GLP-1 dose schedules, side by side

People ask two different questions and the internet answers them as one. The first is factual: what are the steps, and how long is each? That has a published answer, printed on each product's label, and it is what this page covers. The second is personal: given that I have stalled, or feel awful, or feel nothing at all, should I move up? That question has no published answer, because it depends on your tolerability, your other conditions, your other medications, and what your prescriber is watching for. No page can answer it, and any page that offers to is selling something.

So this is a reference. Read the tables, then take the question to the person who wrote your prescription.

Semaglutide: Ozempic and Wegovy

Same molecule, different labels, different indications, different ceilings. Ozempic is labeled for type 2 diabetes; Wegovy is labeled for chronic weight management and cardiovascular risk reduction. Their escalation schedules are not interchangeable, which is why the brand you were prescribed matters more than the ingredient.

Two details get lost in most summaries. Wegovy's 1.7 mg is an approved maintenance dose, not a waypoint: if 2.4 mg is intolerable, staying at 1.7 mg is a labeled option rather than a compromise. And a 7.2 mg once-weekly dose is approved for adults with obesity when additional weight reduction is clinically indicated. It is not approved for adolescents, and not for the cardiovascular risk reduction indication.

There is also an oral semaglutide tablet for weight management, which escalates on a 30-day rather than 28-day rhythm from 1.5 mg to a 25 mg maintenance dose. If you are taking a tablet, the injection schedule above does not apply to you at all.

Tirzepatide: Mounjaro and Zepbound

Again one molecule, two labels: Mounjaro for type 2 diabetes, Zepbound for weight management and obstructive sleep apnea in adults with obesity. The escalation is the same shape for both.

The steps beyond 5 mg are permissions, not a schedule to complete. Plenty of people stay at 5 or 10 mg long term. Reaching 15 mg is not the goal; the goal is the lowest dose that does the job.

Retatrutide: what is actually true

Retatrutide, sometimes shortened to reta, is a triple agonist that has produced the largest weight loss figures yet published in this drug class. It is also, as of August 2026, not approved by the FDA or any other regulator. Eli Lilly's own trial announcement states plainly that retatrutide "is an investigational molecule that is legally available only to participants in Lilly's clinical trials." The company has said it plans to file for approval in the first quarter of 2027, which puts a decision in 2027 or later.

That means there is no labeled dose schedule for retatrutide. None. What circulates online under that name is not a pharmaceutical product: it has not been through the identity, purity, potency, and sterility controls that approval requires, it is not dispensed by a pharmacy, and nobody is accountable for what is in the vial. The dose charts published by vendors selling it are marketing, not labeling, and we are not going to reproduce them here.

What can be reported honestly is what Lilly measured in the Phase 3 TRIUMPH-1 trial, under medical supervision, in people who were enrolled and monitored. Three doses were studied against placebo, with results at 80 weeks:

In a pre-specified extension for participants with a baseline BMI of 35 or above, those continuing on the highest dose averaged 30.3 percent, about 85 pounds, at 104 weeks. Those are trial arms in a supervised study, not a titration plan, and the gap between the two is the entire point of this section.

Lilly's release did not report lean mass or muscle outcomes, which is worth saying out loud rather than filling with a guess. We cover what the trial data does and does not show about lean tissue in retatrutide and muscle loss.

Why the dose is a muscle question too

This site exists because of what comes off alongside the fat. Reviews of the trial data put lean mass at roughly 15 to 40 percent of the weight lost on a GLP-1.¹ That share does not obviously get worse at a higher dose, but the arithmetic still moves: a bigger total loss means a bigger absolute amount of lean tissue in play. Twenty-eight percent of body weight is a great deal of tissue for that fraction to apply to.

The practical reading is not that higher doses are dangerous to muscle. It is that protein intake and resistance training have to scale with whatever the medication is doing, and the faster it works, the less slack there is. Our muscle-loss risk estimator shows how the countermeasures change the share, and the protein calculator gives you the daily number to aim at.

Stalling, and what it does and does not mean

A stall is the most common reason people go looking for a dose page, so it deserves a straight answer: a plateau is not automatically a signal to escalate. Weight loss on these drugs is not linear, water shifts mask fat loss for weeks at a time, and a scale that has not moved is not the same as a body that has not changed. It is also true that some stalls do reflect a dose that has stopped being enough.

We go through that distinction properly in GLP-1 weight-loss plateau: fat stalling, or muscle loss catching up?. Telling those apart requires information a website does not have. What is useful is arriving at your appointment with the right things written down: how long the scale has actually been flat, what your protein intake has been over that stretch, whether your training has held steady, what side effects you are having and how severe, and whether your appetite suppression has faded. That turns "I think I need more" into a conversation your prescriber can act on.

The honest limits of this page

These schedules are the labeled ones and they will not match everyone. Prescribers deviate for good reasons: side effects, other medications, kidney or liver considerations, pregnancy plans, supply shortages, insurance rules, or a compounded product with entirely different concentrations. Labels are also revised, and a page updated in August 2026 is a snapshot. Check the current prescribing information for your specific product, and treat your prescriber's instructions as authoritative over anything here.