Maintenance Phase
Treatment after goal weight — the least discussed, most decisive stage of medical weight loss.
Maintenance is where weight treatment is won or lost: the biology that defended your old weight — hunger hormones, metabolic adaptation — doesn't retire at goal, and chronic-disease logic says the treatment that produced the result is usually part of keeping it. Options at this stage include continuing the maintenance dose, stepping down to a lower effective dose, spacing doses under supervision, or in some cases transitioning off with intensive lifestyle scaffolding — each a prescriber conversation, none a cliff.
The data is blunt about the cliff: stopping abruptly returns a large share of lost weight within a year for most. The mindset shift that predicts success is treating goal weight as a phase change, not a finish line — habits built during loss (protein, resistance training, sleep) become the maintenance load-bearing walls.
This glossary entry is general information, not medical advice, and is written to be consistent with FDA prescribing information and primary trial publications as of its last review. Always consult a licensed healthcare provider for personal medical decisions.
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