Can I have some advice on kit strength?

[Scraps]

Hi everyone, hope you are all having a good weekend! I was hoping to gather some advice on planning for my first kit buy.

This will be my first research project, so with no prior experience have decided 1mg per week of Retatrutide will be the starting dose.

If I go for a 5mg kit that seems like an easy option other than the fact the reconstituted peptide will be sitting for more that the 4 weeks its advised. I've read on here that shouldn't be an issue but wonder if that's everyone's opinions?

If I discover a higher dose is required before getting to the end of 10 vials, I'm a little concerned the volume of the injection might start to get quite high. However, if I was to say start at a 10mg kit the reconstituted peptide will end up sitting for months. I'm assuming this is bad!

I am planning on filtering when reconing, but how do people going for these really high strength kits go about using them before they have started to turn?

This is the last piece of the puzzle for me before I can progress, after I've cracked this I can start to gather all the consumables.

Thanks for any help and advice.

 

[Rolltide61]

How come you are not starting at 2 mg like in the trials?

I see you are from Scotland. You people have iron stomachs so I don't think you will have a problem. 🙂

 

[Elgordoboy]

Wonder why the trials didn’t start at a lesser dose?

 

[Rolltide61]

Wonder why the trials didn’t start at a lesser dose?

Copied this from AI.

Retatrutide trials started at 2mg per week primarily to minimize gastrointestinal side effects—such as nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea—by allowing the body to acclimate to the powerful triple-hormone agonist. This low initial dose helps improve patient tolerance, reduces dropout rates, and manages the initial metabolic adjustment, enabling higher, more effective doses (like 8mg or 12mg) to be reached later. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Why 2mg Was Selected for Starting

• Minimizing Side Effects: Because retatrutide activates GIP, GLP-1, and glucagon receptors, a slow start is necessary to allow the brain and gut to adapt to this combined hormonal signal, reducing nausea and gastrointestinal discomfort.
• Safety and Tolerability: In Phase 2 trials, starting at 2mg helped participants adapt. In contrast, higher starting doses, such as 4mg, were found to be more difficult to tolerate, causing higher rates of early side effects.
• Gradual Escalation Plan: The trials often used a 4-week, 2mg introductory phase before increasing to 4mg, 8mg, or 12mg, optimizing long-term weight loss while managing initial tolerability. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

While some participants in research studies start at 1mg, 2mg was often used in larger studies as the standard, balancing effective, gradual titration with reduced initial adverse reactions

 

[anhydrous]

I also started with 1mg and I recommend everyone do the same. A friend's wife started with 1mg, felt the effect for 1 day only, and so moving to 2mg seemed reasonable. 2mg was as effective as expected for her, whereas 1mg felt like a sledgehammer to me.

As for how much you buy, I'd suggest starting at 20 or 30 and making aliquots. I'd rather not comment on the hand wringing and hot air surrounding the storage and use of multi-dose vials. Your relationship with risk tolerance is personal. Do your research and make your decision.

 

[Chili777]

I started at 1 mg, twice a week for the first two weeks, just to gauge my response. I did 2 mg for the next two weeks and then followed the trial. Your response may be different. I bought my first kit based on an 8 week schedule using each reconstituted vial, because that's how long I wanted to store it in the fridge to maintain potency. So I would make a schedule, and decide how large your first kit should be based on your projected usage.

 

[Gt3294a]

Hi everyone, hope you are all having a good weekend! I was hoping to gather some advice on planning for my first kit buy.

This will be my first research project, so with no prior experience have decided 1mg per week of Retatrutide will be the starting dose.

If I go for a 5mg kit that seems like an easy option other than the fact the reconstituted peptide will be sitting for more that the 4 weeks its advised. I've read on here that shouldn't be an issue but wonder if that's everyone's opinions?

If I discover a higher dose is required before getting to the end of 10 vials, I'm a little concerned the volume of the injection might start to get quite high. However, if I was to say start at a 10mg kit the reconstituted peptide will end up sitting for months. I'm assuming this is bad!

I am planning on filtering when reconing, but how do people going for these really high strength kits go about using them before they have started to turn?

