Maintenance - How are you maintaining?

SoCalGirl

SoCalGirl

Explorer
Joined
Dec 23, 2025
Messages
95
Reaction score
0
Location
USA
I feel like I can finally spot a faint bit of brightness far down this endless, gloomy passage. Perhaps roughly 15 lbs. remain. After that comes maintenance for the rest of my life. With a new year approaching, it could be the right moment to switch to maintaining. At the moment I take 4mg RETA plus .5mg to 1mg of Cagri each week. I've never exceeded that.

What's the way to get into maintenance? Is tapering down the first step? Or do you simply lower the dose? Do you move from weekly to monthly? I figure I've got around three months to work this out.

After you're there - is the dose fixed forever? Do you continue tweaking it? Does anyone cycle on and off and then back on?

Thanks!
 
I've just begun maintenance. My tirz dose went from 10mg down to 7.5 mg, and I'm now injecting it every other week. One upside is that my appetite has come back somewhat, which is a positive since I wasn't eating enough previously.
 
If the dose that brought you to this point is something you can handle, I'd think about sticking with it for a while to observe what unfolds. If the pattern starts shifting gradually, you may have to make adjustments.
 
SoCalGirl said:

I feel like I can finally spot a faint bit of brightness far down this endless, gloomy passage. Perhaps roughly 15 lbs. remain. After that comes maintenance for the rest of my life. With a new year approaching, it could be the right moment to switch to maintaining. At the moment I take 4mg RETA plus .5mg to 1mg of Cagri each week. I've never exceeded that.

What's the way to get into maintenance? Is tapering down the first step? Or do you simply lower the dose? Do you move from weekly to monthly? I figure I've got around three months to work this out.

After you're there - is the dose fixed forever? Do you continue tweaking it? Does anyone cycle on and off and then back on?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

The dose that works is capped by how bad the side effects get.

If we call efficacy the ability to hold weight steady, then that dose won't match whatever dose produced the loss in the first place.

While maintaining, sides can mean things like quality of life, or having to put in effort to keep appetite or food noise in check, and so on.

What I usually suggest is to weigh yourself on a consistent basis and apply a simple moving average so you can figure out your weight at whatever dose you're on. You'll want some margin of error so you don't end up chasing your tail, though weighing daily and making adjustments off a 14 day SMA cuts down on that noise.

Eventually you should land on a dose and rhythm that "just fits," and you can stay on that until something shifts the math.

Right now I'm cutting on 20mg Reta/2.5mg Tirz/1mg Elora. Going by my August experiment, my maintenance estimate will start by dropping the Reta to 8mg/week. Depending on sides, I might lower or drop Reta in favor of Tirz, and/or raise Elora.

I figure I'll be at maintenance by mid November, though it depends on how this last bit of abdominal fat responds.
 
I'm in maintenance mode at this point, and my doses haven't changed. Every 6 days I take 7.5mg of tirz, and 3 days after that I take 2mg of reta, also on a 6-day schedule. This routine has been going for a couple of months now - my weight has held steady and I haven't felt the urge to switch anything up. Adding more weight loss isn't my goal; instead I'm focused on gaining muscle and dealing with the loose skin on my inner arms and thighs - it isn't a huge amount, but it has proven really stubborn!!
 
SoCalGirl said:

I feel like I can finally spot a faint bit of brightness far down this endless, gloomy passage. Perhaps roughly 15 lbs. remain. After that comes maintenance for the rest of my life. With a new year approaching, it could be the right moment to switch to maintaining. At the moment I take 4mg RETA plus .5mg to 1mg of Cagri each week. I've never exceeded that.

What's the way to get into maintenance? Is tapering down the first step? Or do you simply lower the dose? Do you move from weekly to monthly? I figure I've got around three months to work this out.

After you're there - is the dose fixed forever? Do you continue tweaking it? Does anyone cycle on and off and then back on?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I've been in maintenance for 6 months, and I've actually been at the same dose for even longer than that. My schedule is once a week, since that has worked well enough for me, and having it on a weekly basis keeps things simpler mentally.

My weight really hasn't shifted much, and the loss that did happen came entirely from fat, so body composition got better even though I only dropped around 2-4 pounds. It's probably not realistic for me to stay at this dose forever, but in my situation, any decrease will happen gradually, whenever it becomes necessary.
 
I've reached my goal weight, and my approach is to keep taking 5mg tirz on Mondays along with 5mg reta on Thursdays....

