Question about weight loss on Reta / GLP-1

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Kyli

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Hey Everyone,

I could use some assistance. To keep it brief (the full version is in my introduction): I'm 178, my SW was around 145kg, and my CW is 140kg. Right now I'm in week 3 of Reta. I was doing 1mg twice a week, and for the past 2 injections I moved up to 1.5mg — the most recent one was 2 days ago. By my math, the active amount of Reta in me right now is 3mg.

Alongside Reta, I'm also using 5-Amino-1MQ and SS-31.

Now for my question. At 1mg, hunger sometimes came back. At 1.5mg, things seem okay so far. What I can't wrap my head around is how Reta actually works. How do people lose weight? Because when something tastes good, it takes sheer will power to not eat it.

What confuses me is why people say to titrate slowly. Why? If the studies show most patients began losing weight in month 2 or even month 3. From what I understand, the Glucagon Receptors aren't even triggered below roughly 4mg, since Reta can dock to the receptors but that isn't enough to make the liver start working and clearing fat from it.

Compared to my SW, I've now dropped about 5kg. But I'm certain most of that was water, because the inflammations are largely gone now. I'm sure it wasn't fat that melted away.

And right now I'm sort of stuck. I've read everything I can get my hands on. But I don't get why in the studies people start losing weight once they were at 4-6-8mg a week. So roughly 5-10mg of active substance in the body. Then I saw here in the forum that people are stacking Cagri on top. But from my research, that can cause Gastroparesis.

I started this journey very motivated. But at the moment I'm somewhat confused. I want more in a shorter period of time.
 
Think of this as a marathon rather than a race. If you increase your dose before it's time, you'll end up feeling really unwell. Regarding will power... once you begin this journey, the foods you used to enjoy simply won't appeal to you anymore. Will power won't even come into play. Stick with the plan. Follow the schedule for titrating up, and try not to overanalyze or push things too far.

I'm in week 5 of Tirz. Down 26lbs and feeling GREAT! The food noise is silent, inflammation has cleared up, my skin looks clearer, I concentrate better at work, and even my joint pain has eased.

On top of that, I take B12, Magnesium Malate, Whey, and Casein protein powder, and I've been having soups, raw veggies, fresh fruits, nuts, fiber and nut bars, and salads. I'm enjoying these new foods and don't miss the fried junk that used to leave me clogged from head to toe. Burgers, meat-heavy meals, sweets or treats don't even cross my mind, and none of that stuff is kept in my home anyway.
 
Let's get one thing straight: this isn't a magic fat-melting pill (though it comes close).

Training and diet are still on you.

At night, reta can curb binge eating, and it usually helps with the overeating that happens at every meal.

You'll feel full sooner, and that fullness sticks around longer.

That said, dropping 50 pounds in 3 months isn't happening unless you're 300lbs + and cut your food drastically.

A deficit, training, and your 12k steps are what you need.

What GLP1 does is take the edge off your binge eating, nothing more.

Don't get hung up on the glucacon and so on.

Splitting your reta dose is a mistake, since it only makes you adapt to it sooner.

Compared with splitting, a single dose gives more appetite suppression.

Even when the tastiest treat is sitting right in front of you, reta helps with the urge to eat it.

Keep the prize and the finish line in mind at all times.

Slim and healthy.

Skip the training and the food, and you'll end up looking like a Hollywood star atm ultra skelleton slim and like you're about to die.
 
Pushing the pace too hard may cause your gastric to lock up. It's either nothing whatsoever or the entire amount constantly. I dealt with constipation, though a few of my friends were able to poop through a screen door and leave it spotless. After that, there's the entire pancreatitis and other secondary issues that follow. Yeah. Watch out, buddy.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone.

The reason for stacking SS-31 together with 5-Amino-1MQ was partly to repair damaged mitochondria and partly to raise energy levels.

And yes, I do exercise. Since I have three dogs, I spend roughly 2 hours walking each day, plus training sessions with the dog. Weightlifting is something I've begun as well.

I've already done some reading on Cagrilintide. What I don't understand, though, is what it adds when combined with Reta. Why would stacking it be preferable to simply raising the dose?

