A five field weekly log for GLP-1 dose titration

Anyone who has been on a GLP-1 for more than a few weeks runs into the same problem: the dose changes, the injection day drifts, side effects come and go, and by the time the next appointment arrives nobody can remember what actually happened. A prescriber asking how 5 mg felt is asking a question most people cannot answer from memory.

What follows is the smallest log that still answers that question. It fits in a notes app, a paper notebook or a spreadsheet.

Five fields per week

1. Date and dose. The date you actually injected and the amount you actually used, not the ones you planned. If you skipped or shifted a day, write the real one.
2. Injection site. Abdomen left, abdomen right, thigh, upper arm. Rotating matters, and a log is the only reliable way to know you are rotating.
3. Side effects in the first 72 hours. Nausea, reflux, constipation, fatigue, headache, each rated 0 to 3. Numbers beat adjectives when you are comparing two dose levels months apart.
4. Appetite signal. One line on how food felt that week. This is the thing that fades first as you acclimate, and the fade is usually what makes a step up worth discussing.
5. Weight once a week, same day, same conditions. Daily weighing produces noise that will make you second guess a dose that is working fine.

The dose column needs more care than people expect

With a fixed click pen the dose is whatever the pen says. If you are drawing from a vial, the number that matters is not the milligrams in the vial but the volume in the syringe, and that depends entirely on how much bacteriostatic water went in at reconstitution. The same 5 mg vial can mean 25 units on the syringe or 50, depending on the dilution. Writing “5 mg” in a log without recording the concentration means a future you cannot reproduce the dose.

That is the one place where doing the arithmetic in your head is a bad idea, and it is why I moved off a spreadsheet and onto the Peptide Tracker & Calculator. It keeps the concentration attached to the log entry, so a dose recorded in March still means something in September. There is a standalone reconstitution calculator too if you only need to check one vial.

What the log is actually for

It is not for self optimising. It is for walking into a fifteen minute appointment with a straight answer to three questions: what dose have you actually been taking, what did it do, and what changed since last time. A titration decision made against a written record is a different conversation from one made against a vague recollection, and the record is the part that is entirely within your control.

One caveat stated plainly: a log is a record, not medical advice. Dose changes belong to whoever prescribes for you. The log only makes sure they are deciding with real information.