Does Maintenance does relate to the highest does you got to?

[UniChildQuestions]

I'm on 9mg Mounjaro at the moment - and have been on a long journey (was morbidly obese) and 3 stone to go...

I was wondering you know when people aim to drop down at the end to a maintenance dose -does it make a difference how high you have been?

I was thinking I might try not going above 10mg if so - as the expense long term will depend on the maintenance does. But I would go higher if it makes no difference long term.

Any wisdom or is it all guesswork??

No necessarily. I've read that once you reach your weight goal you stay on the same dose and increase your calories by a small amount. After a few weeks if you're continuing to lose weight you drop the dose (some people only drop by 1mg, others by more) or spread out the intervals in-between doses.

Essentially you tweak calories, doses and/or intervals between doses until you reach a stable weight. That's your maintenance dose. However it may not be static, you could find out you need to go back up doses or even lower.

A maintenance dose is the one that keeps your weight stable, so it's not high suppression that helps you to lose weight but allows you to eat at maintenance calories, for me that's 5-7.5mg at around 1500 cals a day. I use 10mg to lose weight. The highest I've been is 15mg and I dropped dose as 15 and 12.5 became too strong when I reached 10st bmi 25 and could only eat 700-900 cals a day, which was far too low for me as a full time worker in the nhs and with a 2-3hr commute a day, I was wiped out.

Ah that's really helpful thankyou both . @Mysticmaiden do you mean the dose you were on kind of got stronger when you were samller? I tend towards fatigue for other reasons so am nervous of eating too little anyway.

I've just realised I'm 2 stone away from bmi 25 now - its just I wanted to go below it for safety. I suppose it might be normal for my weight to slow at this stage.

Its helpful to know you were at 15 and could get down to 5. How did you decrease? I am hoping to be there in the summer all being well!

Thank you for posting this. I’m almost at my goal albeit my goal is bmi 26ish. I went up to a month at 12.5 and it actually didn’t seem to make much impact on my loss but my suppression went silly high. I have come down to 10 last week and this week and have eaten maybe 100 cals more a day but I was eaten so little I worried about how I was fuelling myself. I don’t know if I will lose any more tbh but I’ve felt better and done more movement so it’s right for me.

Ideally I’d like to get down to 5mg as a maintenance dose mostly due to cost (especially with no 5th dose) so I’m watching this with interest.

I think we’re all very much figuring out maintenance. It doesn’t seem to have been explored in the drug’s trials, at least not any I’ve seen.

My experience was that I went up slowly to 7.5mg to lose 5kg, then stayed on that dose for a while but kept slowly losing, then tried 6.25 and kept losing, now on 5mg. I’d like to get down to 3.75 or 2.5 if those still give me enough of the anti inflammatory effects.

I certainly could eat more or worse on 5mg, but it gives me the brain hack that means I choose not to. I may still be losing slightly - I’m finding getting the balance right tricky, especially as I want to do body recomposition now and swap a couple of kilos of fat for muscle to get down to 22% body fat.

I went up to 15mg. I gradually dropped down and with some trail and error I now maintain at 5mg fortnightly and have for nearly a year.

I went up to 10.5mg at my highest. Once at goal I very gradually dropped by about a click per week to 4mg, but went back up to 5mg a few months ago.

I wasn't gaining weight, but I felt some of the positive side effects reducing as I was getting achy joints again, etc.

Hopefully I won't need to increase further.

I maintain on varying amounts and have done for over a year now. I went as high as 10mg and I tend to take 7.5 - 10 a week, sometimes a little less. I fart the amount based on how I feel.

This means I tend to eat around 1700 calories a day and maintain my weight of 9 st 7 - 9 st 11

I’ve been taking wegovy for 4 months now but only lost 6 pounds, I feel sick most of the time so stayed on 1mg for the last 2 months, have 1 week left and not sure whether to move up a dose or stay on 1 mg. I feel i am eating to try and make the sick feeling go away, wondering if I should just give up!

I’m on 12.5 and am now 2lbs under my goal of 10 stone. I really dont know what to do, still have 5 does available to me (last of a pen and a new unopened one). The 12.5 is so expensive, really cannot afford to keep on this dose.

This is very interesting although a while off for me.

However “I fart the amount based on how I feel” the mind boggles!!

I've been in maintenance for 5/6 months now and firstly increased the spacing between doses to 10 days and am now dropping down a level. It's a bit trial and error but I'm seeing how little I need to stay in my weight range.