Full Reta cycle and cycling off Reta

[Shadow27]

Hey yall! I’ve been on Reta for 8 going on 9 weeks tomorrow with awesome results pairing with a steady 6-7 day a week gym schedule and high protein diet. I started at .5 mg and have worked up to 6.5mg as of this week.

I have heard of people using Reta for 12 weeks then cycling off, people just using Reta until they hit their goal body weight, or until they hit an absurd amount per week like 12-13mg before hopping off.

What has worked best for you guys on Reta, and when I eventually do cycle off, how quickly do yall recommend titrating back down (in weeks and example mg dosages) before taking a break?

And finally for everyone having done multiple cycles of Reta, how long do you typically wait and give your body a break for before hopping back on? (I’ve heard anywhere between 4-8 weeks)

Thanks yall! 🤙🏻💪🏻

 

[RoadRash]

Hey yall! I’ve been on Reta for 8 going on 9 weeks tomorrow with awesome results pairing with a steady 6-7 day a week gym schedule and high protein diet. I started at .5 mg and have worked up to 6.5mg as of this week.

I have heard of people using Reta for 12 weeks then cycling off, people just using Reta until they hit their goal body weight, or until they hit an absurd amount per week like 12-13mg before hopping off.

What has worked best for you guys on Reta, and when I eventually do cycle off, how quickly do yall recommend titrating back down (in weeks and example mg dosages) before taking a break?

And finally for everyone having done multiple cycles of Reta, how long do you typically wait and give your body a break for before hopping back on? (I’ve heard anywhere between 4-8 weeks)

Thanks yall! 🤙🏻💪🏻

Most people using Reta have long term, chronic obesity issues and most of us recognize that we will probably be using it for the rest of our lives. Some people who are using it for bodybuilding or just want to cut out a couple of pounds may be able to just cycle off and maintain, but I think most who use it have had enough yoyo-ing with their weight to need a long term commitment.

 

[Shadow27]

Most people using Reta have long term, chronic obesity issues and most of us recognize that we will probably be using it for the rest of our lives. Some people who are using it for bodybuilding or just want to cut out a couple of pounds may be able to just cycle off and maintain, but I think most who use it have had enough yoyo-ing with their weight to need a long term commitment.

Gotcha, fair enough. I’m young, 23, using it to help cut down to 9-10% BF, starting from 35%, (at 20% rn). So I was thinking of just running it until I hit my goal and then cycle off and then use the healthy habits I developed to maintain a lower bf %.

I guess my biggest question really is how to properly cycle off and then how long to wait before cycling back on if I deem it necessary?

 

[Mochizuki0124]

Hey yall! I’ve been on Reta for 8 going on 9 weeks tomorrow with awesome results pairing with a steady 6-7 day a week gym schedule and high protein diet. I started at .5 mg and have worked up to 6.5mg as of this week.

I have heard of people using Reta for 12 weeks then cycling off, people just using Reta until they hit their goal body weight, or until they hit an absurd amount per week like 12-13mg before hopping off.

What has worked best for you guys on Reta, and when I eventually do cycle off, how quickly do yall recommend titrating back down (in weeks and example mg dosages) before taking a break?

And finally for everyone having done multiple cycles of Reta, how long do you typically wait and give your body a break for before hopping back on? (I’ve heard anywhere between 4-8 weeks)

Thanks yall! 🤙🏻💪🏻

Wow you titrated really fast.

I agree with Roadrash, it just depends on your goal. Im on my 6th week and I just moved from 1mg to 2mg but my goal is just to lower my BF% from low 20s to about 12-15 and probably take a month off and see if i can maintain it and then just dose accordingly after that.

 

[Shadow27]

Wow you titrated really fast.

I agree with Roadrash, it just depends on your goal. Im on my 6th week and I just moved from 1mg to 2mg but my goal is just to lower my BF% from low 20s to about 12-15 and probably take a month off and see if i can maintain it and then just dose accordingly after that.

Yeah I went up pretty quickly lol. I’m on Tesa and Mots-C as well as working out every day for like 2 hrs with 40 mins of zone 2-3 cardio, so my hunger and cravings I noticed started to return faster on lower dosages. Haven’t had any side effects.

Gotcha! Yeah once I’m done with my cycle with the higher dosing, I was thinking of doing what you plan to do and take a low dose weekly to maintain after take a break. Thanks!

 

[woundcarping]

Cycling is gym bro malarkey not applicable to someone starting at 35% body fat.

