80lbs lost on Tirz in 1yr. Ready to make the jump to Reta.

[lessthanhalf]

Thank you, I appreciate the thoughtful response. I have not considered moving up from my current 15mg Tirz. dosage. I have a 2 month supply left and may try this on my next injection day. I am still losing weight but have been noticing an increase in hunger/food noise.

My highest weight was unfortunately 480lbs. Honestly, it’s saddening writing this and realizing how bad I let things get. I am a 6’2” male, retired football player. Still have good muscle mass which has been helpful with training and exercise. I’m weighing in at 399lbs as of this morning. I’d like to lose 150 more lbs.

Thanks again. I appreciate it.

The only thing I would suggest being careful of is if it turns out reta does not work for you as well as you would like , to change back to tirz sooner rather than later. I am assuming the rate of weight loss has slowed a bit with the extra food noise? Reta does have the advantage of boosting metabolic rate a bit, but most people on this forum have found it is not as effective as tirz for food noise.

You are asking these drugs to do more than they were designed to do, tirz at best is 25% weight loss and reta at best is average of 29%, and so far you are down 17% 80/480 , but trying to get to 47% 230/480 . So unless you respond better than average, there is a good chance you might need higher than standard maximum doses or combinations of GLP drugs. My basic logic is that obesity of that degree of severity is so bad for your health, that even unknown possible adverse consequences of higher doses or combinations are very unlikely to be as risky.

I only started GLP drugs after losing most of the weight and am using them to control hunger to stop me putting the weight back on, but so far it is working to get me to 55% down from my start weight of 145kg. I added in 5mg reta to 15mg of tirz , and cannot go higher without intolerable skin sensation weirdness, and added in 0.5mg of cagri to help. I chose to add reta to tirz as it was working pretty well with very few side effects and I did not want to stuff that up by changing to reta.

Options from where you are now probably depend a fair bit on what side effects you have had so far, but either switching to reta, increasing the dose of tirz to as high as you tolerate or 25mg? , adding in low dose cagri slowly , or adding in reta to tirz. The reason I am suggesting this is my guess is at some point you are fairly likely to need higher doses or combos anyway.

 

[Spork]

The only thing I would suggest being careful of is if it turns out reta does not work for you as well as you would like , to change back to tirz sooner rather than later. I am assuming the rate of weight loss has slowed a bit with the extra food noise? Reta does have the advantage of boosting metabolic rate a bit, but most people on this forum have found it is not as effective as tirz for food noise.

You are asking these drugs to do more than they were designed to do, tirz at best is 25% weight loss and reta at best is average of 29%, and so far you are down 17% 80/480 , but trying to get to 47% 230/480 . So unless you respond better than average, there is a good chance you might need higher than standard maximum doses or combinations of GLP drugs. My basic logic is that obesity of that degree of severity is so bad for your health, that even unknown possible adverse consequences of higher doses or combinations are very unlikely to be as risky.

I only started GLP drugs after losing most of the weight and am using them to control hunger to stop me putting the weight back on, but so far it is working to get me to 55% down from my start weight of 145kg. I added in 5mg reta to 15mg of tirz , and cannot go higher without intolerable skin sensation weirdness, and added in 0.5mg of cagri to help. I chose to add reta to tirz as it was working pretty well with very few side effects and I did not want to stuff that up by changing to reta.

Options from where you are now probably depend a fair bit on what side effects you have had so far, but either switching to reta, increasing the dose of tirz to as high as you tolerate or 25mg? , adding in low dose cagri slowly , or adding in reta to tirz. The reason I am suggesting this is my guess is at some point you are fairly likely to need higher doses or combos anyway.

Curious... do you think if you stepped down your tirz dose a bit and upped the reta that you'd still have the intolerable skin sensation situation?

Like I wonder what the mechanism is that's causing your dysesthesia - is it the GLP-1, the GIP or the Glucagon?

 

[lessthanhalf]

Curious... do you think if you stepped down your tirz dose a bit and upped the reta that you'd still have the intolerable skin sensation situation?

Like I wonder what the mechanism is that's causing your dysesthesia - is it the GLP-1, the GIP or the Glucagon?

I have tried to research this, but there really is nothing in the studies.

