. I am hoping to come off it but if I need to stay on that’s ok. Hopefully on a nice low dose though! Like maybe 4mg, could get 6 doses of that from a current 5mg one and 5 doses from the stingy pens that are coming along, works out at £30ish per week which isn’t too bad.

@Choux ‘the pendemic’ is brilliant, I’m going to start saying that now 😂

Instead of planning to buy a couple of 2.5mg pens maybe consider buying one 5mg pen? Far cheaper per weekly dose if you’re happy with going beyond 30 days

I think with all the madness bulk pen buying and people have a few , suppliers will be more flexible about having people on their books even if haven’t bought a pen for a while, as long as proving had a stash - why is why I took a pic of my 4 pens and cards

Makes sense but I am planning to buy them from two different pharmacies who will let me go back on after a break. Just in case!

I wasn’t the first to use it but it sums up in one word the events of last month so is far easier to type. It really was pendemonium trying to find a supplier last month.

Am going to do an order today. Pharmulous I think and am then going to try to get on the record with them as having a plan to titrate down with each pen I buy and ask questions about trying to stop Mounjaro and if I could restart on a small dose within 3,6,12 months. I may or may not mention I have 2.5 pens in the fridge already.

I do think restarting customers who have taken a break is the next growth area in providers’ guidelines and sales. I started Mounjaro in March 2024 so have been on it 18 months now. Initially there was only the losing weight dosing guidance and a 2 year limit to being on it and then a token bit of maintenance guidance and the 2 year limit disappeared. But now more people are reaching goal weight but are nervous about stopping completely - the questions I am going to ask are not unusual and must be asked to every supplier every day. I hope I can get to a v low dose or even stop completely but my number one priority is not to put the weight back on whatever it takes.

If the tablet versions currently being trialled are successful and released in the next year or two they may become the long term maintenance option as they are cheaper to produce but not quite as good for weight loss as the injections.

@choux I will be following this with interest. Pretty much in the same position as you 👍

Which 2 pharmacies are they? I'm tapering down doses in interested in doing this. I know pharmulous and oushk have maintenance plans to do this but oushk is 15 per month.

Pharmulous and Swift. I have been in touch with them about it already so will be shopping there for my next (and hopefully last) two pens. I’m not paying Oushk £15 pm just to be allowed to shop there in future.

I think Ousch may drop /reduce that now there are others about doing thr same

Just catching up after the weekend. Welcome @littleburn . It sounds like you have a good plan in place and have some potential alternatives going forwards. Keep us posted on how it goes.

Following the discussions about maintenance suppliers with interest. I've had to revert to strict calorie counting again, as I've been bouncing around a few pounds up for about a month now and I need to get back down, otherwise I know it is a slippery slope. I keep thinking to myself that I'm not eating much, but when I track it, I realise that the few small extra bits and bobs quickly add up and I gain weight at anything over 1500 calories, unless I am putting in serious exercise!

The good thing about MJ was it made keeping the calories low so easy for me, because I just didn't want to eat! However, it also gave me awful acid reflux, sucked my soul a bit and increased hair loss, so I have to keep remembering the side effects too. Going to keep going without it for now, but am very much considering whether to keep a maintenance option open, as my last order was January 2025.

Can someone explain this to me pls. I copied it from a post here but can’t get it to make much sense for me. Thank you.

Last time we chatted he mentioned that his maintenance plan is to stay on the same dose to start with(12.5mg in my case), but to slowly spread out the doses.
So over a month or so l am spreading out the doses until I get to every 10 days, stick there for a couple of weeks and then continue increasing the gap between doses until I am injecting every 2 weeks.
At that point I will start to decrease the dosage

Hello @Weepixie That was me!

So, I am under the care of a private weight loss consultant Dr. (Last year when I started, I didn't know that you could get them directly through pharmacies)
He has been using WLI's to treat patients for many years, even before they were officially licensed for that purpose. So he does already have experience at helping people maintain as well as lose.

His advice for maintenance was to stay at the same dose initially but to start off by spreading out the doses. So week by week I have been increasing the gap between injecting by an extra day. I am currently injecting 10 days apart. If possible I will try and increase this until I am injecting every 2 weeks. It just depends on how/if my weight fluctuates.
Then, when I feel I am at a gap that works for me, I will start to titrate down the doses, a month at a time.