While you didn’t expressly say it, I’m pretty sure you didn’t drop 15% body fat in 7 weeks.

 

[Shadow27]

Cycling is gym bro malarkey not applicable to someone starting at 35% body fat.

While you didn’t expressly say it, I’m pretty sure you didn’t drop 15% body fat in 7 weeks.

Went from 230 lbs to 204lbs in 8 weeks(almost 9 weeks). A month ago my scan had me at 30% BF at 217.5 lbs and yesterday my scan had me at 20.7% BF while doing a body recomp. So I’ve actually put on muscle while being on Reta.

I’ve just heard different things about cycling because I don’t rly wanna be taking 12mg weekly eventually for my wallets sake lol.

 

[BNLFL]

Roughly 3.25lbs/week loss is too much. I've lost 5.5% BF in 16 weeks since I started tracking it. I find your BF loss hard to believe, but whatever.

 

[Shadow27]

Roughly 3.25lbs/week loss is too much. I've lost 5.5% BF in 16 weeks since I started tracking it. I find your BF loss hard to believe, but whatever.

Idk lol. I live in the gym after working a 10 hr shift and I’m pretty young so maybe that has something to do with it? Or the scanning scale I get scanned on at the gym is wrong lmaooo. 🤷🏻‍♂️. The mirror has definitely been looking brighter lately tho

 

[BigRed1]

I see no point in cycling with the plan to instantly get back on in a few weeks. At that point just keep it going, You aren't getting a benefit of stopping and starting.

If you hit your goal weight and you want to stop losing weight then I could see it being beneficial to finding a lower dose that you can coast at.

But quitting for a few weeks just to start again seems pointless

 

[Shadow27]

I see no point in cycling with the plan to instantly get back on in a few weeks. At that point just keep it going, You aren't getting a benefit of stopping and starting.

If you hit your goal weight and you want to stop losing weight then I could see it being beneficial to finding a lower dose that you can coast at.

But quitting for a few weeks just to start again seems pointless

Gotcha, makes sense. Appreciate the advice!

 

[lessthanhalf]

Depends a bit on your weight history, if you have been overweight long term, then treating it as a temporary problem to be fixed is likely to not produce the long term results you want, as odds are you will regain the weight when you stop it, unless you are one of the rare people who establish new permanent better eating and exercise patterns .
Currently the most reliable method yet invented for maintenance of weight loss long term is staying on GLP drugs.

 

[dizzy]

If you're using it for cutting (aka you're a lifter/athlete) then it's fine to cycle. If you are trying to lose weight you definitely do not want to cycle. Mouse studies shows that GLP1 drugs were less effective after a cycle, by a lot, especially after the first cycle. Anecdata from humans tells a similar story in my experience in this world over the past year or so.

 

[lessthanhalf]

Yes that is the concern, a recent study in rodents found that if you gave them semaglutide on for a few weeks and off for a few on a high fat diet and they regained weight during the off cycles, they gradually lost less and less weight over time when they went back on semaglutide.

Not replicated in humans at this point, though there are people online who have stopped and started with worse results than expected after restarting, so if this turns out to be a real and substantial effect in humans , it is a very strong argument against cycling GLPs, especially if there is any underlying obesity issues, as messing up the effectiveness of the drugs that work long term does not sound like a good idea to get marginally lower body fat. If the start point is already pretty skinny then not sure it is as much of an issue, but the way I see it is you are then exposed to all of the risks of glp therapy like pancreatitis or NAION, for a cosmetic result, and there may be no health benefits to offset those risks, whereas in obesity the health benefits outweigh the risks by a huge margin.

 

[qwertyuiop]

Yes that is the concern, a recent study in rodents found that if you gave them semaglutide on for a few weeks and off for a few on a high fat diet and they regained weight during the off cycles, they gradually lost less and less weight over time when they went back on semaglutide.

In mouse study, the reason they failed to lose as much weight the 2nd and 3rd time is because they regained a lot of fat when cycled off. At least that was the theory from the paper.

We propose that repeated treatment interruptions lead to a cumulative deficit in lean mass that is not fully recovered during off-treatment intervals. Consequently, each successive cycle begins from a progressively altered body composition characterized by increased adiposity relative to lean mass. Under these conditions, homeostatic mechanisms may preferentially defend remaining lean mass, establishing a physiological constraint that limits further weight loss despite continued GLP-1 RA exposure.

So if that explanation is correct, then GLPs shouldn't lose efficacy as long as body composition is maintained.

