My doctor could not believe my bloodwork

Taking the question as asked, rather than the general version of it. A defensible baseline is short: HbA1c and fasting glucose, a lipid panel with ApoB if you can get it, ALT and AST, creatinine with eGFR, TSH, ferritin and B12, and a full blood count. That set catches the things that change, the things that explain symptoms, and the things that alter the prescribing decision. Almost everything else on the long circulating lists is either invariant, uninterpretable without a specific question, or an incidental finding waiting to cause an unnecessary workup.

pete_manc_UK said:

A defensible baseline is short: HbA1c and fasting glucose, a lipid panel with ApoB if you can get it, ALT and AST, creatinine with eGFR, TSH, ferritin…

Agreeing with pete_manc_UK, and the qualification matters more than the agreement. One addition: if the lab changes analytical platform between your draws, the comparison breaks and nobody tells you. It is worth asking when a value moves inexplicably.

BethLabQueen said:

I got a full panel before starting and a repeat at three months, and the second one is more useful than the first purely because I now have something…

Same position here, arrived at the long way round. The single most useful discipline is bringing the whole panel to a clinician rather than one flagged value. One out-of-range result in isolation generates anxiety and unnecessary tests; the same result next to the trend and the rest of the panel usually generates a shrug.

From the other side of the consultation, briefly.

Shot day Thursday report relevant to baseline bloodwork:

Week 48. Currently on 1.7mg. Down 34 lbs from starting weight of 246 lbs.

This week's observations: Energy levels excellent, zero nausea.

Labs due next week — looking forward to seeing the metabolic panel. I'll post results in the Lab Results section when they come in.