Alright, I guess it’s time to start one of these to both hold myself accountable and get feedback and advice from all the members with much more knowledge than I have. A little backstory on me. I’m 37, 5’7 and currently 164 lbs as of this morning. Played baseball and basketball in high school, wasn’t ever really big or muscular even though I did lift, and not good enough to play in college. Gained weight immediately after high school and spent many years going to and from various states of skinny fat to total and complete fat ass.
After the holiday season of ‘25 I tipped the scales at 230 lbs and knew I had to do something before I hit 40. So January 1st of 2026 I started on a weight loss phase weighing in at 226 lbs. At first all I did was religiously track my calories and meal prep all of my meals for the week. After a few months of that with no weight lifting or cardio to speak of (I do work a blue collar job on my feet all day) I was down to 205 lbs all by myself. That was when I got the bright idea to quit raw dogging this thing and enlist some help from the pharmaceutical industry.
Was going to go on ozempic, but after a bunch of research found Reta and dove in head first at 2mg a week. It worked immediately. I used the appetite suppression from the Reta to implement a protein sparing modified fast consisting of mostly protein shakes for the next couple of months. Looking back this probably wasn’t the best approach although it was effective as weight and fat were melting off of me. Ended up running the Reta dosage up to 4 mg during this time to maintain enough appetite control, but I found at 4mg it made me sick after eating. About three months into the protein sparing modified fast approach I couldn’t run the Reta up any higher and started to get diet fatigued. Instead of thinking like a logical person and adding food back in, I thought the best course of action was to get my test levels checked at a TRT clinic.
Levels came back right at 400 and the clinic put me on 140mg/week of test cyp. Initially that was an absolute game changer as far as energy goes, but the benefits were short lived because I was only eating about 1200-1300 calories a day. Finally came to my senses and realized I had to add some actual food back in, so I tapered off the Reta and added food back in at what I thought would be roughly my maintenance. At this point I had done absolutely zero cardio and zero weight training.
I got all the way down to 163 lbs and finally got the balls to get my ass back in the gym after 18 years. Started with 30 minutes of cardio 5x per week and a beginner 3x a week full body workout I found on muscle and strength. After two weeks of that the gym life had roped me in and off I went. Hit up Marathon for some test cyp, started pinning 200mg/week, and went to a 4x a week torso/limbs split I found on a John Jewett video.
Fast forward and I’m still running the torso/limbs split workout routine, upped test to 300mg/week, and committed to getting down to 10% bodyfat so I can blast my socks off and actually put on some decent size. This was me 6 weeks ago at roughly 168 lbs the day I started 300mg/week of test. Also on 4 IU GH
This was two weeks ago still on just 300mg test per week and 4 IU GH at approximately the same weight
After the holiday season of ‘25 I tipped the scales at 230 lbs and knew I had to do something before I hit 40. So January 1st of 2026 I started on a weight loss phase weighing in at 226 lbs. At first all I did was religiously track my calories and meal prep all of my meals for the week. After a few months of that with no weight lifting or cardio to speak of (I do work a blue collar job on my feet all day) I was down to 205 lbs all by myself. That was when I got the bright idea to quit raw dogging this thing and enlist some help from the pharmaceutical industry.
Was going to go on ozempic, but after a bunch of research found Reta and dove in head first at 2mg a week. It worked immediately. I used the appetite suppression from the Reta to implement a protein sparing modified fast consisting of mostly protein shakes for the next couple of months. Looking back this probably wasn’t the best approach although it was effective as weight and fat were melting off of me. Ended up running the Reta dosage up to 4 mg during this time to maintain enough appetite control, but I found at 4mg it made me sick after eating. About three months into the protein sparing modified fast approach I couldn’t run the Reta up any higher and started to get diet fatigued. Instead of thinking like a logical person and adding food back in, I thought the best course of action was to get my test levels checked at a TRT clinic.
Levels came back right at 400 and the clinic put me on 140mg/week of test cyp. Initially that was an absolute game changer as far as energy goes, but the benefits were short lived because I was only eating about 1200-1300 calories a day. Finally came to my senses and realized I had to add some actual food back in, so I tapered off the Reta and added food back in at what I thought would be roughly my maintenance. At this point I had done absolutely zero cardio and zero weight training.
I got all the way down to 163 lbs and finally got the balls to get my ass back in the gym after 18 years. Started with 30 minutes of cardio 5x per week and a beginner 3x a week full body workout I found on muscle and strength. After two weeks of that the gym life had roped me in and off I went. Hit up Marathon for some test cyp, started pinning 200mg/week, and went to a 4x a week torso/limbs split I found on a John Jewett video.
Fast forward and I’m still running the torso/limbs split workout routine, upped test to 300mg/week, and committed to getting down to 10% bodyfat so I can blast my socks off and actually put on some decent size. This was me 6 weeks ago at roughly 168 lbs the day I started 300mg/week of test. Also on 4 IU GH
This was two weeks ago still on just 300mg test per week and 4 IU GH at approximately the same weight
