Bulking on a low carb diet / Cycle Advice

Hi abzlove, I did run this cycle and my results were good! I actually ended up gaining almost a stone over the 6 weeks I was running it, although I'm sure it was not all muscle. After easing off on the calories and going back to my usual quite cardio-focused regimen, I kind of levelled out at around 175 lb or even a little less. So overall my weight went from ~170 lb -> ~180 lb max -> ~175lb... I'm not sure where that falls in terms of the average for a cycle like mine but I am happy with the results, visually even afterwards and months later there are clear and lasting changes in my musculature. I think I could have maybe kept more gains if I'd kept up the kind of lifting I was doing on cycle for longer afterwards, but equally I feel like I could probably easily gain a few more pounds "naturally" now when I get in the mood for weights again.

In retrospect, honestly I'm not even sure 6 weeks or the doses I did were necessary, even though they are quite conservative compared to the trend today. The majority of gains happened in the first 3-4 weeks, so if I was going to do it again I might not even bother with a 6 week cycle and do something like 20-30-30-20 over 4 weeks. I have no doubt this would still be quite effective, for me and my own physiology anyway.
 
That's great. Any adverse side affects from Anavar and Ibutamoren (MK-677)? Have you noticed any quick post workout recovery or any injury healing?

Did you recover fine after the cycle? Any blood work before and after?
 
I won't get into my own opinions of oral only runs but I'm curious as to why you tapered the anavar?
 
I can't comment on the drug regimen, as I've only taken sust, d-bol, and Winstrol (about 15 years ago). Wish I never took it. 4000 calories, wow that's a lot. I do however suspect that the abdominal discomfort is probably more from the excess protein than the carbs. The body is made to metabolize carbs as it's main energy source, and you should be eating 40 to 55% carbs. Think of what you need as maintenance and the macronutrient ratios. If you wish to gain or lose, you will be adjusting the carbs more than the others. 20% carbs is too low in my opinion.

As I suspect, the bloating and flatulence is probably due to the high protein. Whey protein can do this. However, super high fiber carbs like oatmeal can do this too. I would see what foods you react positively and negatively to.

At 5'4", 174lbs and lean I would consume about 2600 Kcal or alittle more. 3000 would make me gain body fat too fast. Anyways now I'm 160 and a little thicker than I'd like to be. I probably eat 2200 a day or less.
 
^^dear lord man that's like starvation calories. In contest prep I didn't drop below 2000 calories til the last two weeks and I'm 5' 6"and was around 155 at the time. Even then I was at around 1800 calories.
 
^ Lol.


abzlove said:
That's great. Any adverse side affects from Anavar and Ibutamoren (MK-677)? Have you noticed any quick post workout recovery or any injury healing?

Did you recover fine after the cycle? Any blood work before and after?
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No significant adverse effects to note, fortunately I did not get injured so can't really comment on that. Actually I'm not sure I noticed anything from the Ibutamoren specifically, I didn't get any of the usual side effects like sleepiness, hugely increased hunger, etc which lead me to wonder at times if I had got a bunk formulation... I'm still a little undecided but other people seem to report a good response to the specific brand I got, so who knows.

I didn't get pre-cycle blood work which I should have done, but I got post-cycle blood work with nothing abnormal to report. There was 1 slightly elevated liver enzyme, but I was told this was nothing to be concerned about necessarily, just maybe something to watch... and in my own estimation it may not necessarily have been from the Anavar. I can't remember off the top of my head which enzyme it was but I can have a look at the report if you're interested. I did monitor my blood pressure at times and it was mostly quite often hovering around "high-normal", 130-135~ / 80-90~, whereas usually it's more in the 115 / 70 range.

A friend also commented I seemed more stressed than usual, which, to be honest, I was, but I did have some other work related stresses going on in my life, and I feel like if I had instead had 6 weeks off just to chill and work out then the differences would not have been noticeable.


Swim15 said:
I'm curious as to why you tapered the anavar?
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I tapered it largely based on the (what I consider to be) good advice of some of the moderators of this forum, CFC and I believe also Genetic Freak, that tapering is the best way to get the most out of a steroid cycle while minimising the risk of any undesirable hormonal rebound when coming off. In summary, as I understand it, when tapering up, you are constantly increasing the levels of androgenic substances in your body, rather than starting on your max dose all at once and allowing it time to adapt, leading to diminishing returns after a shorter time. When tapering down, you give your body time to return to baseline gradually, thus mostly eliminating the need for a PCT. I know that nowadays, tapering is not the norm, but considered the reasoning to be sound and for me a low side effect and risk profile was an important factor in planning my cycle and tapering seemed a sensible way to achieve this.


