Smiter said:
focus on myofibrillar hypertrophy to increase myonuclei content so that the muscle mass lost is only sarcoplasmic fluid. Muscle memory will remain and allow you to bulk up rapidly, regaining muscle volume in no time.
Long response - asked Claude to clean it up, but I like my original text better, so it stayed long.
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My personal experience here is that a good strong base of “true muscle” is key, ultimate body composition is incredibly important due to the active nature of muscle tissue.
This said, the line between muscle and fat growth during any muscle building phase is a tough one. The adage that your either bulking or cutting, choose one because you can’t have both is, in general true.
And as was mentioned before, minimizing muscle loss during weight loss is really important. And not all muscle mass loss during weight loss is equal (effectively the point of the article).
Intramuscular fat, organ fat, etc all registers as muscle on the DEXA, so when you lose muscle mass, it does not always mean lost muscle fiber.
IMO, this nuance is incredibly important. There is no real good way to pull the threads apart aside from measurement of strength.
In the past, as I have yo-yo’d up and down, not due to bulk or cut, but due to the nearly impossible discipline required for me to maintain a lean weight, I have always lost strength during weight loss. My 315 bench dropped to 265, my 500lb deadlift dropped to 400, and etc. but my performance in activities such as MTB had always improved because on a bike, lower body weight is a huge factor in performance.
With Reta, I not only dropped weight faster, but my dip in strength was much less, and now I am still losing weight slowly, while getting back to my pre-Reta strength.
NGL, I am highly motivated. I am also pinning Tesa, and on 120mg test c per week.
I have been on test c for 8 years, since I started I have found it nearly impossible to get truly lean. My appetite is just uncontrollable, and if I don’t eat, I get miserable. This and I have always lost strength when losing weight, even on test c.
Each experience is unique, so I am not suggesting my experience is the same for everyone, but in the 4 months I have been on Reta, the weight came off more quickly and effortlessly that I have ever experienced in my life.
Part of me feels as though the speed of the weight loss helped mitigate the more typical loss in strength.
And now back to the article and the nuance, the key point that struck me was the inadequacies of the dexa measures in the study. And the lack of nuance between muscle, fat, bone, etc.
Reta is strongly believed to reduce organ fat, which on a dexa would show up as loss of lean mass. I believe the same is likely true for loss of intramuscular fat (marbled muscle).
So, what are we left with? Without assessment of strength, the belief that muscle loss is occurring at the same rate on Reta as it does with any other weight loss program, because the dexa isn’t looking at lean organ vs fatty organ, or lean muscle vs fatty muscle.
I hypothesize that there is more to the story and the only evidence we have at the moment is strength gain/maintenance/loss.
Full stack:
Reta 4mg split dose
Test c 120 mg split dose (true hypogonadism, tested near zero and led to therapy)
Tesa 2mg 5/2
Wolverine .3mg 5/2
Creatine 10mg/day
