I train every other day. Maybe he splits it so one day is chest, another is arms, and so on.
I hit a complete stop at 5 mg, 7.5 mg, and 10 mg with no further loss. Then I switched straight from 10 mg tirz to 2 mg reta and the food thoughts came rushing back. Never switch cold turkey between the two.
Eight weeks in on 1 mg Reta. I ride 40-50 miles a week at zone 2 pace and lift two or three times a week. Appetite is so low that hitting even 1000 calories is a struggle.
Tirz works for me like a snorkel when you are underwater. It turns an old-style diet into something I can actually keep doing.
Sweets are my main trigger and I think it ties into the addiction side and the dopamine hit. Alcoholism runs in the family, and when people stop drinking they often switch to sugar. I remember my great uncle had a candy drawer at my grandparents. I copied that when I quit and still keep one, though I reach for it less now because it can turn into a small binge and works against my goals. I only allow it on days when I have over 14k steps at work and can fit it into my numbers.
That snorkel comparison actually works pretty well.
That is impressive, though my body is already feeling phantom soreness just thinking about that long stretch of workouts.
There is a big gap between making the fight easier and just raising the dose until you cannot eat enough to gain. Do not treat my words as exact, since English is my second language and I may not be as precise as I would like.
You are going to lose muscle if you keep eating that little. I would be careful.
My weekly DEXA scans show muscle is holding steady so far. Tesamorelin and enclomiphene are helping. Even before Reta I was already on 1200-1600 calories a day, just with worse food and alcohol. Those are gone now.
Even with those compounds it is not possible to avoid breaking down muscle under 1000 calories. You will find out the hard way unless your calorie count is off. A 40-50 mile ride burns roughly 1500-3500 calories for most people.
That is still the weekly deficit on top of eating under 7000 calories. I am just calling it as I see it. Sorry if you do not want to hear it, but I tried.
Eight weeks in and the DEXA scans look good. Muscle is staying strong with good pumps since I added tesa and creatine. Body fat keeps dropping and I am ten pounds from goal. I do not need to listen when I can see the data and I have decades of experience knowing what works for my body.
For five years I fasted, ate only whole foods, and drank only water. I never counted calories because the foods did not come with labels. I ate steak, chicken, seafood, and nuts, and did 72-hour fasts that felt great. I worked out fasted every morning and got back to my high-school weight of 175 lb. Fasting made burning fat straightforward, but my A1c stayed prediabetic. Reta brought all my numbers back to normal for the first time in 15 years.
My worry is that if I eat much less I will not know if I am getting proper nutrition. Without tracking how will I know what is actually working or build better habits? The GLP-1s made weight loss far easier than anything I tried before, even the Mexican diet pills. It became doable. Tirzepatide is a miracle for me, but I think people who just pin and hope will run into other problems later. You might lose the weight but lose health along the way.
How about never jumping from two-thirds of a max dose straight to a starting dose without expecting the obvious result? I went from 5 mg Tirz to Reta in a similar way and had no issues. If you look at it from the right angle you still cannot really see where the switch happened.
I am still pretty new to these drugs so I am missing something. I thought they all reduce food noise. I have only used Reta and at 1 mg a week it completely quiets it for me. Why would switching from Tirz to Reta matter if both quiet the noise? Or is it because you dropped from 10 mg to 2 mg and your body did not respond to the new one at all?
I was on 5 mg Tirz twice a week and wanted to split with Reta. When I swapped one Tirz pin for Reta I started at 2 mg, then 3 mg the next week and 4 mg the week after. Almost no side effects and I probably could have gone straight to 4 mg. Now I am at 5 mg Tirz and 5 mg Reta split.
Tirz is generally seen as stronger on food noise and satiety while Reta with the glucagon part gives better overall numbers in studies. Some people still do better on Tirz from what others report.
I think the strong appetite suppression at 10 mg became my new normal. I was wrong. Stay low as long as you can. When switching, taper down slowly if you were on a high dose. This advice might change if I suddenly see big results at 4 mg in three or four weeks. I would still have been doubtful about running both at once even after reading the stories. Food noise is bad enough, but regaining around the waist is worse. I had to learn it the hard way.
After a little over two months on the split, if I could only pick one I would go with Tirz. I like doing both and the glucagon effect from Reta, but food suppression is clearly better with Tirz. I thought 5 mg Tirz and 4 mg Reta would be about equal and was not feeling it with the Reta, so I raised it to 5 mg and might go to 6 mg. I have tried three different Reta vials from three places.
I used frequent small doses and raised my Reta level quickly without the big risk of overshooting and getting sides while levels dropped. I took three 2.5 mg Tirz doses during the bridge, one of them before a trip to Orlando and Vegas.
I had zero side effects on Tirz. At 3 mg split into 2 and 1 I felt slight nausea, so I am being cautious now. How often and how small were the doses you took?
I had AI pull the details together. You can search my name plus the word bridge to find what I posted earlier. Right now I am 185 lb on 20 mg Reta, 2.5 mg Tirz, and 1 mg Elora weekly. The Tirz lets me say I am still on it. Elora is meant as a step-down tool for maintenance and Reta is handling the last 10 lb.
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