First Cycle, Really Sensitive to AIs

Pharma
1

Stats: 32yrs, 5’6" 150lbs, endurance athlete for 17 years

To make a long story short last year I had a rough year. Started a new job, moved to a new city, gained about 35 lbs (a lot for someone my size). I continued to train but did very little weight training. I was probably running 15 miles per week but still went up to 160 lbs or around 25% body fat.

This year I decided I’d turn myself around. I normally hover around 15% body fat at a weight of 140-145. I’ve always wanted more lean mass and less fat but my body just won’t go that way no matter how much I lift.

It took me a few months to get back to lifting what I used to and was running an additional 20 mi/week. My lifting plateaued (as it always has) and I knew I could lose more weight by running but I didn’t want that tiny runners’ body anymore. So my cycle began. I have a biomedical engineering background and so wanted to be very careful. My inventory included:

Testosterone Ethanate 5 10ml vials 250mg/ml
Novaldex 25mg x 50 caps
Aromasin 25mg x 50 caps
Arimidex 2mg/ml x 30ml
Clomid 25mg x 100 caps
HGC 5000 UI 2 Vials
Finasteride 1mg x 90 pills
[Tren - but don’t plan on using it]

Now I didn’t expect to use all of it but I wanted a solid stockpile.

Here’s what I’ve taken so far pinning on Monday & Thursday, taking 1mg finasteride per day:

Week 1 - 600mg Test,
Week 2 - 450mg Test
Week 3 - 450mg Test, 25 mg Aromasin
Week 4 - 450mg Test, 0.5mg Arimidex
Week 5 - Now

I work out 5 days a week. I do 30 minutes of aerobic per day and lift various muscle groups per day 30-45 min of lifting.

WEEK 1 I felt AWESOME. High libido, good strength, I’m and just generally felt great. I’m also always hungry!

WEEK 2 was much the same. I had some night sweats but nothing that was too much of a bother. I just feel great!

WEEK 3 I realized I was getting bloated and my feet were in immense pain but only after running. I kept drinking water but nothing helped. I then took 1 cap of 25mg Aromasin. I was able to run more and my bloating went down, but so did everything else; my energy, my enthusiasm and my libido. The change was almost instantaneous. I swore never to take Aromasin again. I was feeling great then suddenly like crap! My appetite also went down.

Then end of WEEK 4 comes around and I find I’m bloating again but I’m also feeling better. The side effects of the aromasin were subsiding. This time I decided to take a different path and took a tiny dose 0.5mg of Arimidex (exactly 7 days later). Suddenly my libido was gone, I was unmotivated and felt depressed. Again it was almost instantaneous. The worst symptom is that even when I work up my libido I can’t finish no matter what. Now I have no hunger whatsoever and literally need to force-feed myself.

My goal is to put on more muscle and get that body fat down. It’s just difficult to feel like I’m doing well when I’m bloated. I have seen gains in muscle but I’m puffy there’s no definition. Although I’ve lost body fat my waist hasn’t gotten any smaller. I also eat clean and meticulously watch my sodium intake.

So what do you guys think? How could the AIs have such a profound effect on my body? I have no other side effects from the Test so an AI is definitely not needed. Should I just deal with the bloating? If so, will I lose it during my PCT? Is there any other way I can get my bloating down?

I feel like I need to stay away from AIs. There’s no reason other than the bloating to take them. The Test makes me feel so awesome but the low doses of AIs make me feel worse than I ever have before? I was thinking maybe I took the arimidex too soon after the aromasin? What should I do next? Would adding Tren help?

I know this is a lot of info. Thanks for the help!

2

You weigh 150lbs at 32 year olds after being an endurance athlete, and your background is biomedical engineering - and your first solution for gaining mass is to use steroids? Is your diet even in check? Have you done a good program for weightlifting that you’ve been consistent on? Based on your bodyweight, my answer would be no.

I wish you luck in your endeavor and I hope you just withheld the above information because you only want steroid advice. Maybe you already have good numbers in your lifts and have everything else dialed in. Otherwise you’re going to add water weight, get bloated, and then piss it all away when you come off.

Good luck.

3

Get blood work. Post your diet. Not to belittle your intelligence but this is step 1. If you’re bloating it’s an estrogen and/or diet issue. Especially off such a low dose.

4

I say endurance athlete because I ran distance in high school and club team college. That might not be the right description anymore. Now I tend to do triathlons sprint or olympic distance in the summer. To give you an idea of my body shape I wear a 42S suit and a 29-30 waist, 30 length. (Last year I put 2 inches onto my waist.)

With regards to my training I usually spend my winters (November-March) 5-6 days in the gym and the rest of the year, 3 gym days then 3 days of running, swimming or cycling. So what has traditionally has happened is that all winter I get large. At 25 or so I began to plateau at the same weights annually. Then the summers hit and I just shrink. (Last year was the ONLY year ever that personal reasons caused this change.)