This is the last piece of the puzzle for me before I can progress, after I've cracked this I can start to gather all the consumables.

Thanks for any help add by in

Wonder why the trials didn’t start at a lesser dose?

My fiends and I have a theory about that. The folks taking 2mg - what was their weight and bfp? I have found among my circle that leaner folks need way less reta. 2mg a week is my max dose. So we call that initial trial dose “the big jeans initial dose”. I can’t eat or sleep if I take 3mg. So it just affects folks differently. I cant imagine that folks that take north of 6mg. But I have a small sample size.

 

[Galapagosfit]

My fiends and I have a theory about that. The folks taking 2mg - what was their weight and bfp? I have found among my circle that leaner folks need way less reta. 2mg a week is my max dose. So we call that initial trial dose “the big jeans initial dose”. I can’t eat or sleep if I take 3mg. So it just affects folks differently. I cant imagine that folks that take north of 6mg. But I have a small sample size.

30 years old and 15% body fat, i do 0.5mg twice a week and its more than enough. my cravings and appetite are gone. no need to go higher if you lose weight. i will climb up the dose only if my appetite is coming back and my weight stop going down for 2 weeks+.

 

[lessthanhalf]

Either 5 or 10 mg kits. 10mg is cheaper, but if you are only on 1mg a week then will last for 10 weeks which is longer than the recommended 4 weeks ( to minimise risks of contaminant growth or peptide degradation ) Many people would not care about this but some do.
Use either 0.5ml or 1ml for 5mg vial so each 1mg is 0.1 or 0.2ml, plenty of room in syringes for higher doses and 0.1ml/0.2ml is not hard to measure. and 1ml or 2ml for 10mg same concentration. Write it down or better still put it on the label so you cannot forget how you diluted it.
Depends a bit on whether you have a lot of weight to lose or just trying to lose a bit or for body recomp. A lot of not very overweight people seem to have good results on low doses, but if you are trying to lose 50 kg then you are likely to need much higher doses sooner or later and bigger vials make more sense.

 

[Scraps]

I also started with 1mg and I recommend everyone do the same. A friend's wife started with 1mg, felt the effect for 1 day only, and so moving to 2mg seemed reasonable. 2mg was as effective as expected for her, whereas 1mg felt like a sledgehammer to me.

As for how much you buy, I'd suggest starting at 20 or 30 and making aliquots. I'd rather not comment on the hand wringing and hot air surrounding the storage and use of multi-dose vials. Your relationship with risk tolerance is personal. Do your research and make your decision.

Thanks, I am comfortable starting at the 1mg, but I guess ultimately I'll need to try it and see. It seems the best bracket to start at with plenty of movement possible in either direction.

Can you expand a little on the making of aliquots? Presumably the only way to do that would be after reconstitution due to the amount of filler involved in a vial?

I don't want to put you in a spot, but would the process be to make up a higher strength vial, split that amongst others and dilute them down to a smaller concentration then store the vials until needed? So one 20mg vial would produce four 5mg vials. Then keep them refrigerated or frozen? That would push the last vial out past 4 months before starting it. Is there opinions/evidence that it's ok to do that? It would certainly make the most financial sense. And allow for making higher concentration vials down the road if dosages needed to be increased.

 

[Scraps]

My fiends and I have a theory about that. The folks taking 2mg - what was their weight and bfp? I have found among my circle that leaner folks need way less reta. 2mg a week is my max dose. So we call that initial trial dose “the big jeans initial dose”. I can’t eat or sleep if I take 3mg. So it just affects folks differently. I cant imagine that folks that take north of 6mg. But I have a small sample size.

I'm currently 223lbs at 6 foot tall, and according to my smart scale just over 30%bf. Im not sure on that as I don't look like any pictures of 30%bf I can find online. I am quite well muscled, just a bit... fluffy right now! So I am only looking to lose about 35lbs as a starter and see where I am at that weight. I just can't maintain the calories to lose it naturally. Anything over 1600 a day and I maintain or put on. Hoping Reta is the way.