FLglpguy said:

Think of this as a marathon rather than a race. If you increase your dose before it's time, you'll end up feeling really unwell. Regarding will power... once you begin this journey, the foods you used to enjoy simply won't appeal to you anymore. Will power won't even come into play. Stick with the plan. Follow the schedule for titrating up, and try not to overanalyze or push things too far.

I'm in week 5 of Tirz. Down 26lbs and feeling GREAT! The food noise is silent, inflammation has cleared up, my skin looks clearer, I concentrate better at work, and even my joint pain has eased.

On top of that, I take B12, Magnesium Malate, Whey, and Casein protein powder, and I've been having soups, raw veggies, fresh fruits, nuts, fiber and nut bars, and salads. I'm enjoying these new foods and don't miss the fried junk that used to leave me clogged from head to toe. Burgers, meat-heavy meals, sweets or treats don't even cross my mind, and none of that stuff is kept in my home anyway.
Click to expand...
Could I ask what dose you're on at the moment, in Week 5?

Rezwalker said:

Let's get one thing straight: this isn't a magic fat-melting pill (though it comes close).

Training and diet are still on you.

At night, reta can curb binge eating, and it usually helps with the overeating that happens at every meal.

You'll feel full sooner, and that fullness sticks around longer.

That said, dropping 50 pounds in 3 months isn't happening unless you're 300lbs + and cut your food drastically.

A deficit, training, and your 12k steps are what you need.

What GLP1 does is take the edge off your binge eating, nothing more.

Don't get hung up on the glucacon and so on.

Splitting your reta dose is a mistake, since it only makes you adapt to it sooner.

Compared with splitting, a single dose gives more appetite suppression.

Even when the tastiest treat is sitting right in front of you, reta helps with the urge to eat it.

Keep the prize and the finish line in mind at all times.

Slim and healthy.

Skip the training and the food, and you'll end up looking like a Hollywood star atm ultra skelleton slim and like you're about to die.
Click to expand...
What's the reason? From what I understand, this is the element that sets it apart from Trizapetide. It raises overall energy and stops the metabolism from adapting to a lower calory level.
 
Kyli said:

Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone.

The reason for stacking SS-31 together with 5-Amino-1MQ was partly to repair damaged mitochondria and partly to raise energy levels.

And yes, I do exercise. Since I have three dogs, I spend roughly 2 hours walking each day, plus training sessions with the dog. Weightlifting is something I've begun as well.

I've already done some reading on Cagrilintide. What I don't understand, though, is what it adds when combined with Reta. Why would stacking it be preferable to simply raising the dose?

FLglpguy said:

Think of this as a marathon rather than a race. If you increase your dose before it's time, you'll end up feeling really unwell. Regarding will power... once you begin this journey, the foods you used to enjoy simply won't appeal to you anymore. Will power won't even come into play. Stick with the plan. Follow the schedule for titrating up, and try not to overanalyze or push things too far.

I'm in week 5 of Tirz. Down 26lbs and feeling GREAT! The food noise is silent, inflammation has cleared up, my skin looks clearer, I concentrate better at work, and even my joint pain has eased.

On top of that, I take B12, Magnesium Malate, Whey, and Casein protein powder, and I've been having soups, raw veggies, fresh fruits, nuts, fiber and nut bars, and salads. I'm enjoying these new foods and don't miss the fried junk that used to leave me clogged from head to toe. Burgers, meat-heavy meals, sweets or treats don't even cross my mind, and none of that stuff is kept in my home anyway.
Click to expand...
Could I ask what dose you're on at the moment, in Week 5?

Rezwalker said:

Let's get one thing straight: this isn't a magic fat-melting pill (though it comes close).

Training and diet are still on you.

At night, reta can curb binge eating, and it usually helps with the overeating that happens at every meal.

You'll feel full sooner, and that fullness sticks around longer.

That said, dropping 50 pounds in 3 months isn't happening unless you're 300lbs + and cut your food drastically.

A deficit, training, and your 12k steps are what you need.

What GLP1 does is take the edge off your binge eating, nothing more.

Don't get hung up on the glucacon and so on.

Splitting your reta dose is a mistake, since it only makes you adapt to it sooner.

Compared with splitting, a single dose gives more appetite suppression.

Even when the tastiest treat is sitting right in front of you, reta helps with the urge to eat it.