The whole point of this is that for those of us who have a long history of obesity or weight loss/ weight gains, we need to re-set our set point.

The theory is that my body thinks my ideal weight is 16+ stone, and will do everything it can to get back up there (food noise/cravings/eating when stressed or emotional).
I am trying to train my body/psychae that 11+ stone is my set point; my ideal weight.

Set point theory is just that, a theory, but I am persuaded by it and happy to go with this as a way of maintaining. The only possible issue is that I am spreading the pens out for longer than the recommended 30 days, but the specialist seems OK with that, as do a lot of other peoples experience, and I am happy to do this.

I hope that helps explain it. Any questions, just ask.

There are quite a few different methods of maintaining, that's why this thread is so helpful.

To me, it makes more sense to lower the dose to 5 or 2.5 and then stretch out the days.

Where your doctor says the opposite to stretch out the days on a higher dose then reduce the dose

If I have to and I will inject once a week on 2.5 or five surely there’s got to be better than going every two weeks on 12.5 then every two weeks or 10L

Good luck with the calorie counting and well done for taking yourself in hand @MargoLivebetter. I am still lb or two up and have just started taking creatine so expect to jump up a bit more.

I feel like I have by eating under control but have definitely been boozing too much, a sniff of autumn in the air and I want red wine! I should probably start counting cals, but I have been obsessive about it in the past, I will see how I go this week

The half live of MJ is 5 days so makes much more sense to me to reduce the dose but keep the weekly injection so that the amount in your system is more constant otherwise going to be dealing with highs and lows especially with a high dose.

Obvs once down to 2.5 it might make sense at that point to spread out doses, although I’m planning to microdose weekly eg 1.25mg a week.

However am sure the doctor has experience - perhaps it’s good to be more tested in the 10-13 days after a dose?!

Whether to go down the doses first, or to spread them out first:
Perhaps it's six of one, and half-a-dozen of the other...... or personal preference/instinct. I dont think either is any more right or wrong. maybe one chooses and feels more confident with one option than another.

I was nervous at first, spreading out the doses, waiting for the food noise and/or cravings to kick in. However that has not happened, and there have been some advantages.
I always got some nausea/indigestion for the first couple of days after jabbing. That is much less now as (I think) there is less in my system when I come to do the next dose.
I was always aware when the next jab day approached, and felt the medication was wearing off on the last day or so, which was always a Monday/Tuesday.
Now I am doing it every 10 days, there is not the 7 day rhythm and I lose track of which day I could/should start to feel the effect wear off. It's now day 9 and although I was pretty hungry by lunch time, I had my now normal lunch and feel full. (whereas last year I would have had at least twice the amount and still not feel full).
So far I have continued to lose each week, albeit very small amounts, (1.5lb over 4 weeks) so am happy to continue spreading out the doses as planned.

Something I have come to realise on this journey is that I can feel empty but not hungry. I can tell when my stomach is empty, and before MJ that would have had me heading for the fridge/cupboard thinking I was actually hungry, but I now realise that real hunger is a completely different feeling.

@MagnoliaTreePetals thank you. I thought that’s what you meant. So am I right in thinking - A day longer between injections then once you have gone 10 days between jabs try to go 14 for 2 jabs. Then once you have done that go down a dose and start the cycle all over again.

it’s pretty much what I was going to do but without the 2 lots of 14 days before going down a dose.

Ive heard of set point but to be honest I’m so blooming jaded by all the theories and advice that I just put my head down for the last year and got through it. Happily.

My son in law is a physician and looking after me really well but I liked your plan so I’ll do it yours and his together.

thank you so much.

@Weepixie Now I have got to injecting every 10 days I am going to stick there for a couple of weeks as I am on holiday on Wednesday for a week, then have to have an operation, and can't inject within 7 days of the general Anaesthetic. So it just works out that way.
So after that I will move to 11 days, then 12 etc. I may or may not get to every 14 days before I start to drop down the doses, it just depends on what the scales and my body are telling me.
When I drop down the doses I will be sticking at the injection interval that I have got to, I won't be going back to weekly for example.