Hey all,
Seems like this is a common backstory. I'm 43/m and have been lifting off and on since my mid 20s, I have a little to show for it but much less than you'd think in terms of size and strength due to how it always seems lifting has coincided with being in a caloric deficit. Like many, I felt the slow down hit in my 40s, became a new parent and years of significant sleep deprivation and a bad attitude towards my own wellbeing took its toll.
I had been a heavy drinker for a long time and that ramped up. Got my test levels checked in November 2024 and it was 210 ng/dL. Decided it was time to square myself away for good cause the daily drinking just wasn't working with involved parenting and a full-time job. Haven't had a drink since 11/23/24 and while I miss getting drunk, I don't miss anything else about it like the expense, hangovers, big hit to productivity, having to make sure I have enough at home every night, and so on and so on. I could write a novel about this but it'd be boring, so I won't. That said, I'm amazed and thankful that 15 years of 15-20 beers a night and all my blood work came back in range. My liver enyzmes were elevated but still well within range, sonogram showed very early signs of fatty liver but no scarring and that has completely reversed, lipids were in range, was flirting with prediabetes but wasn't there yet, and kidneys seem ok per a cystatin A test. Only thing I can think of is it's always been just beer. While I like the hard stuff, I told myself I had to stay off it from the start.
Started TRT and found out I must be a bit of a low responder as 180mg test cyp/week gets me to the mid 700s. On 200mg/week plus HCG I come in around at the upper limit of the reference range. I can't say I've noticed a huge difference between 950 and 700, so I'm considering dropping back down to 180mg/week to confirm that.
Diet, lifting, and cardio has been locked in for 8+ months at this point and I've made great progress on body comp. But aside from regaining some previous strength, I haven't made much progress in my lifts. I think that's to be expected though as I'm running at about 1400 kcals/day usually somewhere around 225g protein, 30-50g carbs, and 30-40g fat. About 4 months ago, I started tirzepatide following the usual titration schedule and it has made things easier but overall my weight loss has stayed on it's original trajectory more or less. Great tool for diet compliance and I definitely saw a big improvement in A1C, 5.4 down to 4.9, but I'm sure the low carb diet is doing a lot of that work too.
I brought HGH into the mix a few months back and titrated up to 4 IU/day split 2/2 AM/PM. I settled on that dosage for it supposedly maximizing lipolysis. Recently, I've titrated up to 6IU spit 2/4 AM/PM to test the waters and maybe squeeze a little extra fat loss and recovery out of it. 4 IU/day got my IGF-1 to 242 ng/mL, upper limit of the reference range for my age is 270. Been on 6 IUs about 2 months with no sides other than a scale bump in water weight, no CTS and my fasted blood glucose is roughly the same as always. I do IF in addition to low-carb, eating between noon and 6pm, so I'm hoping that's helping to keep insulin sensitivity where it needs to be. In September I'm thinking to pull back to 4 IU/day for the remaining duration of my cut. I know the consensus for a long time has been HGH: As much as you can afford, as long as you can afford. But it's so cheap now, I wonder if that still holds true. Reading up and thinking it over is in progress.
Navy bf calc has me at about 215 lbm but I take that with a grain of salt. Plan is to get a dexa but I'm waiting until I get a little closer to my fat loss goal to squeeze a bit more utility out of the scan for calibrating the final push to 10%.
Speaking of which, future plans are to push hard on this cut for another 4-5 months and hit 10% bf. Reverse diet back up to maintenance and really lock in what that number is for me, hold there for a month or two, and then potentially do a first blast of around 500-600mg/week of test for 20 weeks and finally get to lift in caloric surplus and put in some real work in on my strength and size. That's the plan anyway.
Looks like I've written that novel, I didn't intend to but when I got started it became a bit cathartic to organize these thoughts into words because I don't really talk about this stuff with anyone. Thanks for reading.
Seems like this is a common backstory. I'm 43/m and have been lifting off and on since my mid 20s, I have a little to show for it but much less than you'd think in terms of size and strength due to how it always seems lifting has coincided with being in a caloric deficit. Like many, I felt the slow down hit in my 40s, became a new parent and years of significant sleep deprivation and a bad attitude towards my own wellbeing took its toll.
I had been a heavy drinker for a long time and that ramped up. Got my test levels checked in November 2024 and it was 210 ng/dL. Decided it was time to square myself away for good cause the daily drinking just wasn't working with involved parenting and a full-time job. Haven't had a drink since 11/23/24 and while I miss getting drunk, I don't miss anything else about it like the expense, hangovers, big hit to productivity, having to make sure I have enough at home every night, and so on and so on. I could write a novel about this but it'd be boring, so I won't. That said, I'm amazed and thankful that 15 years of 15-20 beers a night and all my blood work came back in range. My liver enyzmes were elevated but still well within range, sonogram showed very early signs of fatty liver but no scarring and that has completely reversed, lipids were in range, was flirting with prediabetes but wasn't there yet, and kidneys seem ok per a cystatin A test. Only thing I can think of is it's always been just beer. While I like the hard stuff, I told myself I had to stay off it from the start.
Started TRT and found out I must be a bit of a low responder as 180mg test cyp/week gets me to the mid 700s. On 200mg/week plus HCG I come in around at the upper limit of the reference range. I can't say I've noticed a huge difference between 950 and 700, so I'm considering dropping back down to 180mg/week to confirm that.
Diet, lifting, and cardio has been locked in for 8+ months at this point and I've made great progress on body comp. But aside from regaining some previous strength, I haven't made much progress in my lifts. I think that's to be expected though as I'm running at about 1400 kcals/day usually somewhere around 225g protein, 30-50g carbs, and 30-40g fat. About 4 months ago, I started tirzepatide following the usual titration schedule and it has made things easier but overall my weight loss has stayed on it's original trajectory more or less. Great tool for diet compliance and I definitely saw a big improvement in A1C, 5.4 down to 4.9, but I'm sure the low carb diet is doing a lot of that work too.
I brought HGH into the mix a few months back and titrated up to 4 IU/day split 2/2 AM/PM. I settled on that dosage for it supposedly maximizing lipolysis. Recently, I've titrated up to 6IU spit 2/4 AM/PM to test the waters and maybe squeeze a little extra fat loss and recovery out of it. 4 IU/day got my IGF-1 to 242 ng/mL, upper limit of the reference range for my age is 270. Been on 6 IUs about 2 months with no sides other than a scale bump in water weight, no CTS and my fasted blood glucose is roughly the same as always. I do IF in addition to low-carb, eating between noon and 6pm, so I'm hoping that's helping to keep insulin sensitivity where it needs to be. In September I'm thinking to pull back to 4 IU/day for the remaining duration of my cut. I know the consensus for a long time has been HGH: As much as you can afford, as long as you can afford. But it's so cheap now, I wonder if that still holds true. Reading up and thinking it over is in progress.
Navy bf calc has me at about 215 lbm but I take that with a grain of salt. Plan is to get a dexa but I'm waiting until I get a little closer to my fat loss goal to squeeze a bit more utility out of the scan for calibrating the final push to 10%.
Speaking of which, future plans are to push hard on this cut for another 4-5 months and hit 10% bf. Reverse diet back up to maintenance and really lock in what that number is for me, hold there for a month or two, and then potentially do a first blast of around 500-600mg/week of test for 20 weeks and finally get to lift in caloric surplus and put in some real work in on my strength and size. That's the plan anyway.
Looks like I've written that novel, I didn't intend to but when I got started it became a bit cathartic to organize these thoughts into words because I don't really talk about this stuff with anyone. Thanks for reading.
