Dr.NutriCornell said:

Order of operations matters more than any single choice here: establish a baseline, change one thing, wait long enough for it to express itself, then…

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.

Happy to go further on any of that.

FDA_TrackerJim said:

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

That reframing is the part I needed. Printing the relevant bit and taking it with me.

Dr.NutriCornell said:

Order of operations matters more than any single choice here: establish a baseline, change one thing, wait long enough for it to express itself, then…

Pushing back on Dr.NutriCornell here. 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.

One concrete data point for the thread. Give anything pharmacological four weeks before you judge it, and give anything measured weekly a four-point rolling average before you call it a trend.

Moderator note: reminder that nothing in this thread is medical advice, and that clinical claims need a source.