I changed my protocol a couple weeks ago and drastically reduced the total dosage of my weekly Test Cyp injections. The why and how much and labs, don’t matter to my question here but I went from 180mg/week to 120mg/week just for scale of the reduction. I take nothing else aside from the TestCyp.
When I first started TRT, I had some moderate edema that completely disappeared after the first month. I still had the common 6-8 lbs of intracellular water weight that I read about. Over this past weekend, exactly two weeks since the protocol change, I was urinating every time I turned around. I commonly consume 3-4 L of water per day so I know what my intake/outflow patterns are. It wasn’t anything I ate or took that may have irritated my bladder. But I get up this morning and I’m down 5 lbs from yesterday morning. I’m not dehydrated and continuing to take water at the stated rate. TBH, I’m happy to be down 5 lbs and was talking with a friend of mine recently that I enjoy the TRT but not thrilled with the water weight penalty but it’s worth the trade offs.
Here’s my question (finally): Did the drastic reduction in my dosage cause my body to shed the extra intracellular water my body was holding onto? If so, will it return once I reach homeostasis for this dosage? Or is this an indication that my body likes this dosage better?
Thanks!
I think with my experience it levels off and it will not increase water weight after you stabilize. Not sure if you got that libido Spike when you changed protocol, but that for me went away after stabilized. But libido still solid.
I remember when I use to sweat from ass in the night, and wake without the water. I recently lowered my dosage from 140 to 115ish and clearly lost the water.
The water weight is the worst feeling when you see your belly.
A while back I used to have sporadic urgency to pee when doing closer to 100. When I increased my dosage the urgency and moderate sweating at night was gone and the water weight came back.
Would like to hear other thoughts too. As this is of concern to me.
I do think in general sweating everyday doing exercise helps overall. And I recently am eating an avocado (700mg potassium) a day to increase my potassium. I believe it lowers some sodium in the body and u piss out water.
You change your protocol and now hormones are unstable which will takes 4-6 weeks to stabilize. This happens everytime you change your dosage.
Yes I understand that. I’ve changed protocols before but this is the first one that resulting in shedding this much water.
Did your other changes include such a drastic reduction in dosing?
No, and that’s the point of my question. Water retention is common with TRT as we know that it is, is the reduction in dosage responsible for the water loss? It seems reasonable to conclude that it is, but have never heard anyone else comment on losing their intracellular water when reducing dosage. So while I’m fully aware that it’ll take another month or so to stabilize and longer than that for my body to adjust, but in the meantime looking to see if others had similar experiences.
FWIW, I’m still within my first year of TRT so it could be that my body was going to turn loose of that extra water sometime anyway.
Yes it is, the real question is will it come back once hormones have stabilized. There are other ways to reduce water retention on TRT even without losing changes, changing the injection frequencies can have a big impact on water retention by smoothing out the hormonal spikes in between injections.
I’ve been on for 3 years . Injecting more t then you need may cause water retention
Water wasn’t the reasons for the dosage change in my case, just a pleasant surprise.
I’d already made my peace with the “fact” (my assumption of) that extra water is a tradeoff for TRT but would welcome ways to minimize it. I’m already pinning 3x/week to smooth out my spike - changed that by the 2nd month. My hypertension meds include a diuretic, so already have that one down. And again I’m taking water at 3-4 L / day NOT including what extra I consume pre/during/post exercise.