Keep the prize and the finish line in mind at all times.

Slim and healthy.

Skip the training and the food, and you'll end up looking like a Hollywood star atm ultra skelleton slim and like you're about to die.
Click to expand...
What's the reason? From what I understand, this is the element that sets it apart from Trizapetide. It raises overall energy and stops the metabolism from adapting to a lower calory level.
Click to expand...
Right now my Tirz dose sits at .50, and it goes up every 4wks. Shot 6 went in on Wednesday. The reason I went with Tirz is that I was after the strongest appetite suppression I could get. My starting point was 386lbs. Today I'm at 360lbs, I'm 55yrs old and 6'2". Getting down to my GW of 215lbs is going to be a long road, so maximum appetite suppression was what I wanted.
 
Kyli said:

Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone.

The reason for stacking SS-31 together with 5-Amino-1MQ was partly to repair damaged mitochondria and partly to raise energy levels.

And yes, I do exercise. Since I have three dogs, I spend roughly 2 hours walking each day, plus training sessions with the dog. Weightlifting is something I've begun as well.

I've already done some reading on Cagrilintide. What I don't understand, though, is what it adds when combined with Reta. Why would stacking it be preferable to simply raising the dose?

FLglpguy said:

Think of this as a marathon rather than a race. If you increase your dose before it's time, you'll end up feeling really unwell. Regarding will power... once you begin this journey, the foods you used to enjoy simply won't appeal to you anymore. Will power won't even come into play. Stick with the plan. Follow the schedule for titrating up, and try not to overanalyze or push things too far.

I'm in week 5 of Tirz. Down 26lbs and feeling GREAT! The food noise is silent, inflammation has cleared up, my skin looks clearer, I concentrate better at work, and even my joint pain has eased.

On top of that, I take B12, Magnesium Malate, Whey, and Casein protein powder, and I've been having soups, raw veggies, fresh fruits, nuts, fiber and nut bars, and salads. I'm enjoying these new foods and don't miss the fried junk that used to leave me clogged from head to toe. Burgers, meat-heavy meals, sweets or treats don't even cross my mind, and none of that stuff is kept in my home anyway.
Click to expand...
Could I ask what dose you're on at the moment, in Week 5?

Rezwalker said:

Let's get one thing straight: this isn't a magic fat-melting pill (though it comes close).

Training and diet are still on you.

At night, reta can curb binge eating, and it usually helps with the overeating that happens at every meal.

You'll feel full sooner, and that fullness sticks around longer.

That said, dropping 50 pounds in 3 months isn't happening unless you're 300lbs + and cut your food drastically.

A deficit, training, and your 12k steps are what you need.

What GLP1 does is take the edge off your binge eating, nothing more.

Don't get hung up on the glucacon and so on.

Splitting your reta dose is a mistake, since it only makes you adapt to it sooner.

Compared with splitting, a single dose gives more appetite suppression.

Even when the tastiest treat is sitting right in front of you, reta helps with the urge to eat it.

Keep the prize and the finish line in mind at all times.

Slim and healthy.

Skip the training and the food, and you'll end up looking like a Hollywood star atm ultra skelleton slim and like you're about to die.
Click to expand...
What's the reason? From what I understand, this is the element that sets it apart from Trizapetide. It raises overall energy and stops the metabolism from adapting to a lower calory level.
Click to expand...
What really counts is whether you can stick to your diet without binging — that's where reta/tirz/sema/etc prove their worth

A steady diet beats anything, any compound

The glucagon effect builds up gradually, but fat loss is still achievable with it

It's simply a bonus
 
Back when I had to pick between GLP and Reta, I chose GLP (Tirz). The reason was simple: silencing food noise mattered most to me, and I figured good outcomes would follow naturally. With Reta, the reputation is that it doesn't handle food noise as well as Tirz does. So if food noise is bothering you, it could be worth looking into either making a switch or stacking the two.

Still, FLglpguy has a point — this is a marathon, not a sprint. Don't let the nonsense floating around Reddit forums convince you that you can get ripped in 3 months.
 
What you're after is either food intake or sticking to an eating plan, which means reta lets you feel neutral toward the majority of foods, such as empty calories from snacks and sugary drinks. Feeling ill is not something you want. I'm 6 5' and my starting weight was 240lbs. For 1 month I used .5ml, and now I'm at week 10 on 1.8ml. BUT.......

