Anyone else still unsure their success will last?

D

Delphyne

Explorer
Joined
Jan 9, 2026
Messages
14
Reaction score
0
Location
Germany
I haven't reached my goal weight, though I've already dropped a significant amount of weight - once more?

Like plenty of others here can probably understand, I've tried countless diets before, shed some pounds, put every bit back on, along with the guilt and self-blame.

What convinces you that this time it will be lasting and permanent as long as you keep taking the medication?
 
Yeah, that thought has definitely run through my head too. I get why people question something that works like a miracle pill.

In my case, I've been logging my food for more than a year (on top of the 8 months I did it back in 2020). Between 2020 and 2021, I dropped from 240lbs down to 185lbs purely by counting calories — never once set foot in a gym. But then I quit tracking, and the weight crept back up to 225lbs, where it stayed stuck for ages. At the start of last year (2025), I began both counting calories and going to the gym 5 days a week. From then until early 2026, I went from 225lbs to 190lbs with noticeably leaner muscle.

My whole point is this: since I'd already built this healthier way of living, I see Reta as something to ADD on top of my existing habits, not something to REPLACE them. If that comes across clearly. I'm genuinely trying to treat it as a tool rather than leaning on it entirely. And in that sense, it's been a total game changer in multiple ways, even though I only started 5 days ago.

I hope this gives you a bit of experience or perspective on what you asked, and best of luck!
 
I'm pretty confident the weight would come back quickly if I stopped Reta. I've gritted my teeth through plenty of diets before, and the pounds returned the moment I stopped paying close attention. My plan is basically to stay on a low dose for as long as I can see ahead. Right now I'm at 5mg and roughly 10lbs away from my goal. Once I get there, I intend to taper down. I'll likely need to experiment with the dosing to find what works best, but I've made peace with the fact that this will probably be part of my life over the long haul.
 
I'm ready to keep using it right up to the end, and I've got a supply that covers 10 years or longer.
 
Delphyne said:

I haven't reached my goal weight, though I've already dropped a significant amount of weight - once more?

Like plenty of others here can probably understand, I've tried countless diets before, shed some pounds, put every bit back on, along with the guilt and self-blame.

What convinces you that this time it will be lasting and permanent as long as you keep taking the medication?
Click to expand...
For me it comes down to hope and belief. Without hope, I never would have begun a glp in the first place. The belief comes from watching things shift—not just on the scale, but when I look in the mirror.

I hope I can sustain this momentum. I believe I can, because this time around I'm altering my life in ways I couldn't manage (or simply didn't bother with) during earlier diets, and those alterations—together with the glp—are what should make the long-term difference.

There's something I tell my players: trust the process and believe in it, and it will carry you as far as the effort you invest. So now I'm attempting to take my own counsel—trust it, believe in it, and do the work.

I'd guess plenty of us who use glp for weight loss have been knocked down when a diet didn't pan out the way we expected, but I can see all of us rising again and giving it another shot. This time, just with a different tool.
 
Delphyne said:

I haven't reached my goal weight, though I've already dropped a significant amount of weight - once more?

Like plenty of others here can probably understand, I've tried countless diets before, shed some pounds, put every bit back on, along with the guilt and self-blame.

What convinces you that this time it will be lasting and permanent as long as you keep taking the medication?
Click to expand...

Around the 6-month mark on tirzepatide, once I'd dropped a fair bit of weight, the exact thought you're having crossed my mind: “Why is this time going to be any different”. (I've been a yo-yo dieter my whole life.)

Right around then I was binge watching My 600-lb life, and watching so many people battle weight loss (even following bariatric surgery) led me to realize that part of my weight problem could be psychological. I put in some “work” on that front, so my hope is that sticking with glp-1 for life plus the behavioral work means this time will be different.
 
This probably doesn’t apply to me — in 60 years I’ve never dropped a single pound, and it wasn’t for lack of effort. So if it takes another sixty years for me to put it back on, fine. I’m not going to stay on this stuff indefinitely. I could, but then how would I ever learn what might happen if I continued?
 
At 54, I figure some kind of upkeep dose will always be part of the picture, or maybe a swap like moving from reta over to tesamorelin.

On reta I dropped from 190 to 168 in less than 2 months, and I'm 5'8". In hindsight my dose was higher than it needed to be, given the mild side effects, but the results were so good that I brushed it off.

Muscle loss was fairly noticeable, though it was winter and a shoulder injury kept me away from weights regardless. Now I want to let the shoulder heal using BPC-157 and then get back under the bar (fingers crossed). Should the shoulder refuse to play along, running, leg work and core training are still on the table.

