Reta Starting Dose for Asian Women and Women Overall — What Has Your Experience Been? Asking on Behalf of My Wife

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Composure

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Hi everyone on this journey,

I'd like to hear from the women here about what it was like starting Reta — what dose did you begin with, and how did it go for you? My wife is thinking about starting this peptide, so I'm gathering experiences on her behalf.

On top of that, I'm curious how people have dealt with anhedonia (that "loss of joy") while using Reta.

Thanks so much in advance for any help and insights you can share!
 
I'm only 3 weeks in (my 3rd shot is tomorrow) and I'm staying at 1 mg, though I had already spent 3 months on Tirz. I do feel like things have "flattened" somewhat on it, but I'm holding off to find out whether that's simply an adjustment period. It might have nothing to do with the Reta, and could just be life circumstances weighing on me too.
 
bamagirl26 said:

I'm only 3 weeks in (my 3rd shot is tomorrow) and I'm staying at 1 mg, though I had already spent 3 months on Tirz. I do feel like things have "flattened" somewhat on it, but I'm holding off to find out whether that's simply an adjustment period. It might have nothing to do with the Reta, and could just be life circumstances weighing on me too.
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By "flatten," do you mean the dose quit having an effect?
 
Composure said:

By "flatten," do you mean the dose quit having an effect?
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Not that — I'm talking about my mood in general. It's like I've turned into a duller person. Hahaha
 
Each person responds differently. I began at 2mg per week, which is widely considered the best dose, but for me it was awful - severe indigestion and other issues. I dropped to 1mg and had no negative side effects at all, with weight coming off steadily as I head into week 7.

My approach: locate a dose that suits you, then stay on it for the first 4-6 weeks so it can build up systemically at a stable level. After that, check how well it's working and determine if the dose needs adjusting.
 
bamagirl26 said:

Not that — I'm talking about my mood in general. It's like I've turned into a duller person. Hahaha
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Appreciate it @bamagirl26, I'm aware the "meh" feeling can hit some people pretty hard. In your case, would you describe it as joy being tougher to come by? Or did the emotional aspect turn out to be fairly mild?
 
Given how little you told us (she's female, she's Asian, lol), here's what I can offer from my own experience:

I'm not Asian, and I chose to begin at a low amount and move up gradually so I could watch how my system responded. For people generally, Reta's starting dose is 2mg for 4 weeks, then an increase of 2mg every 4 weeks from there, continuing until you reach a set level — I don't recall the exact figure anymore, but I believe it was around 10mg or 12mg. Personally I think that's a LOT, though maybe not to some others, and it is the way the clinical trials have handled it.

My own beginning was .5mg. No issues! The following week I moved to 1mg. Still fine, no problems and no negative side effects. A week after that I took 2mg, which also went well. In the end I never went above 2mg, since I reached my target goal fairly fast. If the weight starts coming back I might return to .5mg and stay there, though I'm also more physically active these days, so hopefully it stays off. So if you (or she) feel uneasy, starting slow is a sensible approach. There's no need to hurry, right? She'll get there.

On the subject of losing joy: my man had that exact worry too (we began together). After reading things online, he was afraid I might stop liking him lol

No loss of joy has happened to me, nothing I could even liken to that. My personality is unchanged (if anything my mood has gotten a bit better overall, thanks to the results I was seeing). Plus I stopped shedding a ton of hair with every shower — a nice surprise of a side effect!

From others I hear that certain very specific habits have shifted, and I think it relates to activities that hand out "cheap" dopamine hits.

A coworker of mine said she no longer cared about chatting with strangers on dating apps for the attention (she never planned to meet any of them irl.)

I've read about people losing their addiction to social media apps, and even cutting way back on drinking, simply because it stopped having the same effect for them.

If you (or your wife) have anything more specific to ask, go ahead!
 
Begin with a low amount and increase it gradually - there's no need to hurry toward the bigger doses. My wife has a petite build, and she was (and remains) an extremely strong responder. For her, 1 mg proved too potent. I needed to reduce it down to .5 mg and hold her at that level for some time. When she had dropped most of the weight she was aiming to lose (around 25 pounds), her dose had only climbed to 1.5 mg, and even that was a stretch. Nowadays she's on 1 mg and still struggles to eat a sufficient amount.

