I think this insight based on actual experience from the real world is very useful for everyone considering a cycle. Thank you for that.
When we are talking about retention in terms of overall gains and percentages are we talking about lean muscle or overall weight gained, which consists of glycogen, fat, retained water (many in the muscle) and lean muscle, or just lean tissue itself? I'm pretty sure it varies by person to person but still.
Also what is the ideal high-level approach after a first cycle to retain as much as theoretically possible. Proper timing, substance, calories compared to maintenance etc.
Thank you again for the information provided. I think it represents great value for everyone to have realistic expectations especially in a world of bro science and false information everywhere.
In my case I'm trying to gather as much information as possible before deciding to pull the trigger.
Since the percentages I mentioned are a very subjective estimate based on my own experience, they're also very generalized. I haven't performed tissue biopsies or conducted scientific studies on how much muscle athletes lose after a cycle, so we can only speculate here.
Let me explain in a little more detail what I mean. I'm not talking about percentages of total body weight in kilograms or even lean muscle mass, but rather a visual assessment and strength performance.
Water
The thing is, some of the weight you lose immediately comes from energy substrates such as stored glycogen and possibly creatine phosphate, as well as fluid retention caused by sodium. In other words, it's water that anabolic steroids help your body retain by binding it to different molecules.
Once the steroids leave your body, that water will no longer be retained, and within a few days you'll literally be pissing away your gains.
How much water you lose depends on the dosages and types of steroids you used, how elevated your estradiol was during the cycle, and many other factors. Your initial body weight also matters. Some people lose 2–3 kg, while others lose 8 kg if they're naturally big and accumulated a lot of water during the cycle.
Muscle
Muscle doesn't disappear immediately because muscle tissue first needs to be broken down into amino acids. How actively this happens depends on your genetics and what you do afterward. Are you doing proper PCT to slow down the catabolic effects of low testosterone? How quickly will your recovery happen? That's also partly genetic. Will you continue eating properly? Will you train in a way that maintains protein synthesis without breaking down too much muscle (or ideally, without breaking it down at all)? And what training volume should you use? That also depends heavily on genetics. I could keep listing factors for a long time, but to summarize: nobody knows exactly how things will go for you or how quickly you'll figure out WHAT WORKS BEST FOR YOU during this period to preserve as much of your gains as possible.
The longer you keep doing things incorrectly, the longer the muscles you built with supraphysiological hormone levels will continue shrinking. At the same time, strength performance is a reasonably good way to assess muscle retention, provided you haven't changed your training approach specifically to increase strength. That could distort the picture somewhat.
Fat
If you only look at body weight, you can easily get the wrong impression. During a cycle, all other things being equal, your body will generally burn fat more efficiently than before. But after the cycle, especially at the beginning when testosterone levels are low, fat can accumulate faster. This is often made worse by athletes who don't want to lose body weight for purely psychological reasons. They're afraid of seeing the number on the scale drop, so they start eating more. This strategy leads to even greater fat accumulation, considering that energy metabolism is different during a cycle and active muscle growth itself requires a lot of energy. So sometimes, four months later, your weight on the scale might be the same or almost the same as it was during the cycle, but your muscle-to-fat ratio will be completely different. Visually, you become a smooth, chubby little piggy
My conclusion
In the end, the picture often looks like this:
1. first the water goes away
2. then muscle gradually starts disappearing
3. while fat accumulates, at least some of the fat you lost during the cycle.
If you push calories too high, you'll accumulate even more fat, and your body weight may end up significantly higher than it was before the cycle. That's why my assessment is based on visual appearance, strength performance, and, by the way, a measuring tape. You can get useful information from measurements too, for example by comparing arm and waist circumference.
For example:
- During the cycle: arms 45 cm, waist 90 cm
- Immediately after the cycle, once the water is gone: arms 44 cm, waist 88 cm
- After PCT: arms 43.5 cm, waist 90 cm
- Two months after PCT and overeating: arms 44 cm, waist 94 cm
I decided not to write another entire manuscript about strength performance. If needed, I'll cover that in my next reply.
I think it took me half an hour to write that text
As for specific advice on what to do during PCT, I have an old article somewhere in my archives gathering dust. I'll find it and read through it. I wrote it a long time ago, and I'd probably rewrite some parts of it today. But overall, I would approach things based on the situation, simply thinking through several possible scenarios in advance. We can talk about this endlessly, but only after experiencing it yourself will you really be able to understand it through your own experience.
Maybe your experience will be completely different, and you'll tell me that everything I've written is complete nonsense and doesn't apply to you. And you know what? You'd be absolutely right