 

[Scraps]

Either 5 or 10 mg kits. 10mg is cheaper, but if you are only on 1mg a week then will last for 10 weeks which is longer than the recommended 4 weeks ( to minimise risks of contaminant growth or peptide degradation ) Many people would not care about this but some do.
Use either 0.5ml or 1ml for 5mg vial so each 1mg is 0.1 or 0.2ml, plenty of room in syringes for higher doses and 0.1ml/0.2ml is not hard to measure. and 1ml or 2ml for 10mg same concentration. Write it down or better still put it on the label so you cannot forget how you diluted it.
Depends a bit on whether you have a lot of weight to lose or just trying to lose a bit or for body recomp. A lot of not very overweight people seem to have good results on low doses, but if you are trying to lose 50 kg then you are likely to need much higher doses sooner or later and bigger vials make more sense.

I did have a question on minimum volumes for soloution actually. Is there a way to know the minimum amount of liquid you need to actually dissolve the amount of filler? Like will 1ml actually be enough that it's not...gritty(?) at the bottom?

 

[lessthanhalf]

Yes you can buy bigger vials , reconstitute and split up into smaller empty vials , say 5 mg and freeze them. Generally freezing reconstituted peptides causes a bit of degradation, so repeated freeze thaw cycles are definitely a bad idea , but realistically 1 or even 5% degradation from a single freeze thaw is going to make basically zero practical difference to dosing. Main advantage of bigger vials is price.
Without calculating, that sounds like about 12-15% you are wanting to lose. in the studies 1mg of reta caused 9% weight loss over a year, on average, which is much higher than any of the other GLP's at very low doses, making it more or less ideally suited to what you are trying to do. Individual responses vary enormously to GLP drugs in terms of side effects and weight loss, and the only way to find out how you will respond to them is to start and see what happens, but there is a good chance you could get what you want from doses of 1 or 2 or maybe 4 mg, which is useful as usually side effects are much more of a problem at higher doses. There are a stack of people on here with mild obesity or overweight or just want to be thinner who have had good results from quite low doses of reta. The scientific research is really only on people with more severe obesity.
I have never personally used less than 1ml to reconstitute but the filler they add is quite soluble ( I think it is mannitol ) so I doubt it would be an issue if it was less, like 0.5ml, and the peptide itself is a microscopic amount. There might be some peptides or amounts per vial that are more fussy about solubility but GLP's are not.

 

[Scraps]

Yes you can buy bigger vials , reconstitute and split up into smaller empty vials , say 5 mg and freeze them. Generally freezing reconstituted peptides causes a bit of degradation, so repeated freeze thaw cycles are definitely a bad idea , but realistically 1 or even 5% degradation from a single freeze thaw is going to make basically zero practical difference to dosing. Main advantage of bigger vials is price.
Without calculating, that sounds like about 12-15% you are wanting to lose. in the studies 1mg of reta caused 9% weight loss over a year, on average, which is much higher than any of the other GLP's at very low doses, making it more or less ideally suited to what you are trying to do. Individual responses vary enormously to GLP drugs in terms of side effects and weight loss, and the only way to find out how you will respond to them is to start and see what happens, but there is a good chance you could get what you want from doses of 1 or 2 or maybe 4 mg, which is useful as usually side effects are much more of a problem at higher doses. There are a stack of people on here with mild obesity or overweight or just want to be thinner who have had good results from quite low doses of reta. The scientific research is really only on people with more severe obesity.
I have never personally used less than 1ml to reconstitute but the filler they add is quite soluble ( I think it is mannitol ) so I doubt it would be an issue if it was less, like 0.5ml, and the peptide itself is a microscopic amount. There might be some peptides or amounts per vial that are more fussy about solubility but GLP's are not.

Thank you so much for such a detailed and informative response!

 

[attcbf]

I doubt it would be an issue if it was less, like 0.5ml, and the peptide itself is a microscopic amount.

I have reconed glps w/ ,5ml b@c without any issues. For me, the amt of b@c is flexible depending on how many units to pin is desired. under & overfills also can make the calculation more complex. i put enough b@c in to provide the desired mg dose, but also to have an even number of units, if using a 100cc pin,. as i do not like filling to a 13, 19, 23, etc unit measurement.

