Step 6 Semaglutide: Reaching 1.7mg on the Wegovy Schedule

You've been injecting weekly for months. Here's where 1.7mg sits in that story.

Picture the scene: you open the fridge door, take out your pen, and notice the strength printed on it is different from last month's. That change from 1.0mg to 1.7mg is deliberate. The Wegovy titration schedule (0.25mg, then 0.5mg, 1.0mg, 1.7mg, and finally 2.4mg) exists because jumping straight to a therapeutic dose causes far more nausea than most people can tolerate. Each step lets your gut adapt before the next increase. Step 6 (counting from the very first injection) is 1.7mg, and it is one month away from the dose at which the pivotal STEP 1 trial recorded an average body-weight reduction of around 15% over 68 weeks, as published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

At 1.7mg you are likely noticing genuine appetite suppression, meals feel filling sooner, snacking urges have probably softened. That is semaglutide working as expected. The dose is still slightly below the 2.4mg level where the clinical evidence is strongest, so this month is as much about tolerability confirmation as it is about maximum effect. Keep a brief note of how you feel in the first week after switching. A quick check you can do in under a minute: read through the side-effect list in your Patient Information Leaflet and tick off anything new, if anything surprises you, contact your prescriber rather than waiting for your next review.

It is also worth knowing that the Wegovy programme has expanded since the original schedule was set. The MHRA approved a 7.2mg maintenance dose in January 2026, subsequently making available a dedicated single-dose 7.2mg pen, for adults with a BMI of 30 or above. That means 2.4mg is no longer the ceiling for everyone, though whether a higher maintenance dose is appropriate is entirely a clinical decision.

Side effects at 1.7mg: what shifts compared with earlier steps

The gastrointestinal side effects of semaglutide (nausea, loose stools, constipation, indigestion, burping) tend to return briefly each time the dose goes up. Most people who sailed through 1.0mg find 1.7mg brings a short replay of what the early weeks felt like: a few days of queasiness, perhaps a need to eat smaller portions than usual. For the majority this settles within one to two weeks. Eating slowly, choosing lower-fat meals in the first few days after the dose change, and staying well hydrated all help.

Fatigue and mild headache are less discussed but real. If either is disproportionate or does not ease, that is a conversation for your prescriber. The NHS medicines page for semaglutide lists the full side-effect profile, including which symptoms warrant urgent medical attention. One to take seriously at any dose: severe, persistent stomach pain that spreads to your back (with or without vomiting) should prompt same-day medical review because, rarely, GLP-1 medicines have been associated with acute pancreatitis. Reporting anything unexpected through the MHRA Yellow Card scheme is always open to patients.

Injection-site reactions (small lumps, redness, itching) remain possible. Rotating between your abdomen, thigh, and upper arm each week reduces the chance of them building up. Storage stays the same: refrigerated at 2–8°C, with a limited room-temperature window that the Patient Information Leaflet specifies precisely.

Should the dose increase to 2.4mg next month, and who decides?

The short answer is: your prescriber. The titration schedule is a framework, not a contract. If 1.7mg has been well tolerated and your clinical review supports it, moving to 2.4mg is the natural next step. If side effects have been persistent, staying at 1.7mg for a further month is a perfectly reasonable clinical choice. Some people ultimately maintain at 1.7mg if 2.4mg proves harder to tolerate, the licensed schedule accommodates that.

What the schedule does not accommodate is skipping or self-managing dose changes. The broader semaglutide dose schedule and the reasoning behind each step are set out to help, but the actual timing is always a prescriber's call based on your whole picture. If you want to understand where earlier steps fit into the journey, the step 5 (1.0mg) page covers the dose that preceded this one.

For people considering semaglutide who have not yet started, if you are also comparing costs at this stage, our guide to finding the cheapest Wegovy available through a regulated UK pharmacy is worth reading before making any decisions. These are prescription-only medicines; clinical suitability is assessed before anything is dispensed. At nume, every repeat order (including a dose increase) is reviewed by a GPhC-registered prescriber before it is approved. If you have questions about your current step or what comes next, speaking to our prescribers is a straightforward starting point.