I agree partly with the 80% of aesthetics being diet. I think this is true for an individual. Being lean looks good for most men. You can get the most bang for the buck by being lean.
However, other genetic factors come into play. I have a buddy that is just scrawny. Lifting made him slightly less scrawny, but also bulking just kinda made him get a pot belly. He just doesn’t have it in him to have a physique that looks awesome on the beach. Kinda the best he can do is have some muscle tone and be lean. He isn’t capable of having a powerful look (and I think this is true even if he was using gear). If we did things identically for training and diet for several years, I’d look a lot different at the end of it. He is lacking in overall frame size (width), and has small bones in general. He can improve, but he just isn’t going to have a certain body that is desirable no matter what he does.
That’s great stuff! Proper nutrition makes a big difference, and Stu knows what he’s doing. I’m actually going to see him next Friday.
I think you know I like what you have to say here, as you are someone who talks about TRT for what it is: medicine. Speaking of people leaving, I don’t think a TRT forum can hold up if so many don’t speak of it as such.
You do not have a “sweet spot”? Maybe between 840 and 860?
Exactly! When a new patient on initial consult starts talking about “dialing in”, I know I have some explaining to do and may be facing an uphill battle which may not end well.
I have a friend who uses a lot of steroids and he once asked if my doc would “talk to him”? I asked, “What do you want to talk to you about? He cannot even do anything for you so long as you are on roids.”
I actually will only refer people to my doctor anymore if they don’t promise to:
not talk about the gym and muscle
not drive him nuts with numbers
not look at online info about TRT in the first few months of taking it.
Dialling in is only a slang word for adjusting the medication until the patient feels like they are getting the benefits of the TRT right with minimal sides- surely?
So whats all the fuss?
Almost no one hits the ground running with their protocals and needs to adjust until right- whats the issue with referring that as dialling in?
I and others have noticed that this results in the person chasing a feeling, which is highly subjective, and might even be a feeling that cannot be had with normal hormone values. So, for example, a man can take 100 mg per week, have normal T values, but not feel how he wants to feel.
That’s true to some but to be fair there are also a fair amount of people who feel worse on TRT, hence want to get dialed in. Instead they get the whole “you expect TRT to cure everything” shtick.
It’s not a cure for everything but surely when done right the minimum expectation should be to feel slightly better, even if marginal.
to be honest, I stopped posting anything in TRT/Pharma for a while because it was mostly bickering.
I came back and offered an alternative perspective in Pharma, and immediately bickering ensued.
TRT is mostly 20 year olds looking for justification to shrink their balls, or 40 year olds claiming that their “TRT” dose is 200mg test with 400mg deca and 25mg Var and 3-4IU HGH.
Pharma is mostly dogmatic and bickering, with all the same bullshit that you see on the TRT side too.
And between the two of them, 95% of the answers they need to hear are not the answers they want to hear.
I made a thread a while back asking for pinned threads. I think we could answer almost all of these questions with a few pinned threads, but that would kill even more traffic.
Honestly, I had a strong libido even with low T for some reason. Now it’s still strong although my wife would tell you I’m at her more, but I felt it was always the same.
Especially when someone comes on here complaining of this “feeling” or that “feeling”, but when we ask them what their most recent bloodwork states, they either don’t have it or give us 1 or 2 markers but not all the ones that are strongly interrelated. Now that I think about it, the usual problem is that the poster doesn’t have ANY bloodwork done but assures us they are “going to schedule to get their bloodwork soon”. I think all of us have repeated until we are blue in the face "we cannot even attempt to help you with said problem(s) if we are not at least able to see your complete blood work!
You complain of itchy nipples…do you know your SENSITIVE estradiol results? no, of course not. You are worried that your injection frequency is either too far apart of too often…have you maintained THE SAME injection frequency for at least 8-12 weeks and THEN gotten your bloodwork so that we can see those results? NO, I don’t have that.
It’s as if these new guys come on here and we’re supposed to magically know what the hell is going on inside their bodies based upon just their “feelings”! It’s very frustrating.
I too, in SEVERAL of my responses, suggested pinning several frequently asked questions and answers so that new members who come on here can quickly see a pinned thread that has a topic they are dealing with, easily select it and read all of the back and forth, and perhaps get their questions answered without the need to put up another tired old post and make the rest of us bang our heads against the wall. It’s not that we don’t want to help these new guys (I’ve found that many of us are in fact happy to share our knowledge and experiences), but regurgitating the same information over, and over, and over gets to be irritating.
If I had to choose the thing that just drove me, and I assume many others, up the wall though, it’s guys coming on here with these grandiose ideas to turn their TRT into cycles and not only having no idea what they are doing (drug sides, interactions, functions) but when we (as @Andrewgen_Receptors said) give them advice that they don’t want to hear, they stuff their fingers in their ears and immediately get defensive. At that point I’m usually checked out and think “fine, go ahead and make all the mistakes that either I’ve done and learned the hard way or worse, make the really bad mistakes that we all have known others to make who have royally fucked themselves up”. Eh, maybe we should just stop responding to the new posts with bird-brained topics? Or those among us who have the patience of a saint can choose to engage them.