Mounjaro maintenance: should I contact providers now or after dose finding?

[ThisPeachFawn]

I'm very nearly at my target weight and I plan on staying on mounjaro long-term. I've got 3 unopened pens in the fridge, which I'm going to use to click count to find my lowest dose for maintenance, but I'm not sure what to do about maintenance providers. Am I best contacting them now and explaining about the stash and the fact I don't know what my maintenance dose will be yet so I don't want to order any pens until I know what that is? Or should I just use the pens to find my maintenance dose and then find a maintenance provider? Will it make a difference?

For reference, the highest I've gone dose wise is 8mg and I've shopped around with providers throughout so I've used some maintenance providers before eg Swift and Pharmulous.

Any advice regarding managing maintenance and providers would be greatly appreciated. Thank you 😊

Take a clear photo of your stash showing prescription boxes and the pens next to them. Include some ID and the date of the photo.

@TheSlimmingPumpkin thank you!

If you're planning to click count and use the pens for more than 4 weeks, be aware that most prescribers won't accept this. Most places need you to order at least every 6 weeks to keep ordering a dose higher than 2.5.

So, if you've got 3 unopened pens, you can show the prescription boxes to any new provider and (hopefully) they will let you have a break in ordering for 3 months. Any longer than that and you may have issues.

Definitely worth contacting providers in advance though, as it still lets you use up at least some of your stash. Although there is no guarantees. I had this with a provider who said I was fine to use up my stash, then after a break when I came to order normally, they wouldn't prescribe! It all got sorted out in the end, but it was stressful.

I would contact one of the maintainance providers (I use Swift) and explain your situation - it’s £30 for a consultation. You can take a gap on ordering and they are broadly supportive of titrating down ie stretching pens.

@OneThirdLess that's my concern. In an ideal world my maintenance dose would be 2.5mg or lower but there's no guarantees that will be the case. I don't want to come down the doses using my existing pens and discover my maintenance dose is actually 5mg or higher but then I can only order 2.5mg because of the gap.

@MeridaBrave that's really good to know thank you. I'll definitely get in touch with Swift and a few others from the monj list and see what they say and then go with whoever will allow me to use up my stash first.

If you find your maintenance dose is 5mg, then order early so that you have a 2.5 and a 5 by the time you need it.
I have been counting clicks and am on my last 10mg pen. I will make it last two months, at least. I’m down to 20 clicks, or 3.33 mg. I might make it down to 2.5 before it runs out, but I’ve already ordered a 2.5. My next pen will be 5, then 7.5, then maybe another 7.5, depending what dose I end up on. I’ll then work my way through those before starting back at 2.5.

I wish I could go down to a cheaper pen but I cant. My friend is maintaining on 2.5mg and was still losing on 5mg. She lost 5 stone!

I lost 3.5st. I had to go up to 10mg to lose my final 5lbs and hit goal Sept 2025.

I lost another 4lbs on 10mg during Autumn so dropped to 7.5mg thinking that would be my maintenance dose and hoping to go down to 5mg, but on 7.5mg I gained 5lb over 5 months,

Not wanting it to creep up any more I went back to 10mg. 3 months on and am still 2lbs away from goal.

I track macros and calories, I exercise a lot, and I really wish that was my maintenance dose.

My friend just started on 2.5mg and says she will not go up too high. I've told her that its not something you get to decide if you want the weight to stay off.

We all have iron willpower but still ended up obese!

In Sept I will have maintained a healthy BMI for a 1 year, in December it will be 2 years since I was BMI33.

I will keep paying for 10mg until I die, I am with Oushk.

I moved from Oushk to Swift Doctor a couple of months ago as they seem to have a much better setup.

I have ordered two pens 6 weeks apart. Felt “rude” to go straight in to asking about a break without ordering anything first 🤣. I have emailed to give an overview of my weight loss, maintenance and fess up on my partial dosing and stash and they’ve replied to say they can support a break and to book a consultation to discuss the way forward, so will do that next week.

@Goinghome2late I am also currently with Swift Doctor and find them very straightforward and helpful. They are also £30 cheaper than Oushk for a 10mg pen, and you can usually get £5 or £10 further off with various discounts. If you have a maintenance consultation with them for £30 then you will definitely get a £10 discount for each subsequent order.

@WeAllHaveWingsI hope it goes well with Swift and they are supportive of your partial dosing. Be interesting to hear if they will support you. With so many of us taking smaller amounts from larger pens, if a pharmacy ever comes out openly in support of it, I think they'll be deluged with orders!

@OneThirdLess gut feeling is they won’t support it going forward as against manufacturing guidelines but they will be understanding of it happening in the past and allow the break to use up stockpile (I hope).

Voy does prescribe part doses, but they have done independent lab testing for the pens to be used for 6 weeks, this is data other providers don’t have to justify prescribing using pens for longer.

@WeAllHaveWings I suspect you're right. It's understandable when they have to prescribe within licence and Lilly's safety data says only 30 days. I mean, none of us have dropped dead yet, but we're not exactly a robust clinical study.

Can I ask the Swift and Oushk users - are you buying mj as a maintenance dose once a goal weight has been achieved? I started to look in to this last year but I managed to keep ordering from ME and didn’t move over. Having issues with MedExpress now so I think I have to take the plunge and change prescribers but I don’t know where they all stand on long term use.

Yes - as maintainance and only once every 8 weeks as I split the pen to save money.

Thank you for all the advice and good luck to everyone else figuring out maintenance.

I'm still bouncing around suppliers getting the new customer discounts while I can, and I'm also getting away with 6-8 weeks between orders so my stash is slowly depleting. My bmi is currently 23 so I don't need to rush to move to maintenance just yet, but I'm definitely going to move to swift doctor once I have a better idea of what my maintenance dose is (I'm currently on 7.5mg and still losing around 0.25lb a week).

My plan is to order the pen nearest to whatever's double my maintenance dose and then only order every 8 weeks which will make the monthly cost much more affordable (these prices are just from the monj maintenance page).