In the low dose semaglutide trials it was rare, in the high dose, 7.2 and 16mg studies it was very common. So given it only acts on GLP-1 receptors it more or less has to be a GLP-1 effect, totally fails to explain why it is most common at normal doses with reta rather than the others.

I have tried increasing doses of tirz and reta and even very small dose increases of either make it worse, so on second daily doses from 4.5mg of tirz to 5mg or for reta from 1.4mg to 1.6 is noticeable. I have not seriously tried dropping tirz/reta ratio, once or twice i tried and the skin sensations were worse.

 

[Spork]

I have tried to research this, but there really is nothing in the studies.

In the low dose semaglutide trials it was rare, in the high dose, 7.2 and 16mg studies it was very common. So given it only acts on GLP-1 receptors it more or less has to be a GLP-1 effect, totally fails to explain why it is most common at normal doses with reta rather than the others.

I have tried increasing doses of tirz and reta and even very small dose increases of either make it worse, so on second daily doses from 4.5mg of tirz to 5mg or for reta from 1.4mg to 1.6 is noticeable. I have not seriously tried dropping tirz/reta ratio, once or twice i tried and the skin sensations were worse.

Aw man, that stinks!

It's a shame that I don't think even the pharma companies that plowed the money into researching these drugs fully understand how they work entirely.

I do wish I were one of the people who was a super-responder, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards for me. I had a BMI of 45+ when I started tirzepatide, so you know the struggle there.

I'm looking at adding retatrutide into the mix to see how much more I can push things, but I appreciate your story because I'll definitely do this with extra caution thanks to your story.

 

[RT0123]

The only thing I would suggest being careful of is if it turns out reta does not work for you as well as you would like , to change back to tirz sooner rather than later. I am assuming the rate of weight loss has slowed a bit with the extra food noise? Reta does have the advantage of boosting metabolic rate a bit, but most people on this forum have found it is not as effective as tirz for food noise.

You are asking these drugs to do more than they were designed to do, tirz at best is 25% weight loss and reta at best is average of 29%, and so far you are down 17% 80/480 , but trying to get to 47% 230/480 . So unless you respond better than average, there is a good chance you might need higher than standard maximum doses or combinations of GLP drugs. My basic logic is that obesity of that degree of severity is so bad for your health, that even unknown possible adverse consequences of higher doses or combinations are very unlikely to be as risky.

I only started GLP drugs after losing most of the weight and am using them to control hunger to stop me putting the weight back on, but so far it is working to get me to 55% down from my start weight of 145kg. I added in 5mg reta to 15mg of tirz , and cannot go higher without intolerable skin sensation weirdness, and added in 0.5mg of cagri to help. I chose to add reta to tirz as it was working pretty well with very few side effects and I did not want to stuff that up by changing to reta.

Options from where you are now probably depend a fair bit on what side effects you have had so far, but either switching to reta, increasing the dose of tirz to as high as you tolerate or 25mg? , adding in low dose cagri slowly , or adding in reta to tirz. The reason I am suggesting this is my guess is at some point you are fairly likely to need higher doses or combos anyway.

Yes and no. Yes food noise has increased however I am still losing weight. Goal weight is 250lbs. After the great insight I’ve received from many here, I am going to add 2mg Reta to current Tirz schedule. I’ve had no side effects or adverse symptoms. Just noticing the food noise a bit more after being on it a year & lifting much heavier after the initial 80lb loss. I have a feeling this can be attributing to my recent hunger increase. I’ve upped my protein intake and had -3lb loss for the week. Appreciate your insight! Good luck to you!

 

[Spork]

I have tried to research this, but there really is nothing in the studies.

In the low dose semaglutide trials it was rare, in the high dose, 7.2 and 16mg studies it was very common. So given it only acts on GLP-1 receptors it more or less has to be a GLP-1 effect, totally fails to explain why it is most common at normal doses with reta rather than the others.

I have tried increasing doses of tirz and reta and even very small dose increases of either make it worse, so on second daily doses from 4.5mg of tirz to 5mg or for reta from 1.4mg to 1.6 is noticeable. I have not seriously tried dropping tirz/reta ratio, once or twice i tried and the skin sensations were worse.

I have seen more than a few people claim that Claritin (marketed/branded as Claratyne in Australia) can actually address the skin sensation problem. Have you ever tried something like that?