And that's another week in the bag!
Basic stats
Male
Mid-40's
5'10/178cm
Weight as of this morning - 75.9.kg/167.3309lbs (Down from 76.5.kg/168.6536lbs)
Rolling 7-day average is down 0.8kg/1.7637lbs (tiny bit higher than last week)
Estimated body fat - Down 0.3% (I'm using a withings scale, I know it's not super accurate, but I'm watching trends - fwiw since starting withings thinks I'm down 1.4% BF total and up 1.3% muscle mass)
Average resting heart rate - 46-48 (same as last week)
Average blood pressure - 112/69 (was 113/71)
Current dose - 1mg reta previously, yesterday I upped to 2mg
Thoughts and observations
The main thing of note here is that nothing really changed from last week, everything I reported then is still true this time around. The only difference now is I decided to up my dose to 2mg instead of 1mg.
This isn't a result of "I don't think this is working" because it clearly is, I see it visibly, the numbers show it, everything tells me it is. The only reason is because in the last couple of days before pinning it gets a bit more difficult.
It will be interesting to see how much of a correlation there is between dose and heart-rate and I'll update on any sides but I think it'll be fine.
Muscle retention rant
Probably going to go on a bit here but this has been playing on my mind quite a bit over the last week or so, especially after I saw the trends from my withings scale showing consistently higher lean mass numbers and smaller fat numbers.
Taking that at face value, it means that I'm burning fat and building muscle. I definitely am burning fat, as for building muscle I'm uncertain, but what I feel more certain about is that I'm not losing muscle. And that's one of the things that I was concerned about with reta. I said it in my initial post, I want to get lean and retain as much muscle as possible, but everywhere you read reta is portrayed as some muscle eating compound that you could shoot into the Hulk to change him back into Bruce Bana.
But I don't think that's the case.
So here's a few points I've been mulling over that I want to bring up.
1. All the studies show something like 25-30% lean mass reduction on people taking Reta. But this is misleading. The knee-jerk reaction of the world seems to be that lean mass = muscle, but that's not true.
Lean mass has a lot of things to it, and when talking about muscle specifically, it's not even all muscle. There's a lot of water in it (do a heavy leg workout that you feel the next day, I can easily weigh 1kg more than I should), intra-muscular fat, all sorts of things that add up to that number. But we see lean mass on the studies, and people immediately think muscle.
2. Again, the studies. Most of the people in these studies are suffering from clinical obesity and a whole host of other chronic issues, and from what I gather, there's a lot of much older people in the studies as well.
This is important because you have not only people who are metabolically broken, but also probably not doing all of the things you can do to minimise the loss of lean mass when in a calorie deficit. And that leads me nicely onto the next point.
3. Unless you're on a good dose of TRT, juice to the gills with SARMS (or something similar), or you make a swishing sound when you move because your pinning so many peptides into you on a daily basis, then anyone on a calorie deficit is going to lose some lean mass.
Anyone. Everyone.
And that's referring to a regular diet, eating less than you're expending.
The human body is great, incredible, it does a lot of things really really well.
But it's not perfect. You can't figure out the golden ratio of calories in vs. calories out with ideal muscle stimulus and decimal correct protein amounts and think the body will flip a switch and say "I'm only going to be burning 100% fat now". It's not THAT good. If you're in a deficit and losing weight, some will be lean mass.
Sure, you can tweak and do the right things, and minimise the ratio, but you will lose lean mass. End of.
4. This is the point that stands out to me the most, and it's kinda wild that I don't see anyone talking about it now that I've thought about it for a while.
Lean mass to total body weight ratio.
Here's a very rough example to get the idea.
You take someone that's overweight, 50% of their total weight is lean mass, the rest fat.
That person loses weight, let's say with a GLP. And when they reach their goal, scans show they lost 30% lean mass.
Shocking, right? Or is it?
That person started with a lean mass to total weight ratio of 0.5 (for every lb of weight, 0.5 of it was lean mass, the rest fat).
But at the end of the journey, because only 30% of the total weight they lost was lean mass, that means the other 70% was fat.
So now, instead of having a ratio of 0.5 it's probably more like 0.7. They've gone from half of their weight being lean mass to 70% of their weight being lean mass. Not only is that healthier, but that will visibly look a ton better, as well as feeling immensely better.
But this ratio is never highlighted, it's only the "30% lean mass/muscle gone" without giving it the proper nuance it actually needs.
So now that I've rambled way too much, my point is this. I think it's very possible to retain a very good amount of muscle (I said muscle not lean mass for a reason, read above
)on Reta with just a few simple steps.
1. Easy calorie deficit, nothing too extreme. (I understand this might not be the case for everyone, some people have a lot more weight to lose, so you do you).
2. Adequate protein amounts. 1 gram of protein per estimated lb of lean mass (important distinction, lean mass, not muscle).
3. Proper stimulus for the muscles. You don't need to smash the gym 20x per week, just a few workouts where you have 1 or 2 sets in most muscle groups getting within 1-2 reps of failure should do it (I always like to push 1 set to absolute failure on most lifts where viable, don't do this for barbell squats and other compounds etc.)
4. Decent rest and recovery. This is when all of the work you put in is turned into something more than just work. Don't neglect sleep and recovery.
And that's it, rant over. I've typed way too much for something non-work related so I'm out.
Onto the next!