My diet 5 days a week is:

Breakfast - 3-4 eggs with red peppers and onion, 1 glass watered down OJ
Morning snack - greek yogurt with almonds & walnuts
Lunch - Some sort of grilled chicken breast or tuna with veggies, protein shake
Afternoon Snack - Apple, Orange, Banana pretty much whatever fruit is in season and I bought that week, probably still drinking shake
Dinner - Chicken breast in some sort of simmer sauce and some sort of carb. More carbs as summer approaches.
After dinner - I’m always still hungry so sometimes I have granola with soy milk

(Kinda let myself cheat a little on the weekends but definitely not a lot. I’m always the jerk who won’t go to that restaurant because there’s nothing healthy I can eat there. I try to steer my friends to Sushi.)

Once race season comes around I have to take in A LOT more calories. Still I’ve tried hard for YEARS to make most of those calories come from protein but when I do that I just don’t have the endurance to run or ride. I have to eat more carbs. They’re whole grain bread or pasta. Still no matter what I eat my body just shrinks and doesn’t “cut.”

5

Another short note. This is the first time I’ve ever watched my sodium intake. Honestly with the way I sweat I didn’t think it would have a profound effect. Now I don’t put salt on my eggs and watch whatever I cook my chicken in. It might have just been that.

The biomedical background is why the AI thing confused me. I can’t find a single study where someone has had such a profound reaction. The New England Journal of Medicine just published a study on men with and without testosterone replacement with and without AIs. The doses of their AIs were consistent with what people discuss on this forum.

I have lost a good inch along my waist. It was one day of bloat that countered this and so I freaked out a bit and took the aromasin. I really should have just tried to let it run its course. Right now I’m a little bloated but not at the point where others have noticed. (Or at least they don’t mention it) I’ve gotten comments on my shoulders and bis but no one has yet to say “you look like you’ve lost weight.” My chest sticks out farther than my stomach when I’m drinking enough water. I guess it could also be that I’ve never experienced bloating before and I’m freaking out over nothing. Still, those AI side effects feel real. Not being able to get off is what brought me to the forum. I could hardly control myself until that first dose of aromasin killed my libido.

6

Harsh reality time: your diet is awful

7

[quote]Steve Rogers wrote:
Harsh reality time: your diet is awful[/quote]

Ok. How so? Can you help me improve it?

8

You’re stating your weight has hit a plateau and besides fruit, which personally I’m not a fan of, you have one Carb meal. Which you didn’t not advise an amount so it might be 10 g or 500 g.

Honestly I’d read John meadows forum on this site, read Shelby starnes ebooks and focus on time on understanding the basics first. Gear will not mask poor diet and training

9

Carbs = good

Finasteride = bad

10

More specifically, estrogen levels have alot to do with libido, you need to adjust your dose to find the sweet spot, you don’t want to much or too little.

Drop the finasteride, it could be responsible for your libido loss, and can do so permanently, read some of the horror stories online about it for those “2%” that experience sexual sides. DHT is good for alot which finasteride blocks, if you are genetically predisposed towards hairloss it is going to happen and drugs won’t stop it.

Also as the above poster mentioned, drugs won’t help you without proper dieting. Its still biology, not black magic, and you need to eat to grow.

11

25 mg aromasin is a relatively large starting dose for a male. So is 0.5 mg arimidex. Some guys get away with it, but since you are more sensitive to these drugs, you should try much smaller doses, say 0.1 mg arimidex, and titrate upwards from there if necessary.

Since you are sensitive to AIs, I would say you should definitely not use aromasin. Rather do your experimentation with arimidex. As you found out, it can take quite long to recover from an overdose. Recovering from an arimidex overdose is more rapid. This is because aromasin destroys aromatase enzymes that then have to be replaced by the body, a process that takes 1-2 weeks, while arimidex only temporarily inactivates aromatase enzymes for about 2-3 days.

And yes, you didn’t say if you were actually taking the finasteride but that can definitely cause sexual side effects.

12

Not sure if anyone is still paying attention to this thread but I thought I’d give you guys an update 3 weeks later.

I’ve finally reached my steady state and have gotten to understand my body. The Test-E ONLY as a first cycle is probably the best advice I’ve taken. I’m absolutely blown away by my progress. I’ve accomplished more in the past 7 weeks than I have in the last year. It’s truly helped me breakthrough the dreaded plateau which I perceived more as a ceiling.

So here’s what I did to get back to normal. After about 10 days my body recovered from the aromasin (which I now considered the nuclear option) and I went on a EOD dose of 0.5mg Adex. This combined with a weekly dose of 500mg Test-E has put me in a very comfortable place. I’ve also been carb cycling which I’m sure has also helped.

I’ve DEFINITELY put on some weight. I had to go out and buy new dress shirts because I can’t button the top anymore. That and my pants are getting looser around the waist. I’m down to about 17% bodyfat and dropping. I’d like to hit 10% by the end of my cycle. I only worry that while I’ll be able to fit into all my pants again none of my shirts will fit.

My takeaway from the experience is really that I definitely need to run an AI when I cycle. I’ve had absolutely no signs of gyno but I think running finasteride is what really tipped me in the wrong direction.

I looked at some pharmacokinetic models and realized if you’re inhibiting your body’s ability to break Testosterone down into DHT you’re going to push it down the e2 path.

Anyways, thanks for the feedback guys. And to anyone out there running Test-E with BF% close to 20 DEFINITELY use an AI from the start.