Maintenance dose

A maintenance dose is the dose you settle on after titration — the one you stay on long-term because it delivers the effect you and your prescriber want at a side-effect level you can live with.

It’s not automatically the maximum

Trial protocols pushed most participants to the top dose (2.4 mg semaglutide, 10–15 mg tirzepatide), but real-world practice is more individual. Plenty of people maintain on middle doses because appetite control is still solid and side effects are minimal. The label for Zepbound explicitly lists 5 mg, 10 mg, and 15 mg as maintenance options. “Lowest dose that does the job” is a legitimate strategy, not undertreatment — especially given supply and cost realities.

Maintenance after weight loss

The harder question comes after reaching a goal weight: stay on, step down, or stop? The evidence so far is clear that stopping entirely usually means regain — in the STEP 1 extension study, participants regained about two-thirds of their lost weight within a year of stopping semaglutide (see rebound weight gain). Obesity medicine increasingly frames GLP-1 treatment like blood-pressure treatment: managing a chronic condition, not completing a course.

Dose-reduction maintenance (staying on a lower dose indefinitely) is an active area of practice and research, and one where your own tracked data — weight trend, appetite, food noise — is exactly what the decision gets made on.