Reta has completely eliminated my appetite

Valyra

Valyra

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Honestly, I never imagined I'd be saying this — and I'm someone who deals with food addiction and binge eating disorder — but here I am at week 4 and the mere smell of food makes me feel awful. I used to have food on my mind 24/7, yet now, at 2mg (my start date was February 4th), just the thought of eating turns my stomach.

Yesterday we ordered Greek food. I managed a little meat and tzatziki, then brought all of it back up. About the only things I can keep down these days are rice cakes and other bland items. That means my protein intake is way too low, and even meat — which I used to love — now repulses me? Before Reta I averaged roughly 2000 kcal; for the first two weeks on Reta that dropped to 1400; at this point I'm lucky if I hit 500 kcal. I suppose I'm an extremely high responder, to put it mildly lol.

I still haven't weighed myself since our scale died. My starting weight was 78 kg, so I'm eager to know where I stand now. My face has clearly gotten thinner, my collarbones stick out a lot, and I can feel my ribs again without having to press. Under normal circumstances I'd be thrilled, but getting enough protein is such a struggle. The last thing I want is to become skinny-fat or to ache every time I exercise.

Should I drop back down to a lower dose, do you think? For the first two weeks I took 1 mg every 6 days, after that I moved up to 2 mg and began injecting every 5 days rather than 6.
 
You pushed the dose up too aggressively, too quickly. Ease off a little — going with 2 every 7 days would still be fine, but 2 every 5 days during your first week is overdoing it. Have some protein shakes so at least something is going in, and be sure to keep your fluids up.
 
ambot88 said:

You pushed the dose up too aggressively, too quickly. Ease off a little — going with 2 every 7 days would still be fine, but 2 every 5 days during your first week is overdoing it. Have some protein shakes so at least something is going in, and be sure to keep your fluids up.
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That tracks, yeah. I figured my system might simply be adapting and that I needed to tough it out.

Getting fluids in is brutal at the moment too — even sipping water all day leaves me feeling awful. I suppose I'll wait out 7 days and then drop back to 1.5mg
 
The peak effect of a dose shows up at 4 weeks, so it’s smart to hold at the same dose for 4 weeks before increasing. Keep at 1mg for a month, then check whether you actually need to raise it — 1mg could be all you need 😊
 
Valyra said:

ambot88 said:

You pushed the dose up too aggressively, too quickly. Ease off a little — going with 2 every 7 days would still be fine, but 2 every 5 days during your first week is overdoing it. Have some protein shakes so at least something is going in, and be sure to keep your fluids up.
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That tracks, yeah. I figured my system might simply be adapting and that I needed to tough it out.

Getting fluids in is brutal at the moment too — even sipping water all day leaves me feeling awful. I suppose I'll wait out 7 days and then drop back to 1.5mg
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You could try dropping to 0.5mg, once every 3 days. That way it builds up gradually in your body, and no single shot will cause such a big jump in levels.
 
You could simply be panicking in your own head. Give it a couple of days, stay calm, and see how you feel — the body usually settles into a fresh baseline.
 
Valyra, that was my experience too, and then it flipped lol. My first shot was in Sep 2025 at 0.5, moved to 1.0 and stayed there roughly a month, and so on. Eventually hunger would show up around day 7, so I went with a split: 1.5 on Mon plus 2.0 on Thur. The whole every 5 days thing doesn't make sense to me. I'd stretch it to every 6 days injection or divide your dose to match.
 
Valyra said:

Honestly, I never imagined I'd be saying this — and I'm someone who deals with food addiction and binge eating disorder — but here I am at week 4 and the mere smell of food makes me feel awful. I used to have food on my mind 24/7, yet now, at 2mg (my start date was February 4th), just the thought of eating turns my stomach.