ObieWan said:
I can't comment on the drug regimen, as I've only taken sust, d-bol, and Winstrol (about 15 years ago). Wish I never took it. 4000 calories, wow that's a lot. I do however suspect that the abdominal discomfort is probably more from the excess protein than the carbs. The body is made to metabolize carbs as it's main energy source, and you should be eating 40 to 55% carbs. Think of what you need as maintenance and the macronutrient ratios. If you wish to gain or lose, you will be adjusting the carbs more than the others. 20% carbs is too low in my opinion.

As I suspect, the bloating and flatulence is probably due to the high protein. Whey protein can do this. However, super high fiber carbs like oatmeal can do this too. I would see what foods you react positively and negatively to.

At 5'4", 174lbs and lean I would consume about 2600 Kcal or alittle more. 3000 would make me gain body fat too fast. Anyways now I'm 160 and a little thicker than I'd like to be. I probably eat 2200 a day or less.
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In retrospect, I do think I overshot the calories. I actually reduced to 3500 in the last few weeks because of this, but at the time I was just thinking I wanted to be sure to get the most out of my cycle and I didn't want lack of food to be something that held me back. Also at the time I was very active and working out a lot, but actually I wasn't able to train as much as I'd planned either because of those aforementioned pesky life stresses. However for me I do not believe 20% carbs is too low - I have done what you suggested with the food elimination thing and can only conclude that many carbs just do not react well with me. Nowadays I generally always try to keep my macros at 20/25/55 carbs/protein/fat and feel much better than days where I end up eating 50% carbs.
 
Vastness said:
I tapered it largely based on the (what I consider to be) good advice of some of the moderators of this forum, CFC and I believe also Genetic Freak, that tapering is the best way to get the most out of a steroid cycle while minimising the risk of any undesirable hormonal rebound when coming off. In summary, as I understand it, when tapering up, you are constantly increasing the levels of androgenic substances in your body, rather than starting on your max dose all at once and allowing it time to adapt, leading to diminishing returns after a shorter time. When tapering down, you give your body time to return to baseline gradually, thus mostly eliminating the need for a PCT. I know that nowadays, tapering is not the norm, but considered the reasoning to be sound and for me a low side effect and risk profile was an important factor in planning my cycle and tapering seemed a sensible way to achieve this.
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There are some large gaps in this reasoning with how the endocrine system works, primarily because your body doesn't understand a lower dose vs higher dose. It understand either 'receiving exogenous hormones" or "not receiving exogenous hormones" and responds accordingly. Either way, sounds like you got the results you were looking for so that is good to hear
 
Thanks. :) But, what you say about the endocrine system doesn't make sense to me - the body's response to exogenous hormones surely cannot be as binary as you describe... if it doesn't understand lower doses versus higher doses, then surely the whole concept of measured doses is a pointless irrelevance... this is obviously not true for any other system in the body so I don't see why the endocrine system would be any different.

Surely, the body will respond to a dose of exogenous hormones in a dose-dependant manner, with higher doses eliciting a greater response from the body's homeostatic mechanisms, and in the case of AAS a greater HPTA suppression, etc, etc... Right?
 
Vastness said:
Thanks. :) But, what you say about the endocrine system doesn't make sense to me - the body's response to exogenous hormones surely cannot be as binary as you describe... if it doesn't understand lower doses versus higher doses, then surely the whole concept of measured doses is a pointless irrelevance... this is obviously not true for any other system in the body so I don't see why the endocrine system would be any different.

Surely, the body will respond to a dose of exogenous hormones in a dose-dependant manner, with higher doses eliciting a greater response from the body's homeostatic mechanisms, and in the case of AAS a greater HPTA suppression, etc, etc... Right?
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In terms of purely HPTA function, not from what I have seen. Is there going to be a difference between 20mg of anavar a day and a 1000mg of testosterone per week? Yeah there will be some small difference there but, generally speaking, you are either taking exogenous hormones and your body shuts down natural production or you are not. Your body doesn't say "he is using 200mg a week vs 1000mg a week so we are going to shut down less" - just doesn't work that way.

It's slightly arguable with orals seeing as there is a relatively short half life and with dosing QD, you could probably argue that there is some potential for a drop in hormone levels throughout the day that is significant enough to maintain some small amount of HPTA function. That said, I've got blood work somewhere from years ago that shows I was almost entirely shut down after less than 10 days of anavar at 40mg. That leads me to think it's safe to say that suppression would be in full effect by several weeks in. This reasoning would be a little easier for some people to agree with on an inject run I think but IME it applies roughly the same.

