Dr.DermMIA said:

The useful move here is to separate what is established from what is widely repeated.

Agreed, though "tolerable" needs defining. A dose you tolerate by eating almost nothing is not tolerated, it is being paid for somewhere else — usually in lean mass, sometimes in adherence three months later.

pam_columbus said:

Steady state is the thing most people miss.

This is exactly what I could not find anywhere else. Printing the relevant bit and taking it with me.

Dr.DermMIA said:

The useful move here is to separate what is established from what is widely repeated.

This is where I part company with the consensus forming above. The trial means are being read too generously in this thread. STEP populations were selected, supported, and titrated by protocol, and the real-world curves are consistently a few points worse. That difference is not noise, it is what happens when you remove the study infrastructure.

Adding the numbers, since they settle part of this. If you are comparing against somebody else’s result, check that you are comparing the same measurement taken the same way. Most of the apparent contradictions in these threads dissolve at that step.

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

Moderator note: two posts asking for a source have been merged into one. Please search the thread before asking again. Tagging this one for the weekly digest.