Yesterday we ordered Greek food. I managed a little meat and tzatziki, then brought all of it back up. About the only things I can keep down these days are rice cakes and other bland items. That means my protein intake is way too low, and even meat — which I used to love — now repulses me? Before Reta I averaged roughly 2000 kcal; for the first two weeks on Reta that dropped to 1400; at this point I'm lucky if I hit 500 kcal. I suppose I'm an extremely high responder, to put it mildly lol.

I still haven't weighed myself since our scale died. My starting weight was 78 kg, so I'm eager to know where I stand now. My face has clearly gotten thinner, my collarbones stick out a lot, and I can feel my ribs again without having to press. Under normal circumstances I'd be thrilled, but getting enough protein is such a struggle. The last thing I want is to become skinny-fat or to ache every time I exercise.

Should I drop back down to a lower dose, do you think? For the first two weeks I took 1 mg every 6 days, after that I moved up to 2 mg and began injecting every 5 days rather than 6.
Click to expand...

A dose of 2mg every 5 days works out to 2.4mg per 6 days, or 2.8mg weekly. For sure that isn't a high dose, but coming from 1mg every 6 days, it's a proportionally big jump.

Clearly your reaction is strong… I'm guessing this is your first GLP? What made you raise the dose while spacing it out less often?

When I go past my intended dose, my appetite gets too flat, eating becomes a chore, and portions are unrealistic. Lowering the dose is what fixes it. Food aversion symptoms haven't happened to me.
 
bogardbilla said:

You could simply be panicking in your own head. Give it a couple of days, stay calm, and see how you feel — the body usually settles into a fresh baseline.
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Hm, possibly? Honestly, that wouldn't really add up. For years I dealt with food addiction and went through a lot of misery with every diet I tried, and in the end those diets did bring the weight back down.

trojanpeptide said:

Valyra, that was my experience too, and then it flipped lol. My first shot was in Sep 2025 at 0.5, moved to 1.0 and stayed there roughly a month, and so on. Eventually hunger would show up around day 7, so I went with a split: 1.5 on Mon plus 2.0 on Thur. The whole every 5 days thing doesn't make sense to me. I'd stretch it to every 6 days injection or divide your dose to match.
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By day five, hunger came back. Since some friends of mine inject every 3 days, I assumed switching to 5 days rather than 6 wouldn't matter much. Most likely I'll just return to the 6-day schedule.

woundcarping said:

Valyra said:

Honestly, I never imagined I'd be saying this — and I'm someone who deals with food addiction and binge eating disorder — but here I am at week 4 and the mere smell of food makes me feel awful. I used to have food on my mind 24/7, yet now, at 2mg (my start date was February 4th), just the thought of eating turns my stomach.

Yesterday we ordered Greek food. I managed a little meat and tzatziki, then brought all of it back up. About the only things I can keep down these days are rice cakes and other bland items. That means my protein intake is way too low, and even meat — which I used to love — now repulses me? Before Reta I averaged roughly 2000 kcal; for the first two weeks on Reta that dropped to 1400; at this point I'm lucky if I hit 500 kcal. I suppose I'm an extremely high responder, to put it mildly lol.

I still haven't weighed myself since our scale died. My starting weight was 78 kg, so I'm eager to know where I stand now. My face has clearly gotten thinner, my collarbones stick out a lot, and I can feel my ribs again without having to press. Under normal circumstances I'd be thrilled, but getting enough protein is such a struggle. The last thing I want is to become skinny-fat or to ache every time I exercise.

Should I drop back down to a lower dose, do you think? For the first two weeks I took 1 mg every 6 days, after that I moved up to 2 mg and began injecting every 5 days rather than 6.
Click to expand...

A dose of 2mg every 5 days works out to 2.4mg per 6 days, or 2.8mg weekly. For sure that isn't a high dose, but coming from 1mg every 6 days, it's a proportionally big jump.

Clearly your reaction is strong… I'm guessing this is your first GLP? What made you raise the dose while spacing it out less often?

