I stretch one pen 16 weeks at 0.5 a week. My doctor recommended it and it works perfect. Never had issues. Lost 65 total and kept it off almost 2 years now.
It's wild what salt does to your body, right? The water retention can add pounds overnight even though nothing real happened. I remember when I first started dieting one week I dropped 20 lbs. Obviously that wasn't all fat or muscle either lol