That weight is gone, yet a leftover belly remains, the dad bod lives on! My next move is either quitting reta or cutting the dose way down, and adding tesamorelin plus ipamorelin to zero in on the midsection.

All in all, reta's weight loss has me pretty pleased, but has anyone else landed on a solid approach for midsection fat using tesamorelin, any tips, do's or don'ts?
 
Chris Thomas said:

At 54, I figure some kind of upkeep dose will always be part of the picture, or maybe a swap like moving from reta over to tesamorelin.

On reta I dropped from 190 to 168 in less than 2 months, and I'm 5'8". In hindsight my dose was higher than it needed to be, given the mild side effects, but the results were so good that I brushed it off.

Muscle loss was fairly noticeable, though it was winter and a shoulder injury kept me away from weights regardless. Now I want to let the shoulder heal using BPC-157 and then get back under the bar (fingers crossed). Should the shoulder refuse to play along, running, leg work and core training are still on the table.

That weight is gone, yet a leftover belly remains, the dad bod lives on! My next move is either quitting reta or cutting the dose way down, and adding tesamorelin plus ipamorelin to zero in on the midsection.

All in all, reta's weight loss has me pretty pleased, but has anyone else landed on a solid approach for midsection fat using tesamorelin, any tips, do's or don'ts?
Click to expand...
Results from Tesa don't appear quickly; I stuck with it for close to 4 months before finally moving over to hgh, which worked really well for me. To be clear, this was a low dose, given that I'm older.
 
CNCCurrency said:

Chris Thomas said:

At 54, I figure some kind of upkeep dose will always be part of the picture, or maybe a swap like moving from reta over to tesamorelin.

On reta I dropped from 190 to 168 in less than 2 months, and I'm 5'8". In hindsight my dose was higher than it needed to be, given the mild side effects, but the results were so good that I brushed it off.

Muscle loss was fairly noticeable, though it was winter and a shoulder injury kept me away from weights regardless. Now I want to let the shoulder heal using BPC-157 and then get back under the bar (fingers crossed). Should the shoulder refuse to play along, running, leg work and core training are still on the table.

That weight is gone, yet a leftover belly remains, the dad bod lives on! My next move is either quitting reta or cutting the dose way down, and adding tesamorelin plus ipamorelin to zero in on the midsection.

All in all, reta's weight loss has me pretty pleased, but has anyone else landed on a solid approach for midsection fat using tesamorelin, any tips, do's or don'ts?
Click to expand...
Results from Tesa don't appear quickly; I stuck with it for close to 4 months before finally moving over to hgh, which worked really well for me. To be clear, this was a low dose, given that I'm older.
Click to expand...
Thanks. So HGH 191 is the one, right? And did you combine it with anything else?
 
Delphyne said:

I haven't reached my goal weight, though I've already dropped a significant amount of weight - once more?

Like plenty of others here can probably understand, I've tried countless diets before, shed some pounds, put every bit back on, along with the guilt and self-blame.

What convinces you that this time it will be lasting and permanent as long as you keep taking the medication?
Click to expand...
Yeah, it worries me too. I keep hoping this round ends differently.

Atkins took a lot of weight off me. I stuck with it for 10 yrs. Over the long haul, Atkins is extremely risky. The way I see it, Atkins doesn't strip fat — it strips water. Push it far enough and one slip — a brownie plus a glass of milk — shows up as 4 lbs the next morning, with cracked lips, because your body drags every bit of moisture it can find back into the fat cells.

I also tried counting calories with apps. Weight came off, then came back on, plus extra.

Another stretch: 30 lbs gone, purely from staying locked in, while working offshore and mostly by myself 24/7. Once I came back, all of it returned, plus extra.
 
Chris Thomas said:

At 54, I figure some kind of upkeep dose will always be part of the picture, or maybe a swap like moving from reta over to tesamorelin.

On reta I dropped from 190 to 168 in less than 2 months, and I'm 5'8". In hindsight my dose was higher than it needed to be, given the mild side effects, but the results were so good that I brushed it off.

Muscle loss was fairly noticeable, though it was winter and a shoulder injury kept me away from weights regardless. Now I want to let the shoulder heal using BPC-157 and then get back under the bar (fingers crossed). Should the shoulder refuse to play along, running, leg work and core training are still on the table.

That weight is gone, yet a leftover belly remains, the dad bod lives on! My next move is either quitting reta or cutting the dose way down, and adding tesamorelin plus ipamorelin to zero in on the midsection.