So, ignoring any small differences from oral steroid half life, if you are taking an exogenous hormone then your endocrine system will shut down endogenous hormone production regardless of the dose. So, 20mg - shut down. 40mg - shut down. 100mg - shut down. The half life is so short that stopping 100mg vs 40mg vs 20mg all at once will be the same for all practical purposes since a day or two later, everything will have cleared - although, if it were me personally, I'd allow a couple extra days before PCT to allow metabolite clearance. That's been my experience and supported from the literature and blood work I have personally seen.
 
I actually dosed BID almost exclusively. That is really surprising to me that you were shut down after less than 10 days at 40mg... not because I actually know what I'm talking about though obviously, it's just contrary to most of what I've read should happen at that kind of dose.

I just realised also that when I said I had "blood work" done earlier in the thread, this wasn't the kind of blood work that, probably, the poster who asked about it was referring to. I had blood work to check my lipid profile, liver function and a couple of other things, I was planning to get this done anyway and since it was a few weeks after I had finished my cycle and I was feeling fine, I didn't feel the need to bother with the added expense of getting my hormones checked... so as it stands I really have no idea the effect my cycle had on my natural testosterone.

To be honest I had always assumed that any significant shutdown of natural testosterone and/or any other hormones would be something that I'd be able to "feel"... and I never really felt that bad during my cycle (a little stressed at times as I mentioned, but I can put this down to other life factors...), so I kinda presumed that because of that and my apparently conservative dosing, I was doing fine on that front. Perhaps I was wrong though.
 
For some reason that thought process on shutdown and conservative dosing seems pretty apparent but so far I haven't seen blood work to support it although it may be out there.

Hey, if you didn't feel it, congrats and lucky guy haha. I did two oral only runs before adding in testosterone and felt very mediocre on cycle and like death during PCT. By far the worst part of the experience for me
 
Vastness said:
Thanks. :) But, what you say about the endocrine system doesn't make sense to me - the body's response to exogenous hormones surely cannot be as binary as you describe... if it doesn't understand lower doses versus higher doses, then surely the whole concept of measured doses is a pointless irrelevance... this is obviously not true for any other system in the body so I don't see why the endocrine system would be any different.

Surely, the body will respond to a dose of exogenous hormones in a dose-dependant manner, with higher doses eliciting a greater response from the body's homeostatic mechanisms, and in the case of AAS a greater HPTA suppression, etc, etc... Right?
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Essentially the response to exogenous dosing only occurs if you're still in a range that the body considers to be physiological. But anavar does tend to shut guys down completely over about 20-30mg.

The reason we were encouraging you to taper up is to offset the body's tendency for homeostasis. When you're coming off, we generally suggest dropping right down to a nominal TRT level dose for a couple weeks to give various anabolic pathways a chance to meet the new natural homeostasis without the crash you would get stopping cold (unless perhaps you're running an ester like undecylenate etc with a decent natural taper).

No need to pyramid at the end though really. Even I'm not that old school ;)
 
^ No pyramiding at the end eh? OK, so just out of interest and to improve my understanding a little for next time, would you advise something more like 10-20-30-40-50-60-10-10 for an 8 week Anavar taper? Or maybe 10-20-30-40-10-10 for 6 weeks?

I guess the last 2 weeks in either case are kind of like a PCT and aren't going to do much in the way of adding growth. While tapering down I didn't notice much growth anyway and the bulk of the noticeable, acute effects were already over, I guess this is to be expected.
 
Adding the 10mg at the end is only going to keep you somewhat suppressed most likely while likely not providing enough androgen replacement for a male. Guess the main thing is that tapering down doesn't provide any additional benefit and at the same time prevents you having an environment for optimal recovery (i.e. no exogenous androgens). While I've never been an advocate of tapering for a few reasons, I could definitely see an argument for tapering off something like a higher doses inject run though. For orals, IME, just drop it at 60mg or whatever for some of the above mentioned reasons
 
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Serotonin101 said:
^^dear lord man that's like starvation calories. In contest prep I didn't drop below 2000 calories til the last two weeks and I'm 5' 6"and was around 155 at the time. Even then I was at around 1800 calories.
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Well 2200, and allow another 5-800 from alcohol... I'd probably maintain my weight on 2500 or so. Also I'm pretty sedentary now.
 
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