 

[BNLFL]

I started at 2mg Reta for 4 weeks with a 10mg vial. Went to 4mgs for 6 weeks on a 30mg. I stalled, went to 6mg for 4 weeks on a 24mg vial. You might want to looking into a little bigger vial as mentioned. You sometimes get more for just little more money. A place I buy from will have R40, and R50 is only $20 more per kit.

 

[randompersonrandom]

I don't want to put you in a spot, but would the process be to make up a higher strength vial, split that amongst others and dilute them down to a smaller concentration then store the vials until needed? So one 20mg vial would produce four 5mg vials. Then keep them refrigerated or frozen? That would push the last vial out past 4 months before starting it. Is there opinions/evidence that it's ok to do that? It would certainly make the most financial sense. And allow for making higher concentration vials down the road if dosages needed to be increased.

I did exactly this with Survo, which freezes just fine, and for the same reasons; reconned at a reasonably high concentration, split into four vials, froze three, and reconned the fourth one to fit a very small starting dosage. It worked well, five stars, but I keep reading whispers that are getting louder that reta doesn't freeze as well as some of the other peps.

 

[yrrdead]

Just to tack on. I bought a 12mg kit , started using in Oct'25. Just recon'd my 9th vial last night and that is with my wife mooching off of my last 2.

I started on .5mg every 3 days and titrated up to 2mg every 3 days. Then titrated down with days not dose. Currently at 2mg every 6 days. SW 220 - CW 167.

My next couple kits are R30 which I had similar concerns to you but with my wife starting I'm not as worried now.

 

[Chili777]

Thank you so much for such a detailed and informative response!

You don't want to freeze Reta. It will degrade while frozen. Tirz can be frozen and it will be fine. Reta is not Tirz. Reconstitute what you can use in under 90 days.

 

[Scraps]

So 90 days in the fridge should be ok?

 

[woundcarping]

You don't want to freeze Reta. It will degrade while frozen. Tirz can be frozen and it will be fine. Reta is not Tirz. Reconstitute what you can use in under 90 days.

Who's done research on that? I'm surprised the peptide degrades while actually frozen, the mechanical damage of freezing/thawing would make more sense.

So 90 days in the fridge should be ok?

It depends on your risk tolerance, sterile practices, and luck. My general preference is ~10 weeks for GLP, which gets me 11 doses from a vial (first dose on day 0) during that time.

 

[Chili777]

Who's done research on that? I'm surprised the peptide degrades while actually frozen, the mechanical damage of freezing/thawing would make more sense.

From another site:

Reconstituted frozen Reta degrades 14% +/- after 45 days. Reconstituted and refrigerated Reta degrades between 3% - 5% over the same 45 days. Reconstituted and refrigerated Reta degrades between 3% and 9% over 90 days. Bottom line, don't freeze reconstituted Reta. Just throw it in the fridge.

The peptide bonds are not strong enough to be frozen without shearing would be my guess.

 

[Scraps]

Is it still advised to freeze before reconstitution for storage, or is that more for long term storage?

 

[Chili777]

Is it still advised to freeze before reconstitution for storage, or is that more for long term storage?

Janoshik said you can keep peptides at room temp for months, in the fridge for years and in the freezer for decades. Anything I plan to research in the next 6 months to a year, I put in the fridge. The rest goes in the freezer.

 

[Scraps]

Just to tack on. I bought a 12mg kit , started using in Oct'25. Just recon'd my 9th vial last night and that is with my wife mooching off of my last 2.

I started on .5mg every 3 days and titrated up to 2mg every 3 days. Then titrated down with days not dose. Currently at 2mg every 6 days. SW 220 - CW 167.

My next couple kits are R30 which I had similar concerns to you but with my wife starting I'm not as worried now.

Yeah, my wife has her first Tirz pen from an online pharmacy. Doesn't want to keep up the cost but she's not sure if she wants to hop over to Reta or if i will get two different packs.