All in all, reta's weight loss has me pretty pleased, but has anyone else landed on a solid approach for midsection fat using tesamorelin, any tips, do's or don'ts?
Click to expand...
Once you introduce BPC and Tesa, what Reta dose will you step down to? A few days back I made a post about stacking all 3 of these. I'm in week 4 at 2mg of Reta and plan to raise it to 3mg on Monday morning. I've just gotten some BPC and I'm considering picking up Tesa too.
 
Chris Thomas said:

At 54, I figure some kind of upkeep dose will always be part of the picture, or maybe a swap like moving from reta over to tesamorelin.

On reta I dropped from 190 to 168 in less than 2 months, and I'm 5'8". In hindsight my dose was higher than it needed to be, given the mild side effects, but the results were so good that I brushed it off.

Muscle loss was fairly noticeable, though it was winter and a shoulder injury kept me away from weights regardless. Now I want to let the shoulder heal using BPC-157 and then get back under the bar (fingers crossed). Should the shoulder refuse to play along, running, leg work and core training are still on the table.

That weight is gone, yet a leftover belly remains, the dad bod lives on! My next move is either quitting reta or cutting the dose way down, and adding tesamorelin plus ipamorelin to zero in on the midsection.

All in all, reta's weight loss has me pretty pleased, but has anyone else landed on a solid approach for midsection fat using tesamorelin, any tips, do's or don'ts?
Click to expand...
The fat Tesamorelin goes after isn't the subcutaneous kind around your middle — it's the visceral fat packed around your organs.
 
El fallo de fondo está en tratar la obesidad como un asunto puramente médico y fisiológico, cuando lo psicológico pesa muchísimo. Mi opinión es que a mucha gente le convendría mantener los inhibidores de GLP-1 de por vida, igual que hace quien vive con hipertensión o con diabetes, reajustando la dosis según haga falta. Habrá quien pueda dejarlo, claro, pero en la obesidad grave la balanza se inclina al otro lado: seguir con un inhibidor de GLP-1 y cargar con sus efectos secundarios sigue siendo mejor opción que la enfermedad misma.
 
Chris Thomas said:

At 54, I figure some kind of upkeep dose will always be part of the picture, or maybe a swap like moving from reta over to tesamorelin.

On reta I dropped from 190 to 168 in less than 2 months, and I'm 5'8". In hindsight my dose was higher than it needed to be, given the mild side effects, but the results were so good that I brushed it off.

Muscle loss was fairly noticeable, though it was winter and a shoulder injury kept me away from weights regardless. Now I want to let the shoulder heal using BPC-157 and then get back under the bar (fingers crossed). Should the shoulder refuse to play along, running, leg work and core training are still on the table.

That weight is gone, yet a leftover belly remains, the dad bod lives on! My next move is either quitting reta or cutting the dose way down, and adding tesamorelin plus ipamorelin to zero in on the midsection.

All in all, reta's weight loss has me pretty pleased, but has anyone else landed on a solid approach for midsection fat using tesamorelin, any tips, do's or don'ts?
Click to expand...
Ozempic left me with some muscle loss, so I went back to the gym hoping to put a stop to it. Pretty quickly I remembered that my rotator cuff tear was never fixed. I dropped every shoulder movement from my routine. BPC 157 and TB500 came next, though I couldn't tell they did anything. The elliptical and weight training without shoulders became my routine. After that I made the switch to Reta. More recently, Tesamorlin has been added on top of the Reta. Only in these past few weeks have I begun taking tiny steps toward working shoulders again. The weights are so light I feel awkward if anyone sees me. A bit of weight has gone on, but not so much that it hurts. So far, so good. Assuming Reta did the job for you, pairing a reduced maintenance dose with the Tesamorlin seems like it would suit you. The two of them did a great job together in my case. Finding your own best mix might take some trial and error. It sounds like you're on the right track
 
CNCCurrency said:

Chris Thomas said:

At 54, I figure some kind of upkeep dose will always be part of the picture, or maybe a swap like moving from reta over to tesamorelin.

On reta I dropped from 190 to 168 in less than 2 months, and I'm 5'8". In hindsight my dose was higher than it needed to be, given the mild side effects, but the results were so good that I brushed it off.

Muscle loss was fairly noticeable, though it was winter and a shoulder injury kept me away from weights regardless. Now I want to let the shoulder heal using BPC-157 and then get back under the bar (fingers crossed). Should the shoulder refuse to play along, running, leg work and core training are still on the table.