On the flip side, I'm aware of another person who's been using Reta since April and saw barely any response even once she got to 6 mgs. Strangely, she began taking creatine, and all at once she's dropping a pound each week.

Like others have said, no two people are the same. Finding the correct dose means keeping side effects as low as possible while still achieving the results you want.
 
Adding to what @bluetap said... I agree with her take that the flat feeling comes from dopamine being reset while it's happening. Partway through my own Reta journey I went through that same flatness, and at some point my mood slowly came back up until the flatness was gone. These days I feel steady.

My drinking began to drop off pretty much right after I started Reta, and at this point it doesn't even cross my mind. Drinking is now a choice I can make or not make, and honestly it just doesn't hold much appeal for me anymore. As for social media, my use was already low (I deleted every SM app off my phone years back) and now it's basically zero. Social media doesn't even enter my thoughts now. I also used to scroll news constantly; that's stopped too. I hardly care about it now and don't dwell on it (besides, most of it is button-pushing propaganda anyway).

Dropping those habits, I believe, has lifted my quality of life, and that in turn has done good things for my mood. Inside I feel lighter, and the best part is that none of those changes required me to force them. They came about gradually on their own, and I hardly even noticed. Modern living has messed up our brains, and Reta is an excellent way to undo that.
 
bluetap said:

Given how little you told us (she's female, she's Asian, lol), here's what I can offer from my own experience:

I'm not Asian, and I chose to begin at a low amount and move up gradually so I could watch how my system responded. For people generally, Reta's starting dose is 2mg for 4 weeks, then an increase of 2mg every 4 weeks from there, continuing until you reach a set level — I don't recall the exact figure anymore, but I believe it was around 10mg or 12mg. Personally I think that's a LOT, though maybe not to some others, and it is the way the clinical trials have handled it.

My own beginning was .5mg. No issues! The following week I moved to 1mg. Still fine, no problems and no negative side effects. A week after that I took 2mg, which also went well. In the end I never went above 2mg, since I reached my target goal fairly fast. If the weight starts coming back I might return to .5mg and stay there, though I'm also more physically active these days, so hopefully it stays off. So if you (or she) feel uneasy, starting slow is a sensible approach. There's no need to hurry, right? She'll get there.

On the subject of losing joy: my man had that exact worry too (we began together). After reading things online, he was afraid I might stop liking him lol

No loss of joy has happened to me, nothing I could even liken to that. My personality is unchanged (if anything my mood has gotten a bit better overall, thanks to the results I was seeing). Plus I stopped shedding a ton of hair with every shower — a nice surprise of a side effect!

From others I hear that certain very specific habits have shifted, and I think it relates to activities that hand out "cheap" dopamine hits.

A coworker of mine said she no longer cared about chatting with strangers on dating apps for the attention (she never planned to meet any of them irl.)

I've read about people losing their addiction to social media apps, and even cutting way back on drinking, simply because it stopped having the same effect for them.

If you (or your wife) have anything more specific to ask, go ahead!
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@bluetap and @ronin365 I really appreciate the feedback. For us, going with the 0.5mg route and then just holding off to see how things go seems like the smartest option. I'll start doing that as soon as my order genuinely gets shipped out (since the China Holiday is happening right now).
 
Composure said:

Hi everyone on this journey,

I'd like to hear from the women here about what it was like starting Reta — what dose did you begin with, and how did it go for you? My wife is thinking about starting this peptide, so I'm gathering experiences on her behalf.

On top of that, I'm curious how people have dealt with anhedonia (that "loss of joy") while using Reta.

Thanks so much in advance for any help and insights you can share!
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Among my female clients who only have 10-30 lbs to shed, several were started by me at 1mg. Their feedback: zero side effects, yet appetite and mass are both still dropping.

So far not one of them has had to exceed 2mg, and an increase only happens when two consecutive weeks pass with no losses.

As for me, 2mg was enough until the final three weeks, when I went up to tackle the stubborn last 5 lbs.
 
My wife had to reduce her dose from 1mg twice per week to 500mcg twice per week. The side effects were too much for her, but even at that lower dose it still works for her.
 
