Research

Hormonal

Higher doses of tirzepatide (10-15 mg), younger age, and female sex are associated with a longer time to reach a weight plateau compared to lower doses (5 mg), older age, and male sex.

If you are on tirzepatide and your weight loss slows down significantly (plateau), do not panic or assume the drug has stopped working. This is a normal physiological adaptation. The study shows that people on higher doses, younger people, and women tend to reach this plateau later because they lose more total weight. Focus on maintaining the negative energy balance rather than chasing rapid scale changes. If you are on a lower dose (5mg), you may plateau sooner than those on 10-15mg, but this does not mean the treatment is ineffective.

GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
Multivariate analysis showed that higher doses of tirzepatide (10 and 15 mg), younger age, and female sex were associated with a longer time to weight plateau, while BMI and waist circumference had no association.
Deborah B. Horn et al. · Clinical Obesity · 2025

Why this rating

Based on large-scale phase 3 clinical trials (SURMOUNT-1 and SURMOUNT-4) with rigorous statistical analysis (multivariate regression), though it is a post-hoc analysis.

Source

Time to weight plateau with tirzepatide treatment in the <scp>SURMOUNT</scp> ‐1 and <scp>SURMOUNT</scp> ‐4 clinical trials

Deborah B. Horn et al. · Clinical Obesity · 2025

DOI 10.1111/cob.12734

rct · n=1697Cited 16×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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