That weight is gone, yet a leftover belly remains, the dad bod lives on! My next move is either quitting reta or cutting the dose way down, and adding tesamorelin plus ipamorelin to zero in on the midsection.

All in all, reta's weight loss has me pretty pleased, but has anyone else landed on a solid approach for midsection fat using tesamorelin, any tips, do's or don'ts?
Click to expand...
Results from Tesa don't appear quickly; I stuck with it for close to 4 months before finally moving over to hgh, which worked really well for me. To be clear, this was a low dose, given that I'm older.
Click to expand...
What protocol did you follow with HGH?
 
Quatroskin said:


What dosage of Reta are you dropping to when you add BPC and Tesa? I posted about using these 3 together a couple days ago. I’m on my 4th week of 2mg Reta and will be bumping up to 3mg starting Monday morning. I just picked up some BPC and am thinking of grabbing some Tesa as well.

Quatroskin said:

Chris Thomas said:

At 54, I figure some kind of upkeep dose will always be part of the picture, or maybe a swap like moving from reta over to tesamorelin.

On reta I dropped from 190 to 168 in less than 2 months, and I'm 5'8". In hindsight my dose was higher than it needed to be, given the mild side effects, but the results were so good that I brushed it off.

Muscle loss was fairly noticeable, though it was winter and a shoulder injury kept me away from weights regardless. Now I want to let the shoulder heal using BPC-157 and then get back under the bar (fingers crossed). Should the shoulder refuse to play along, running, leg work and core training are still on the table.

That weight is gone, yet a leftover belly remains, the dad bod lives on! My next move is either quitting reta or cutting the dose way down, and adding tesamorelin plus ipamorelin to zero in on the midsection.

All in all, reta's weight loss has me pretty pleased, but has anyone else landed on a solid approach for midsection fat using tesamorelin, any tips, do's or don'ts?
Click to expand...
Once you introduce BPC and Tesa, what Reta dose will you step down to? A few days back I made a post about stacking all 3 of these. I'm in week 4 at 2mg of Reta and plan to raise it to 3mg on Monday morning. I've just gotten some BPC and I'm considering picking up Tesa too.
Click to expand...
I am dropping my reta from 2mg a week to 1mg a week just to manage food noise. I have lost all the lbs that I wanted to, just not all in the right places, lost a lot of muscle. I have now been taking BPC for just over three weeks. I started immediately after a PRP injection in my shoulder, nagging partial tendon tear that has prevented me from lifting weights. To me the BPC and the reta had no influence on each other, from what I read, they shouldn't. Like you, I thought bringing tesa in would be a good idea to help target belly fat, I do understand that it targets the visceral fat, so it’s not going to make my dad bod vanish, but at my age I am sure I have some visceral fat that I could get rid of, Also, tesa helps release HGH which can help with burning fat. Welp, that was my plan but I think my plan has been flipped upside down because CNCCurrency just informed me that he had better results when he stopped taking tesa and just went to HGH, which would make sense I think, plus I would bet the farm that he is way more experienced than I am. But yeah Quatro, I was planning on doing tesa and reta together, reta at a low dose, all subject to change depending on effects. Man, going to 3mg of reta sounds like a lot to me, but everyone is different i guess. I am curious how 3mg performs for you.

Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Lovedog100 said:

Chris Thomas said:

At 54, I figure some kind of upkeep dose will always be part of the picture, or maybe a swap like moving from reta over to tesamorelin.

On reta I dropped from 190 to 168 in less than 2 months, and I'm 5'8". In hindsight my dose was higher than it needed to be, given the mild side effects, but the results were so good that I brushed it off.

Muscle loss was fairly noticeable, though it was winter and a shoulder injury kept me away from weights regardless. Now I want to let the shoulder heal using BPC-157 and then get back under the bar (fingers crossed). Should the shoulder refuse to play along, running, leg work and core training are still on the table.

That weight is gone, yet a leftover belly remains, the dad bod lives on! My next move is either quitting reta or cutting the dose way down, and adding tesamorelin plus ipamorelin to zero in on the midsection.

