Hello Meso!
I've been lurking here for most of the year and decided to finally make an account now that I know the culture. I've learned so, so much about harm reduction here, and hope I can help to cultivate and protect that culture. Shoutout to @Ghoul in particular for whom I have dozens of posts bookmarked.
I'm a formerly strong fat guy that let it all go to shit when Covid happened and the only gym near me closed, and my home power rack was in a poorly lit basement that had horrible vibes.
About a year ago I injured my back trying to lift something heavy. Like a dumbass, I figured a few weeks of taking it easy was all I needed. That turned out to be a fucking mistake, and it just got worse and worse until eventually I tweaked it doing something completely innocuous and couldn't sit or stand for most of a week. Fuckkkkk. I resolved to never let that happen again.
Went to PT for a couple months and got fixed up. Started running. Started doing yoga. Started lifting again. For the last 8-9 months, I've been laser focused on improving my health. I've shredded from ~26.4% body fat down to 7.9% according to DEXA. Tbh I think it is being a little generous, I think I'm closer to 9-10%. Height 5'10" btw
Just ran my first half marathon on Thanksgiving, ran a hair under 2:30. My lifts are still beginner level, I'm embarrassed to even post them. But newbie gains come fast, and they come even faster when you used to be strong. Tbh I have a terrible memory and have no idea what my lifts used to be, but I lifted for about 7-8 years and while I was pretty consistent, I was an alcoholic and that made progress absolutely glacial. I tried to mitigate my bad life choices by spending more time at the gym, but my "cardio" was 10 minutes on the treadmill before my workout. I've been sober for years now and the difference it makes to training is night and day. I have no idea how that younger idiot stayed motivated.
I also ran a few cycles back in the day. Looking at my logs now... Fuck I was dumb. I never should have been on gear, I was way too fat (probably 22-23% minimum and up to 30%) and aromatized like crazy. Apparently I was taking 25mg asin EOD on my first 500mg cycle. While I did get bloods done before, during, and after each cycle, I didn't do shit to control lipids or BP. No idea what my BP was, but I'm sure it was awful since while I cut back on drinking during cycles, I was still probably drinking at least several drinks most days of the week. The only compounds I tried besides test were masteron and primo.
Anyways I've been on TRT ever since. When I decided to get back into shape this year I bumped it up to 200mg/wk, which has me sitting around 1000-1100 ng/dL. Also got on the retatrutide train and acquired enough to last me until well after it should be available as a generic, lol. Also started on HGH, starting around 2iu and ramped up to 4iu over a few months, IM every morning before fasted cardio. The holy trinity.
I've been treating this whole thing as one big nerdy optimization project. Decided that I'm not allowed to run gear until my blood pressure and lipids are perfect. My BP is around 110/70 most mornings, and here's my latest lipid panel. May have gone a bit overboard - I added both pitavastatin 2mg and Ezet10/Bemp180 since my last draw, where LDL-C was around 47. Should have been patient and just added one or the other to see if I really needed both. I was hoping for something around 40. From what I understand, there's greatly diminishing returns and while it seems like almost all evidence points towards single digit LDL-C being totally fine, I'd still rather be in range that the usual lipid panel can measure.
My goal for this upcoming year: run my first bulking cycle, done the right way, cut back down, and then train and run a marathon. I'm already signed up for my next half marathon in March, hoping to run at least 2 more before the big one.
Thank you gents, I hope to be able to make valuable contributions to this board in time as so many of you have. And ruthlessly block the shitheads who spend all day being pathetic keyboard warriors.
I've been lurking here for most of the year and decided to finally make an account now that I know the culture. I've learned so, so much about harm reduction here, and hope I can help to cultivate and protect that culture. Shoutout to @Ghoul in particular for whom I have dozens of posts bookmarked.
I'm a formerly strong fat guy that let it all go to shit when Covid happened and the only gym near me closed, and my home power rack was in a poorly lit basement that had horrible vibes.
About a year ago I injured my back trying to lift something heavy. Like a dumbass, I figured a few weeks of taking it easy was all I needed. That turned out to be a fucking mistake, and it just got worse and worse until eventually I tweaked it doing something completely innocuous and couldn't sit or stand for most of a week. Fuckkkkk. I resolved to never let that happen again.
Went to PT for a couple months and got fixed up. Started running. Started doing yoga. Started lifting again. For the last 8-9 months, I've been laser focused on improving my health. I've shredded from ~26.4% body fat down to 7.9% according to DEXA. Tbh I think it is being a little generous, I think I'm closer to 9-10%. Height 5'10" btw
Just ran my first half marathon on Thanksgiving, ran a hair under 2:30. My lifts are still beginner level, I'm embarrassed to even post them. But newbie gains come fast, and they come even faster when you used to be strong. Tbh I have a terrible memory and have no idea what my lifts used to be, but I lifted for about 7-8 years and while I was pretty consistent, I was an alcoholic and that made progress absolutely glacial. I tried to mitigate my bad life choices by spending more time at the gym, but my "cardio" was 10 minutes on the treadmill before my workout. I've been sober for years now and the difference it makes to training is night and day. I have no idea how that younger idiot stayed motivated.
I also ran a few cycles back in the day. Looking at my logs now... Fuck I was dumb. I never should have been on gear, I was way too fat (probably 22-23% minimum and up to 30%) and aromatized like crazy. Apparently I was taking 25mg asin EOD on my first 500mg cycle. While I did get bloods done before, during, and after each cycle, I didn't do shit to control lipids or BP. No idea what my BP was, but I'm sure it was awful since while I cut back on drinking during cycles, I was still probably drinking at least several drinks most days of the week. The only compounds I tried besides test were masteron and primo.
Anyways I've been on TRT ever since. When I decided to get back into shape this year I bumped it up to 200mg/wk, which has me sitting around 1000-1100 ng/dL. Also got on the retatrutide train and acquired enough to last me until well after it should be available as a generic, lol. Also started on HGH, starting around 2iu and ramped up to 4iu over a few months, IM every morning before fasted cardio. The holy trinity.
I've been treating this whole thing as one big nerdy optimization project. Decided that I'm not allowed to run gear until my blood pressure and lipids are perfect. My BP is around 110/70 most mornings, and here's my latest lipid panel. May have gone a bit overboard - I added both pitavastatin 2mg and Ezet10/Bemp180 since my last draw, where LDL-C was around 47. Should have been patient and just added one or the other to see if I really needed both. I was hoping for something around 40. From what I understand, there's greatly diminishing returns and while it seems like almost all evidence points towards single digit LDL-C being totally fine, I'd still rather be in range that the usual lipid panel can measure.
My goal for this upcoming year: run my first bulking cycle, done the right way, cut back down, and then train and run a marathon. I'm already signed up for my next half marathon in March, hoping to run at least 2 more before the big one.
Thank you gents, I hope to be able to make valuable contributions to this board in time as so many of you have. And ruthlessly block the shitheads who spend all day being pathetic keyboard warriors.
Last edited:
