Looking for advice or similar experiences. Currently 6 weeks in on first real cycle (did sarms and pro’s in the past). I’m on 300/300mg a week of test c/eq. My goal is to cut but maintain as much mass as I can, which is the reason I’m taking shit. Here’s my issue: after 6 weeks I have lost a total of 2 lbs. I started at 216, went as high as 223 after first 3 weeks, now have settled at 214 for about a week now. I keep cutting calories and increasing cardio but somthing just isn’t adding up. My daily intake yesterday for example was 1492 cals: 97 carbs/41 fat/200g protein. (The fat came mostly from the salmon I fit in yesterday). My BMR is calculated to be roughly 1900-2000. I feel like I’m getting bigger/leaner up top but not losing belly fat. Are my dosages way off or something? Or is this common on a first run? I ran the same workouts and diet on a low dose of rad140 (10mg daily)/adex (.5mg 2x a week) last year and went from 220-198lb and lost 7%bf so I expected similar or better with these compounds. 36yr old fyi.
What you first need to understand is that drugs are not magic. They are 5% of the equation.
If your not moving toward your goals then something is wrong with training/diet/cardio.
Your post is very random and doesn’t give enough info to tell anything besides your not eating enough food for a sustainable diet.
Post some pics
Lay out what you ate last week
Layout your training from last week.
If you don’t have that info detailed we have already discovered your first problem. If that is the case start today and log/post everything for a week and tag me.
I appreciate the reply. I havent consistently tracked my food to give you exact detail but i eat the same thing just about everyday. 2 boiled eggs in the morning or about a cup of egg whites. Grilled chicken breast and broccoli normandy for 2 meals. 25-50g protien from shakes or bars. And i try to finish my day with fish. I was eating about a cup of rice a day up until about 3 weeks ago but i have been trying to cut carbs as i go latley. I will continue to track it this week so i can give you the detailed info though. As far as training. I hit 1 bodypart a day 5 days a week. Normally 3/4 exercises 4 sets, @ the 8-15 rep range. I time my rest to 1 minute 20 secs for pressing movments and 45 sec to 1 minute for others (arms and lateral raises for instance). My cardio is 1 round of tabata 20sec on 10 off @ 8 rounds then elliptical for intervals of 1 minute high res 1 minute low for 15 minutes total. On my non lifting days i do 3 rounds of a giant set of ab work, followed by 1 round lf tabata and 30 mins of low intensity cardio typically on a bike. As far as pictures go: i deleted my before pic but here is one from after the rad cycle and what i currently look like which is similar to what my before picture would look like.
@s.gentz i do still have 6 weeks left to compare apples to apples. Im not as cleaned up or tan either lol. But at this rate im definitely not getting back to what i was and i feel like its somwhat estrogen related. I was considering starting the adex again but i dont want to crash my e2 since im told the eq does that anyway.
Are you significantly stronger? What was your bench press at the start of the cycle? How much has it improved these 6 weeks?
I havent done a 1rm in like 10 years since i work out at the house w/o a spotter. I normally try to “fail” at 6 to 8 reps on my last set of anything i do. I can say i have been stronger over the last 2 weeks but not very impressed overall. To be honest i expected to lose strength at the calorie deficit, but i have noticed an increase. Last year i would be gasing out and dropping a ton of weight on the bar and falling short of my 6 to 8 reps around this time of the cut. With that being said im wondering if that is part of the problem (not pushing hard enough weight wise). I just assumed since im able to hit a higher number on the bar at a high rep range that im building muscle.
IMO, means you are getting stronger.
I believe that you should have made your first venture into AAS to build muscle as your primary objective. Eat sufficient protein and calories to at least not lose any weight and enjoy the ride.
I suggest you compromise between “bulking” and “cutting.” Maintain your starting weight and see how much you can alter your body composition with the aim to look like a more muscular version of yourself. You should be looking fuller with better body part separation. Isn’t that what we all want?
I don’t recommend doing any one rep max sets. 6 to 8 reps is a good compromise between strength and hypertrophy. I personally liked 8 reps for upper body and 10 reps for lower body. Try to get to 9 reps, which means you should use higher weight the next workout.
Thanks for that man. While thats not the reply i was looking for its prob the one i needed. I think my body is telling me it wants to grow (with the compounds) and im trying to force it to do the opposite without knowing how it was going to respond. I will definitely continue to eat clean and most likely keep the gear the same instead of bumping up the eq like i originally planned. Appreciate it.
You can always increase the next cycle. I never felt that any one cycle was critical to get perfect. But then again, from your perspective, this is your first cycle; and my perspective from having had done between 80 and 90 cycles.
As a first cycle you response is likley to be great, and I wouldn’t waste that on a cut. I get it, everyone wants to build muscle and lose weight at the same time, but taking steroids early you gotta maximize their abilities, which are muscle gain.
If you were super muscled already and needed 600mg of AAS to maintain your size while you cut down to 5-6% I’d totally get it. But you’re gonna have way better results splitting the goals up and doing them separately.
Good luck either way.
From what I have seen, this can create an undesirable outcome. IMO, if body composition is in your ultimate goal, you should keep body composition a portion of every AAS cycle you do. You don’t want to add so much fat that you fall into what I call the “Bodybuilder’s Yo-Yo Diet.”
Never get such poor body composition that you cannot see major muscle group separation. I estimate that look at about 15% body fat.
Yeah I’d agree, but for most ‘normal’ guys going on their first cycle looking to ‘build muscle and lose weight’ what they really want is to lose weight more than they want to be bigger. But they think the steroids will give them that muscle size during a diet, and they will a little bit. But your first cycle I’d still argue it’s most effective to focus on muscle building, not going crazy on your food intake, but enough to prioritize muscle size. Diet before that or diet after, whatever you want to do
That was never the case that I can recall during the years that competed. The only people interested in AAS wanted more muscle, and as much as they could get of more muscle.
With social media showing abs on so many pics, I suppose I can see that as a cause to alter the desired outcome from using AAS.
Exactly, in the age of social media, everyone wants to maintain their abs for TikTok and Instagram. They’re afraid to lose their lean look while bulking, which is why every single cycle post on here since 2012 and said ‘I want to lose weight and build muscle at the same time’. And why they usually don’t get the maximum out of the steroids they take, so they take more or complain that what they took didn’t work.