All in all, reta's weight loss has me pretty pleased, but has anyone else landed on a solid approach for midsection fat using tesamorelin, any tips, do's or don'ts?
Click to expand...
Ozempic left me with some muscle loss, so I went back to the gym hoping to put a stop to it. Pretty quickly I remembered that my rotator cuff tear was never fixed. I dropped every shoulder movement from my routine. BPC 157 and TB500 came next, though I couldn't tell they did anything. The elliptical and weight training without shoulders became my routine. After that I made the switch to Reta. More recently, Tesamorlin has been added on top of the Reta. Only in these past few weeks have I begun taking tiny steps toward working shoulders again. The weights are so light I feel awkward if anyone sees me. A bit of weight has gone on, but not so much that it hurts. So far, so good. Assuming Reta did the job for you, pairing a reduced maintenance dose with the Tesamorlin seems like it would suit you. The two of them did a great job together in my case. Finding your own best mix might take some trial and error. It sounds like you're on the right track
Click to expand...
I appreciate you responding. Honestly, those pink weights intimidate me at the moment! Whether this BPC is having any effect, I can't tell, but I'm trying to do everything possible — it feels like I've got just 1 opportunity to get this shoulder problem sorted out. Thanks for sharing your thoughts; hearing that it went well in your case brings me some comfort.
 
Omxxl said:

CNCCurrency said:

Chris Thomas said:

At 54, I figure some kind of upkeep dose will always be part of the picture, or maybe a swap like moving from reta over to tesamorelin.

On reta I dropped from 190 to 168 in less than 2 months, and I'm 5'8". In hindsight my dose was higher than it needed to be, given the mild side effects, but the results were so good that I brushed it off.

Muscle loss was fairly noticeable, though it was winter and a shoulder injury kept me away from weights regardless. Now I want to let the shoulder heal using BPC-157 and then get back under the bar (fingers crossed). Should the shoulder refuse to play along, running, leg work and core training are still on the table.

That weight is gone, yet a leftover belly remains, the dad bod lives on! My next move is either quitting reta or cutting the dose way down, and adding tesamorelin plus ipamorelin to zero in on the midsection.

All in all, reta's weight loss has me pretty pleased, but has anyone else landed on a solid approach for midsection fat using tesamorelin, any tips, do's or don'ts?
Click to expand...
Results from Tesa don't appear quickly; I stuck with it for close to 4 months before finally moving over to hgh, which worked really well for me. To be clear, this was a low dose, given that I'm older.
Click to expand...
What protocol did you follow with HGH?
Click to expand...
Yes, please share.
 
I have some experience with keeping weight off, so here goes. After my 1st pregnancy I dropped 60 pounds: 40 came from the pregnancy itself and 20 was weight I had already wanted gone before getting pregnant. 185->225ish-> 162

That means roughly 3 years of holding steady before we decided sweet #2 was on the way.

Tracking every single day at 100% wasn’t something my brain could handle. I had lost weight on an older WW plan and I was done with being in weight-loss mode.

So I came up with yellow zone and red zone. Because I’m female and have a cycle, I gave myself +- 5 pounds just to stay sane. Yellow zone started at 5 pounds above goal; hitting +5 meant choosing smart snacks, taking smaller slices of birthday cake, and removing the junk that sneaks back in. Those were the “non tracking” good habits.

Once I hit red zone, it was back to measuring and tracking, using the same tools that had gotten me to goal originally.

In about 3 years I entered red zone 2 times. The 1st time, the ww system brought me back down; the 2nd time my brain rejected it, so I switched to CICO and that worked.

Normal maintenance is going to have ups and downs. The person who described yellow and red zones picked their red zone by deciding they refused to diet for more than a month. So when that number showed up, it was time to lock it in.

Isn’t that a wild thought?? Saying “I don’t want to diet more than a month ever again” is mind blowing. Even now, maybe because I’m still far from it.

Q: Anybody still doubting success?

After #2 my chemistry changed, and it was a bunch of things stacking up. My thryroid kind of broke (postpartum thyroiditis, often a precursor to Hashimoto’s ), the baby woke every other hour so I went to bed at 6pm and got up at 6am — having sleep broken every couple of hours is a form of POW torture (seriously) and I basically fell apart.

Lexapro and Wellbutrin mattered, but Lexapro caused weight gain. These days I’d call it an antiGLP: I never felt full or satisfied, I would eat until physically full-full. 20 pounds later I stopped it. And um-teen years later I’ve got enough other things mostly under control to tackle weight.

I haven’t found my stack. GLP-1s bring anhedonia into my chemical-soup-self and it is very disappointing. I have a few things ordered, just working through a crypto deposit to see if they help.

My sister likes sema better than tirz but has no mental health symptoms with either. Sigh.

And I have to remind myself there is much that CAN be done in the meantime. Yes I doubt success but I am an engineer and am still hacking my way to get the system to cooperate.
 
Back
Top