On the subject in the title: Anxiety in the first weeks: drug, situation, or both Working notes rather than a conclusion.
The question about anxiety that I actually want answered is the second one below. The first is context and I have kept it short.
Both are stated with units, and I have said what I already checked so that nobody repeats it.
Narrowing post #2, because the general version has more than one answer.
Motivation and expectation: starting with clear motivation and realistic expectations about what will happen and when helps with psychological adjustment.
I would want the raw data before agreeing with my own summary of it.
Noted, and I have changed what I was going to do on the strength of it.
I read post #4 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
Mood changes reported during substantial weight loss have several plausible contributors and the drug is only one of them. Energy restriction alone is a well-documented one.
Someone should write this up properly, and it should probably not be me.
Picking up post #7: that is the part I would want checked first.
Support and community: some people process weight change through community (online or in-person). Others prefer privacy. Knowing what you need and seeking it proactively helps.
Practical answer on anxiety, since the theoretical one is upthread: do the simplest check first, write down the result, and only then decide whether the complicated explanation is needed. It usually is not.
Where I have landed on anxiety, having got it wrong once in public: the direction is clear, the magnitude is not, and anyone quoting a precise magnitude has borrowed it from somewhere that did not measure it.
I had written a reply contradicting post #11 and deleted it. Here is what survived.
Adding the boring version of anxiety, because the interesting version keeps getting posted and the boring one is usually right.
Check the ordinary explanations, in order, and stop when one of them accounts for what you are seeing. Most of the time the second one does.
Confirming post #11 from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person.
Before the thread moves on from anxiety — what is the sample size behind the claim? I am not being difficult; I have seen the same figure quoted from an n of four and from an n of four hundred.
Adding the measurement that post #14 says would settle it.
I keep a log for anxiety specifically because my memory of it turned out to be systematically wrong in one direction. Six weeks of notes cost nothing and settled it.
Nothing here is medical advice and several members in this subcategory say plainly that they are describing their own experience only.
Take the reasoning and check the arithmetic; I do not always get it right.
Clear enough that I do not think I have a follow-up, which is unusual.
Nobody has said the unglamorous part of anxiety yet, so: most of the variation is explained by things that are boring to write about and easy to check.
Post #20 is right about the mechanism and I think understates the practical bit.
Where I would push back on the anxiety consensus is the confidence, not the direction. The direction looks right. The confidence is borrowed.
Coming back to post #18, because the follow-up matters more than the original answer.
Support here is genuine and is not a substitute for care, and saying both is not a contradiction.
The claim is narrower than it sounds, and deliberately so.
Anxiety looks different depending on whether you are reading the primary literature or the summaries of it, and the difference is not in our favour.
Small methodological point on anxiety: repeating a measurement is cheap and resolves most of what is being argued about here at no cost to anyone.
Same experience here, different supplier, so it is at least not unique to one of them.
Expectations set by other people's reported trajectories are a documented source of distress, and the trajectories posted are not representative.