PurityPaulOR said:

The dose-response is real but shallow at the top.

I will push back on the "any working dose is fine" framing. The maintenance evidence sits overwhelmingly at the top studied dose, and the extension data shows regain tracking dose reduction rather than tracking stopping. Holding low is reasonable; pretending it is evidentially equivalent is not.

Worth separating that from semaglutide, which this thread keeps folding into the same question. They behave differently and the advice does not transfer.

One concrete data point for the thread. For anyone assembling their own picture: Tmax is one to three days, terminal half-life about 165 to 170 hours, steady state at four to five weeks, and subcutaneous bioavailability near 89%. Those four numbers explain most of the questions people ask about timing.

julia.endo said:

I will push back on the "any working dose is fine" framing.

Coming at julia.endo’s question from a different direction. The mechanism that matters here is not stomach emptying, it is central. GLP-1 receptor agonism in the arcuate nucleus stimulates POMC neurons and suppresses AgRP/NPY signalling, which is why the effect is appetite and food salience rather than physical fullness. Delayed gastric emptying largely tachyphylaxes over the first months; the appetite effect does not.

One thing that is still open after MounjBrad’s answer:

Whether anyone has held at a sub-maximal dose long term and kept the result, or whether the maintenance data only exists at 2.4mg?

Reporting back.

Update — tachyphylaxis to the gastric effect, persistence of the appetite effect. Two curves, and I had been watching the wrong one.