A whole paper/survey on why and how your statement is incorrect.
A black box is complex and easily oversimplified.
Comparing growing a lot of muscle vs eliciting a therapeutic effect from a pharmaceutical is a stretch. For example compare effective therapeutic doses for stanozolol or oxandrolone in a clinical setting vs what is used for bodybuilding purposes. Can be a factor of 10 to 50x.
Clinical dosing of oxandrolone in muscle wasting can easily vary 2 to 10x when adjusted per kg of body mass.
See Tables 1 and 2 for examples. Happy exploring of Cytochrome P450 system fun!!
I’ll take both of these as a compliment although I find myself looking better with some more meat on the bones. I’m starting my first week and until everything saturates (presumably around wk 4) I won’t go crazy with the surplus. Mostly because I’m dreading having to diet down again.
My line of thinking was eating at tdee maintenance the first week. Add 100 calories every week until I’m at a 500 calorie surplus at around week 4 or 5.
According to online calculators and watching my calorie intake, my current tdee is about 2800 cals. I was hoping it was higher but besides hitting the gym it turns out my lifestyle is pretty sedentary.
Do you guys find that a 500 cals surplus is too small for someone taking about 1 gram of gear per week, looking to lean bulk for 16-20 weeks? I’m open to suggestions.
That’s the number I would start with. It’s gonna be slower than throwing the kitchen sink but if you want to stay lean you can’t go too heavy on calories.
I was hoping that you were natural, because I know what to expect from Dianabol pertaining to strength response.
I still believe you will have a noticeable positive jump in strength starting around day 10. Pick an upper body press exercise that you can give a maximum effort and use that as your strength metric. Pick a weight and rep range (preferably 5 to 8 reps). Warm up to that weight you got last week. Do that set to the designated rep: if it is easy either do as many reps as you can or stop and add weight and attempt to get the target reps.
What you are looking for is to monitor your strength increase. At the same time you also want to monitor your fat gains (which you want to minimize). I would measure with the skin fold test, and the mirror (or pics).
Obviously you are going to intake more calories, but you don’t want to be eating too many.
Something to consider if you believe there is any validity that the steroid binding sites become less receptive over time. It is one of the reasons I ran mostly 8 week cycles.
I noticed that my rate of strength increase dropped after about 8 weeks. So for most cycles I just stopped after 8 weeks. But my yearly “targeted” contest I ran 12 weeks. At week 7 I would add another anabolic or increase an existing one, where my total weekly AAS was about 10 to 20% higher. My thought: weaker binding sites required a greater concentration of AAS.
In your case, running 16 weeks, at week 9 increase your testosterone and Deca, or maybe add back some Dianabol. Possibly it would make sense to start with lower testosterone and Deca, and increase during the later half of the cycle. You could gradually increase both quarterly of the cycle (every 4 weeks)
I’m nearly at the end of my first week and have opted for:
Test C 300mg/wk 1-16 (can up it to 400 at wk 9 or 10 after assessing progress)
Deca 600mg wk 1-16 (I’ll run this dose till the end, side effects permitting)
Masteron 200mg/wk 1-16 (lower to 100mg after cycle ends)
Dbol 37.5mg/day (12.5mg 3x a day) week 1-5
Total 1100mg/wk + 262.5mg/wk of dbol first 5 weeks. This is my biggest cycle to date and I think after this one I’m going to take it low and slow now that I’m closing in on 40.
As I said I will likely take your advice and either increase test C, reintroduce a small dose of dbol or 25-50mg of anavar the last 5-6 weeks.
I’m feeling some bloat after some larger meals and I got to say… I’M FUCKING LOVING IT!!! After that hollow, poor-man feeling during the better part of my diet I couldn’t wait to feel full again. As the good lord intended!
The majority of steroid users in Aus certainly don’t use tren like that.
Those still standing after decades of roid use are an example of selective pressure. They’re the guys who haven’t had a fatal arrhytmia, MI, stroke, pulmonary enbolism… kidney failure
The list of potential complications is endless
And lets not pretend like you’ve taken steroids without any protective measures in place. Statins are a huge protective bonus if you take steroids!
You had a stent put in. Do you take any additional cardioprotective meds like beta blockers, ace inhibitiors/ARB’s etc?
Imagine you didn’t have a stent in (that led to lifelong use of at least one cardioprotective medication)… do you think you would have never had a heart attack from decades of use?
I can’t stress just how protective statins, beta blockers and ARB/ace inhibitors have the potential to be under the context of chronic AAS use…
Yes, of course i am taking statins, nebivolol, prestarium and aspirin. But info on these drugs as a necessity is not a secret. Everyone nowdays knows to get stuff checked and get meds.
Pinning weekly:
Test C 300mg
Deca 600mg
Masteron E 200mg
Dbol 37.5mg/day
Feeling good, mood ok. Nothing much out of the ordinary. Scale moved up by about 2lb while the waist is down half a cm. The sickly, extreme diet look is more or less gone, and my eye sockets aren’t as hollow as they were a month ago.
Everything tastes fantastic. Developed a sudden fetish for oats - oat pancakes, oat bread, oats soaked overnight in milk and whey, oats as a thickening agent in stews and broths, fish coated in oats and fried instead of in flour…
Muscles feel a bit fuller. The striations on my abs have somewhat disappeared but I don’t care. Everything tastes great and all I think about is what’s next on the menu. I’ll be increasing calories intake by 100 this week.
In short I can mostly see progress in my appetite and a little muscle fullness. Also more energy in the gym.