When I go past my intended dose, my appetite gets too flat, eating becomes a chore, and portions are unrealistic. Lowering the dose is what fixes it. Food aversion symptoms haven't happened to me.
Click to expand...
Yea, I saw that some people began at 2mg, so I assumed it wouldn't matter much. It might, though, have something to do with me not being very tall? Not really sure, but most likely it's mainly that I respond very strongly.

This is my first GLP, taken together with GHK-CU.

Interesting! At 1mg I would still feel hungry, but I'd get full quickly, so hitting my daily protein target was easy. What bothered me about that was reaching 1400-1500kcal daily while the results came slower than I wanted. Sadly, I have PCOS and I'm short, so dropping weight is haaard unless I go into a big deficit. Without the protein, I suppose I'd just suffer through it lmao
 
I’ve been splitting my dose, and I started doing that during my third week on Tirz because the food noise returned. A couple of weeks after that, I moved to Reta, and I split that too. The idea is that I inject on the same 2 days every week, which is simpler to schedule than having the days shift.
 
bogardbilla said:

So should the aim be to permanently avoid hunger? On 7-8mg of Reta weekly, I still get hungry, and I'm continuing to lose weight.
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Nope, haha. The aim is for food not to influence my emotions and not to occupy my mind from morning to night. In a technical sense, that part is working.
 
I began with 2mg for 4 weeks. Even right after that first dose, my wife and I both noticed our appetites were suppressed, though it wasn't extreme. Then we moved to 4mg, and we just took our 3rd Friday shot. This time the appetite effect really hit me. I think I was actually drinking way too much water and felt stuffed—at dinner I had zero hunger. Today I haven't drunk a huge amount of water, so I'll find out soon how that goes. Beer has become another problem: it makes me feel fuller than it ever used to. I'm fairly sure the idea is to stay at a given mg dose for 4 weeks before moving up to the next one.
 
I’d keep the protocol straightforward: just 1 injection per week. Hold the same dose for a full 4 weeks before making any adjustments. It sounds like waiting might have let you remain at the lower amount. My suggestion would be to go back to your starting mg each week, stay there for 4 weeks, and then reassess from that point.

Simplicity is key.
 
When a GLP gives you bad side effects, hold off on the next shot until they've cleared up. That's really all there is to it—though if it takes 2 weeks for your levels to fall enough that the side effects ease off, then 2 weeks is what you wait. After that, use glp plotter to figure out where your blood levels sat when things got rough and where they sat once you felt better; from there you'll know precisely which levels to target and which to stay under. GLP plotter also lets you calculate doses that fit you without crossing the levels you know trigger side effects. Much later, if hunger becomes a problem and side effects aren't, you can attempt to raise doses—but when you're highly sensitive to the drug, step up by tiny increments, something like 10-20% per week.

Should all of that feel like too much, simply wait for the side effects to fade before your next dose, then lower the dose and raise it extra slowly.

In case you don't already know, you need to know that peak effects arrive roughly 24 hours after a dose, and levels take a week to drop by half. Every dose increase also stacks up blood levels for 4 weeks until a new steady state is reached—that's why you wait 4 weeks before increasing doses. This works completely unlike nearly every other medication, so without knowing it, trying to figure anything out is impossible.
 
If the lower dose was doing the job, consider going back down and check whether that eliminates the nausea.

My own experience: I began on 2mg each week, felt no nausea and had zero appetite, then after 6 weeks chose to step down to 1mg per week. It's still effective. Weight keeps coming off and my appetite remains absent, though there's just enough hunger to manage one meat-based meal daily. My guess is that a few of us react very strongly to it. And that's great news for the bank account! 😆
 
Small update:

I switched back to 1.5mg every 6 days. The nausea has largely cleared up, though eating remains a struggle and things I used to like now taste dull. Overall I feel okay, aside from still finding it hard to drink enough, but at least I can get protein down by forcing myself again. I also stepped on the scale and today I'm 69.2kg -> nearly 10kg lost in 24 days.
 
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