Composure said:

Hi everyone on this journey,

I'd like to hear from the women here about what it was like starting Reta — what dose did you begin with, and how did it go for you? My wife is thinking about starting this peptide, so I'm gathering experiences on her behalf.

On top of that, I'm curious how people have dealt with anhedonia (that "loss of joy") while using Reta.

Thanks so much in advance for any help and insights you can share!
Click to expand...
I'm a woman, though not Asian, and my starting dose was 0.5 mg, which I ran for 2 weeks as a way to test the waters and find out whether "something bad" would happen. I was peptide naive, and that appears to matter, because my guess is that most people arrive at Reta after having used Sema, Tirz, or both, so their bodies are somewhat accustomed to one or two of the agonists at work here. Mine wasn't, and effects showed up immediately for me, along with side effects (mostly HR up, HRV down, and loss of REM sleep). Surprisingly my mood stayed the same, and even the drop in sleep quality didn't affect my mental wellbeing at all. I'm 7 weeks in: after the initial 0.5 mg weeks came 4 weeks at 1 mg, and I've now switched my schedule to "split doses" of 0.5 mg every 3 days. I agree that the pull of alcohol gets weaker, but I barely drank to start with, and alcohol raises my nighttime HR even more than Reta does anyway. As for social media and that sort of thing, I suppose I'm not much of a dopamine addict 😉, so nothing has changed there for me.
 
I am an Asian woman, and for week 1 I took .5 mg. I had no sides at all, so for the following 3 weeks I went to 1.0 mg, and after that I have been increasing by .5 every 3-4 weeks. I felt appetite suppression starting as low as 1.0, but at 2.0 it is far more noticeable.

as far as anhedonia goes, I have not experienced it myself up to this point
 
I had already been on the maximum tirz dose when I made the switch to reta, so a higher starting point would likely have been fine for me. But I worried a lot about side effects getting in the way of my day-to-day life, so my first weekly dose was 0.5mg. As I brought tirz down, I moved reta up gradually, and side effects have been minimal.

In general, my view is that beginning at a low dose and seeing how your body responds is the sensible approach.
 
Composure said:


Hi fellow journey peeps,

I wanted to reach out and ask about women's experiences with their starting dose of Reta. What has it been like for you? I am asking for my wife, who is looking to start the peptide.

Also, what are people's experiences with anhedonia (the "loss of joy") on Reta?

Thanks in advance for all your help and insights!

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For every other GLP, the official guidance says dosing doesn't differ between people. With reta there are no official dose recommendations, since it hasn't been approved yet. The trial standard is 2mg, 4mg, 8mg, 12mg — though I'd insert 6mg and 10mg into that list. Since you haven't said how severe the obesity is, it's difficult to judge whether she'd likely need the bigger doses or the smaller ones.

If your goal is to be extra cautious, then 1mg as a starting point is more than safe enough, in my view. The drug company considers 2mg the correct starting dose, with fairly low risk of bad side effects at that level, and I think 0.5mg isn't really needed — it just stretches the process out by 4-8 extra weeks before things get going, and many more months if you only step up by 0.5mg every 4 weeks. The key thing is to raise the dose every 4 weeks until hunger is well controlled and the rate of weight loss is acceptable, or until side effects get in the way. Once side effects show up, increase more slowly or hold steady; if they're bad, drop the dose.

How people respond to these drugs varies enormously. One person may feel side effects at 1mg, while plenty of others feel nothing at all at 12mg. You can't know in advance, and I don't believe body size plays a role. The trouble with these drugs is the week-long half life, so if you do get bad side effects such as vomiting, it can take a week to settle — and which dose will trigger side effects for you is unknown until you reach it. How slowly you go probably doesn't change which dose causes problems; perhaps slower increases give you more warning through milder side effects, letting you decide to stop escalating, but no approach, however careful, is perfect, and there's always a chance of unpleasant side effects.

On average, the reta studies showed a fairly large overall improvement in quality of life among people taking it, presumably at least partly because it let them lose a lot of weight and they were pleased about that. So it's fair to say that, overall, people are happier on it than off it while obese. Anhedonia can happen — oddly it seems far more common on this forum than in any of the studies — but it isn't really that common.
 
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