I measure my food down to the gram / do intense cardio 3 times per week / follow a high protein diet / hit the gym 4 days per week.

At my reta dose I feel normal, I'm able to eat with my family, and I can also skip a meal when I choose to or eat extra to prepare for cardio.
 
Hey everyone, I've got another question regarding my present "condition". Yesterday at 18:00 was the last time I ate. Protein and fat came from some meat and fish, plus a pear and half an apple for something sweet. Today I had a few errands to run in the city. Usually I fast for 18 hours, so I had been intending to eat around 12:00. Then at 10:00, all at once, my stomach started growling and I felt like I needed to burp. It was a weird sort of sensation. As if I were hungry, yet at the same time not hungry. And I believe that sensation is now making me think I'm hungry.

Shouldn't GLP-1 also be suppressing this stomach growling? (or Cagrilintide - I'm not taking it. Just a question). Tomorrow morning is when my next injection is due.

PS: And once I had my breakfast / lunch, that feeling disappeared.
 
The point of not ramping up doses quickly is that you lower the chance of getting slammed with intense nausea and vomiting. Among the problems that show up with these drugs during the starting and escalation phases, this is by far the most common one that is fairly serious, and roughly 1% of people end up needing hospital care because of it, receiving IV fluids to correct the dehydration it causes. Move faster than the standard schedule and that risk climbs, though almost 50% of people will experience some level of nausea or vomiting at some stage, so it is far from rare. There was also an unfortunate guy who ended up with weeks of hiccoughs following his very first reta dose, which is no fun at all.

The standard starting pace is set up to keep those risks reasonably low. Not zero, though. It is worth playing around with glp plotter so you can watch on a graph what the drug does over time. These drugs behave very differently from most others: after a dose it takes around 24 hours to hit peak blood levels, then 6 days for levels to fall to half that peak, meaning that if side effects become intolerable it can take a week before they improve. On top of that, the amount in your system accumulates over 4 weeks at the same dose, so side effects can appear weeks after a dose increase. This is one of the issues with grey GLP's, and hopefully anyone getting a prescription from a competent doctor would receive at least some warnings and guidance about side effects before they start.

You are already using the one relatively safe way to raise doses faster, which is smaller doses taken more often. To someone who has never been on glp drugs before, I would not really suggest any strategy for speeding up. Since you are dosing twice weekly, the benefit is simply that if side effects do become a problem, they will settle down sooner after a smaller twice weekly dose than after a weekly dose that is twice the size. A week of puking is not fun, and that is what you want to steer clear of. ( not the only side effect, but the only one with a decent chance of putting you in hospital ) Even with twice weekly dosing, any choice to keep raising doses still has to be based on effects and side effects. if a little appetite suppression shows up at 1mg /2x a week, or a bit of nausea, chances are good it will get worse if you go higher, so you need to pay attention to how your body responds before increasing doses, and be sure to stop escalating quickly once effects begin. Raising doses by 1mg a week is probably fairly safe with twice weekly dosing, but nothing is ever guaranteed, and effects and side effects do not always follow perfect logic. Smaller dose increases should, hopefully, give you an early signal about future side effects so you can ease off.

Ultimately, for more severe obesity I view these as lifetime treatments, so spending a few weeks starting more slowly is not a disaster, and it lowers the odds of unexpected severe side effects, even if it does not change the dose at which they might or might not happen for you. The benefit of treating them as long term treatments is that, unlike every other diet nearly everyone has tried where the weight comes back later, with GLP drugs you hopefully only need to lose the weight once, as long as you keep taking them to hold onto that weight loss.
 
Regarding the previous post, I spent a long stretch on ozempic — a year of feeling somewhat unwell and a little nauseated, even on very small doses — though it did cut my appetite, and my aim was to avoid putting back the 70 kilos I'd shed. So I know what it's like to spend about a year with feelings sitting somewhere between an uneasy stomach and slight nausea, mixed with hunger, where telling them apart is really difficult. At times I needed to eat just a little something, dark chocolate or ginger for instance, to settle the nausea. Luckily, tirz combined with reta gives me fewer side effects than ozempic did.

