BariatricNurseD said:

Most of what circulates confidently in this community traces back to one summary of one study, and the qualifier was dropped somewhere in the third…

Pushing back on BariatricNurseD here. I think the framing smuggles in the conclusion. Ask it the other way round and the obvious answer reverses, which usually means the question is doing the work.

If somebody has the primary source to hand I would rather cite it than paraphrase it.

The figures, for anyone assembling their own picture. The boring version of this is the one that works, and the boring version is: measure a baseline, change one variable, wait, measure again under the same conditions. Nobody wants that answer and it is still the answer.

Correct me if the detail matters more than I have assumed.

TrialNerd_Beth said:

I think the framing smuggles in the conclusion.

Adding the part of the answer the thread has not reached. Whatever the answer turns out to be, the method for getting there is the same: state the assumption, do the arithmetic in public, and invite the correction. That is slower than asserting, and it is the only version that survives being wrong.

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

Did your prescriber agree with that reading, and if not what was their objection?

Closing the loop on my own question.

For the archive: it took about six weeks rather than the two I expected, and the difference between those two numbers was the whole of my problem.