The other explanation is that there is some receptor desensitization or some other biological mechanism we don't understand yet that actually does makes the drug less effective over time. I think this has also been studied and desensitization did not occur. But that also seems to go against most peoples' experiences that GLPs do have less effect over time... Idk what to make of all this.

 

[lessthanhalf]

The best evidence I have seen that tolerance or desensitisation to the weight loss effects of GLP's does not happen if they are used continuously is the long term follow up studies where average weight loss was a flat line for 4 years on the same dose, if efficacy was dropping weight should have gone up.

And why using them intermittently should change anything is not obvious to me. I guess it is possible that it is the repeated episodes of weight gain that cause problems, something certainly seems to go wrong in obesity that seems to get worse the more weight is gained.

I also read a paper not that long ago where they tried to analyse competing theories for how human weight is regulated, and found flaws with all current theories, where they could not create models that produced results consistent with the data, so if something that fundamental is not understood, it is not surprising that not every result makes perfect sense.

 

[cujet]

Thinking about the half life of Retatrutide if you stop cold it still remains in your system for a month. I'd say stopping cold still results in a gradual decline.

 

[SVT810E]

most peoples' experiences that GLPs do have less effect over time

Suppose I had high blood pressure, 140/90, and my doctor prescribed me telmisartan. I start taking it and a few weeks later stop in at a pharmacy and I’m already down to 130/85. A couple months later I go in for a followup appointment and my pressure is 120/80 and my doctor says “great, we’ll keep you on that dose for now”. The next year I go in for my annual checkup and my blood pressure is still 120/80. Should I complain to my doctor “it seems like this drug isn’t working anymore, my blood pressure has been plateaued for a year now”? Of course not. But people do just that with GLP-1s.

 

[JoonyO]

Suppose I had high blood pressure, 140/90, and my doctor prescribed me telmisartan. I start taking it and a few weeks later stop in at a pharmacy and I’m already down to 130/85. A couple months later I go in for a followup appointment and my pressure is 120/80 and my doctor says “great, we’ll keep you on that dose for now”. The next year I go in for my annual checkup and my blood pressure is still 120/80. Should I complain to my doctor “it seems like this drug isn’t working anymore, my blood pressure has been plateaued for a year now”? Of course not. But people do just that with GLP-1s.

Not sure that's an apples to apples analogy.

 

[Beardboost]

Roughly 3.25lbs/week loss is too much. I've lost 5.5% BF in 16 weeks since I started tracking it. I find your BF loss hard to believe, but whatever.

Ill be honest everyone is different, for me its been 14 weeks with 17.7% loss in weight, is it to much per week? Its considered too much yes but my deficit is calculated well with working out which I was not able to do due to health conditions, but its very possible for someone to lose that much weight given how they were before and how strict they are now with dieting, 58.86 lb is 26.7kg for reference.

 

[SVT810E]

Not sure that's an apples to apples analogy.

I disagree with the idea that they’re fundamentally different. Blood pressure medicines don’t reduce your blood pressure overnight, that’s an effect that builds over several weeks until the drug effect plateaus. Likewise GLP-1s do not reduce you to your goal weight overnight, that’s an effect that builds over several months until the drug effect plateaus.

That plateau does not mean the drug has stopped working, it means it is working. The plateau is what we take the drug hoping to achieve. And in the case of both GLP-1s and hypertension meds, sometimes the plateau doesn’t land exactly where we want it to. My blood pressure drug might only reduce me to 130/85 just like my GLP-1 might only get my BMI down to 28 when I reach that plateau with each.

These are similar mechanics. The fact that a GLP-1 might not reduce our BMI to 22, that it achieves a less desirable plateau after months of progress, does not mean it’s having “less effect over time” any more than a blood pressure medicine that plateaued at 130/85 after weeks of progress.

If a drug does this:



Do we call that a “loss of effect over time”? That’s a stable drug effect! People just have unrealistic expectations that a drug can solve all of their problems.

 

[qwertyuiop]

I think you misunderstand what I meant. I'm not talking about the people who successfully maintain their weight on, say, 15mg Tirz after they reach their goal weight. I am talking about the people that reached their goal weight on 15mg Tirz but are now are looking into stacking Reta, Cagri, and/or Elora on top because a year later, 15mg Tirz is no longer enough. There seems to be a decent amount of stories like that.

But you're right that the data seems to show that they not actually lose effectiveness over time, despite what some people report. Could be that the few people who are still having issues post the most online while the majority get to their goal weight and log off.