It sounds like things may be beginning to take effect. Not every gut sensation these drugs bring on will be agreeable.

The drop in appetite and food noise, plus feeling full after far less food, will come. Where that becomes clear varies widely from person to person, since everyone reacts a bit differently to these drugs, but broadly speaking, without deliberately eating less, people shed an average of 29% of their weight on 12mg of reta across a year. So it does work — likely better than any drug has ever done for weight loss.
 
@lessthanhalf I appreciate your reply and that you were straightforward with me.

To be clear, my intention isn't to stay on GLPs indefinitely. What I want is to shed the weight, and afterward manage to keep it off without needing any medication at all. Hopefully that works out, though that comes later. Getting rid of the fat has to happen first.

I put together something along the lines of the GLP plotter you brought up, so I can track precisely how much is active in my system at any moment. That means I understand the half life and how concentration builds and falls over time.

Up to now, the side effects have been manageable for me. A mild nausea showed up after injection number one. Then, following a different one, I got a headache. I believe that was the 3rd shot, at 1mg. Constipation was another thing I dealt with. Honestly though, I can't say for sure what triggered it. Maybe I simply wasn't eating enough. Or could Reta be responsible? I really don't know. Still, if I take Magnesium in the morning, I'm able to pool without any trouble.

There's one more thing too: looking at myself naked in the mirror has become something I can't stand. I want every bit of the fat gone... And living in an era of overwhelming instant gratification makes it tough to stick with the whole journey. As I was writing this, the "Click" movie with Adam Sandler popped into my head.
 
lessthanhalf said:

Regarding the previous post, I spent a long stretch on ozempic — a year of feeling somewhat unwell and a little nauseated, even on very small doses — though it did cut my appetite, and my aim was to avoid putting back the 70 kilos I'd shed. So I know what it's like to spend about a year with feelings sitting somewhere between an uneasy stomach and slight nausea, mixed with hunger, where telling them apart is really difficult. At times I needed to eat just a little something, dark chocolate or ginger for instance, to settle the nausea. Luckily, tirz combined with reta gives me fewer side effects than ozempic did.

It sounds like things may be beginning to take effect. Not every gut sensation these drugs bring on will be agreeable.

The drop in appetite and food noise, plus feeling full after far less food, will come. Where that becomes clear varies widely from person to person, since everyone reacts a bit differently to these drugs, but broadly speaking, without deliberately eating less, people shed an average of 29% of their weight on 12mg of reta across a year. So it does work — likely better than any drug has ever done for weight loss.
Click to expand...
If my keys go missing, there's a part of me that's motivated to locate them.

A small tip: swap that framing out for a phrase like "the weight I've gotten rid of" or "the kilos that have disappeared," or any other wording that drives home to you that it belongs to the past and won't be coming back. On the surface these sentences might appear equivalent, yet their effect on unconscious processes, beliefs, and motivation is entirely different.

Also, one of the great things I inject is 5 mg/day of 5-amino-1-mq. It cuts through fatigue, and more importantly, it may wipe out the epigenetic memory of adipocytes so they don't go back to their former (large) size. but I will really know in two or three years wether it worked.
 
I have the unfortunate experience of reaching the normal weight range multiple times over the course of my life, yet I was never able to remain there for very long. The most recent instance was 65kg during 2012-14, but by 2022 I had gone up to 145. Looking at myself as someone with obesity and food addiction/binge eating disorder who is presently in remission is not the worst framing. When I tried to keep the weight off during 2023/4 without glp drugs, it was extremely hard and required relentless effort to put up with eating far less than my hunger demanded. So viewing it as a condition that was very much so still present helps me hold onto the motivation to prevent it from returning. There are also solid medical reasons to avoid putting the weight back on. My outlook on the world tends to be excessively realistic and possibly depressogenic, and that is not something I can change very much.

The reality is that GLP drugs have completely transformed the problem, so that hunger is roughly balanced with the number of calories needed to be weight stable, at about 1600-1900/day, but does require a fair amount of them , tirz 15mg / reta 5mg / cagri 0.5mg and there is zero headroom to increase doses without much worse side effects. So currently considering trying elora instead of cagri to see if I can get less hunger without the extra nausea I get from tiny doses of cagri.
 
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