Rather than tapering the GLPs downward, my plan is to move food upward....Throughout my weight loss I've managed to eat larger amounts, it was simply that I didn't feel like it....For me the GLPs act as a hard floor, and I'm hesitant to let that disappear and allow food noise the opportunity to come back and take control again....
 
I have to admire the belief that an inexpensive black market Reta supply will stay readily accessible for maintenance across roughly the next 20 years, right up until it goes generic…
 
SoCalGirl said:


I think I might see a glimmer of light at the end of the long, dark tunnel. Maybe another 15 lbs. or so to go. And then it's a lifetime of maintenance. Let's just say with the new year coming up, it may be time to maintain. Doing 4mg RETA and .5mg to 1mg of Cagri weekly right now. Haven't ever gone higher than this.

How do you begin to maintain? Do you start titrating down? Do you just drop the dose? Do you quit weekly and go monthly? I think I have about three months before I need to figure this out.

Once there - do you lock in your dose for life? Do you keep adjusting? Do you ever start and stop and restart?

Thanks!

Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Way to go on being so near your target weight🎉🥳

My goal weight was hit roughly a month back, and my maintenance dose is still a work in progress. 3mg (Reta) was the top amount I reached, and at this point 2mg 1x per week seems like it might be the right fit for me. My hope had been 1mg, though I need to stay realistic, since once the food noise returns it drowns out everything else 💀
 
During maintenance, my reta dose hasn't changed at all. The only thing I did was bump up how many calories I eat each day.

Only recently have I begun lowering the reta a little, which lets me work tirz in. Down the road, my aim is for my weekly tirz amount to be larger than my reta amount.
 
GLiPtest said:

I have to admire the belief that an inexpensive black market Reta supply will stay readily accessible for maintenance across roughly the next 20 years, right up until it goes generic…
Click to expand...
In my view, China will never walk away from such a huge cash cow. One way or another, they'll figure out how to get it into the hands of the consumer.
 
sheilarae74 said:

During maintenance, my reta dose hasn't changed at all. The only thing I did was bump up how many calories I eat each day.

Only recently have I begun lowering the reta a little, which lets me work tirz in. Down the road, my aim is for my weekly tirz amount to be larger than my reta amount.
Click to expand...

What's the reasoning behind that? I'm just wondering - no judgment at all. 😉
 
GLiPtest said:

I have to admire the belief that an inexpensive black market Reta supply will stay readily accessible for maintenance across roughly the next 20 years, right up until it goes generic…
Click to expand...

Do you mean that getting it through a pharmacy will be less expensive and less of a hassle, or that the grey market availability is going to shift?
 
I've dropped 40, but there are still 90 lbs between me and my goal, so it'll be some time yet. Even so, maintenance is already on my mind. For me, that's the make-or-break part. I've shed weight plenty of times in the past, yet the bounce-back always hits hard. If my calories go under 1200, the losses stop, which forced me onto an ADF schedule: maintenance calories (1500) on one day, then a fast the next. So my guess is that some form of fasting will always be part of my routine, perhaps 1 or 2 times a week, combined with reta or whichever glp drug turns out to work best.
 
anhydrous said:

If the dose that brought you to this point is something you can handle, I'd think about sticking with it for a while to observe what unfolds. If the pattern starts shifting gradually, you may have to make adjustments.
Click to expand...
That's the approach I'm taking. I'm on 4mg/wk, and my weight appears to have settled into some sort of homeostasis at around +/-140lbs. My appetite is returning, yet consuming more food isn't causing any weight gain.

Flash-BCR said:

I've reached my goal weight, and my approach is to keep taking 5mg tirz on Mondays along with 5mg reta on Thursdays....

Rather than tapering the GLPs downward, my plan is to move food upward....Throughout my weight loss I've managed to eat larger amounts, it was simply that I didn't feel like it....For me the GLPs act as a hard floor, and I'm hesitant to let that disappear and allow food noise the opportunity to come back and take control again....
Click to expand...
I only began doing this a couple of weeks back, and up to now it's been working nicely.

sheilarae74 said:

During maintenance, my reta dose hasn't changed at all. The only thing I did was bump up how many calories I eat each day.

Only recently have I begun lowering the reta a little, which lets me work tirz in. Down the road, my aim is for my weekly tirz amount to be larger than my reta amount.
Click to expand...
Let us know how the switch goes. I've felt a strong pull to do the very same thing.
 
Back
Top