 

[woundcarping]

From another site:

Reconstituted frozen Reta degrades 14% +/- after 45 days. Reconstituted and refrigerated Reta degrades between 3% - 5% over the same 45 days. Reconstituted and refrigerated Reta degrades between 3% and 9% over 90 days. Bottom line, don't freeze reconstituted Reta. Just throw it in the fridge.

The peptide bonds are not strong enough to be frozen without shearing would be my guess.

That doesn’t equate to degradation while frozen.

If it degraded 14% in 45 days, where would it be in 6 months and a year? If it’s still ~14%, that could be acceptable in some use cases.

 

[Chili777]

That doesn’t equate to degradation while frozen.

If it degraded 14% in 45 days, where would it be in 6 months and a year? If it’s still ~14%, that could be acceptable in some use cases.

I suppose it depends on how long it was frozen. I would rather just keep it in the fridge than have to compensate for it and increase the volume. My first vial lasted 10 weeks, but being a 20% overfill, I didn't worry about it.

 

[anhydrous]

Thanks, I am comfortable starting at the 1mg, but I guess ultimately I'll need to try it and see. It seems the best bracket to start at with plenty of movement possible in either direction.

Can you expand a little on the making of aliquots? Presumably the only way to do that would be after reconstitution due to the amount of filler involved in a vial?

I don't want to put you in a spot, but would the process be to make up a higher strength vial, split that amongst others and dilute them down to a smaller concentration then store the vials until needed? So one 20mg vial would produce four 5mg vials. Then keep them refrigerated or frozen? That would push the last vial out past 4 months before starting it. Is there opinions/evidence that it's ok to do that? It would certainly make the most financial sense. And allow for making higher concentration vials down the road if dosages needed to be increased.

Yes absolutely post recon just like randompersonrandom said. A simple example and list of supplies might include converting 1xRT30 into 3xRT10's. So you'd start with 1x RT30, 3x sterile vials, 70% alcohol wipes, 1x 13mm 0.22um pes filter, 1x 3mL mixing syringe, a handful of 1.5" 25g needles, and maybe 3.4~mL of diluent depending on overfill and flush.

It is not possible to accurately predict how you will respond and accurately gauge how much you'll use in the ensuing 4 months. You'll have to make some educated guesses, perform some trial and error, and find out!

 

[Scraps]

Yeah, the not knowing is hard! I had thought that starting at 1mg per week was the best move. The more I read other people's experiences the more people I find that didn't feel a benefit before 4mg, and others who got on totally fine on just 1mg. Seems like there isn't a way to get a good handle on things other than to just start it and see.

To be honest harder than sourcing the peptides is the filters that go along with it. Then the worry that the bac water might be bunk, or that the vials for filtering into might not be sterile!

It's quite the undertaking.

 

[BNLFL]

Who's done research on that? I'm surprised the peptide degrades while actually frozen, the mechanical damage of freezing/thawing would make more sense.




It depends on your risk tolerance, sterile practices, and luck. My general preference is ~10 weeks for GLP, which gets me 11 doses from a vial (first dose on day 0) during that time.

I try to plan 8 weeks when mixing, but it might go over a little. Not a crisis.

Yeah, the not knowing is hard! I had thought that starting at 1mg per week was the best move. The more I read other people's experiences the more people I find that didn't feel a benefit before 4mg, and others who got on totally fine on just 1mg. Seems like there isn't a way to get a good handle on things other than to just start it and see.

To be honest harder than sourcing the peptides is the filters that go along with it. Then the worry that the bac water might be bunk, or that the vials for filtering into might not be sterile!

It's quite the undertaking.

I started at 2mg as mentioned and started feeling it a day later with the appetite suppression full feeling. I lost 5lbs that first week, but also changed the way we ate and I drank beer. I'm sure a bunch was water weight. I don't worry about BAC going bad. Yep read and read more. It's not really that hard. As you said, best way it to start. You might want to check out a few You Tube videos from Peptide Critic on reconstituting and filtering if you want to do that. I personally don't filter, but I do have the stuff to do it. Not sure how your access to products is over there.