Reta guide for beginners
TL;DR:
- start 1mg/wk weeks 1-3
- 2mg/wk weeks 4-6
- 3mg/wk weeks 7-9
- 4mg/wk week 9 onward
Slowly titrate back down if you decide to stop. Don’t just quit cold turkey. Body needs time to adjust.
Use a peptide calculator to dial in the dose Peptide Dosage Calculator
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For all the newbies taking reta or considering it. Please for the love of god do not start at 2mg/wk.
Unless you are morbidly obese, have a food binge eating disorder, or have taken other GLP-1 like Ozempic (semaglutide) or Mounjaro/Zepbound (tirzepatide), you will not tolerate a starting dose of 2mg/wk well and you will feel like shit and experience more side effects like diarrhoea, constipation, stomach aches, nausea and potentially a complete loss of appetite.
Start with 1mg/wk for the first 3 weeks. You take it once weekly, ideally in the morning after breakfast. Avoid taking it at night as it can affect some peoples sleep quality due to the Glucagon receptor stimulation (AKA the increased resting heart rate and resulting caloric burn at rest from your heightened baseline metabolism that your body is going to experience on reta, which other GLP-1s do not activate). Not all users experience issues sleeping on reta but some do, hence the AM dosage protocol.
On week 4, you can assess your hunger levels and the weight loss progress and then decide if you should increase your dose from 1 mg/wk to 2mg/wk. You want to pay attention to your hunger levels, eventually your body adjusts to the dosage and your hunger cravings will return. Thats an indicator that you’ve adjusted to the current dose and could potentially increase it by 1mg/wk. The goal is not to crush your appetite until you aren’t eating at all, but to take a dose that eliminates some food noise so you aren’t reaching for the snack drawer throughout the day.
Assuming you start taking 2mg/wk at the start of week 4, you should continue taking 2mg/wk for weeks 5 and 6. At week 6 or week 7, reassess your hunger and weight loss again. This is where you can increase to 3mg/wk.
Prioritize eating protein with each meal, and fibre. Fibre will go a long way with reta, it will help with any bowel movement side effects like constipation or diarrhoea. Try to make well rounded food choices when you do eat, so that your body has enough protein to retain muscle while you are in a caloric deficit that the Reta enables. This way you will mainly lose fat (which is why ppl take reta in the first place). Also, on the topic of fat, try to avoid fatty foods. They will slow your digestion down more, which Reta is already doing. This can lead to more feelings of being bloated or constipated.
After three to four weeks at 3mg/wk reassess again. If you are handling it well you may want to increase to 4mg/wk. For most people 4mg/wk is a good dosage to stay on for the remainder of your weight loss journey. It is where your background metabolic activity will really start burning calories via the glucagon receptor activation.
If you decide to stop taking reta don’t just quit cold turkey. You need to slowly titrate back down. Your body will experience intense hunger cravings and blood sugar fluctuations if you just go from 4mg/wk to 0 mg/wk. Follow a similar protocol for lowering the dose every few weeks until you are back to 1mg/wk. For many people they continue on 1 or 2mg/wk for a long time as it is a solid maintenance dose for hunger cravings and lowering inflammation and regulating blood sugar. But to each their own.
Any questions feel free to comment or DM. I know several people will disagree with this but I have been taking reta for some time now, have read tons of research articles on it, and have coached several clients on it as well and this is the protocol that works best for the majority of people. I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice.
TL;DR:
- start 1mg/wk weeks 1-3
- 2mg/wk weeks 4-6
- 3mg/wk weeks 7-9
- 4mg/wk week 9 onward
Slowly titrate back down if you decide to stop. Don’t just quit cold turkey. Body needs time to adjust.