How to break through a plateau?

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Kyli

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Hey Everyone,

I'm taking Reta now for about 2.5 Month. Currently 2.5mg 2x Week. And the weight really went down. In this time I lost about 14kg. But now for about 1.5 Weeks (since I added Tesa to my stack), the weight even went up. My CW is currently 131kg, the lowest weight was 129kg. And now currently I have no idea, what to do next. Because now I'm at a point, where I'm also loosing my motivation.

The 130kg mark is some kind of a magical number for me. It was my weight for a long time. Even with 5x Week Sport (15 years ago), I wasn't able to get below it.

Besides Reta, currently I do IF from 17/18:00 to 12:00. tbh. the weeks before I was eating a strict carnivore diet. But the last 2 weeks I got more fruits, well because of the summer I want to eat some Watermelons, Raspberries, e.g. But I'm still in a deficit of about 750-1.000 kcal / day.

You know, when I started with Reta, nearly every day I got a new lower number on the scale. But now... It's depressing....
 
Are you on a high fat carnivore diet, or low fat? Are you exercising? You may be at a new equilibrium? Or maybe you just need to give it more time? 750-1000 kcal deficit is a lot. Don't give up.
 
Being discussed here also

1.5 weeks is not significant. It is normal to fluctuate based on water retention, hormones, etc.

Here’s what I posted on the other thread re: stall:

CICO. You can’t outrun math.

What happens as you lose weight is that the daily caloric requirement to maintain your current weight drops. It doesn’t take as much energy to fuel a smaller body compared to (your former) larger one. Over a longer period like several months (daily or even weekly fluctuations are not significant) a stall means you are eating the amount of calories needed to maintain your current weight.

You must drop caloric intake, increase daily caloric expenditure, or both. Reta helps with both, but not without some help from you, especially later in the game (after you’ve already lost weight).

To decrease intake, count calories and eat fewer of them. Simple! Eat foods that are less calorie dense that are high in protein and fiber to fill up faster and protect lean muscle. To increase expenditure, lift weights. Maintaining muscle burns more calories than maintaining fat and a more muscular body burns more calories per pound at rest than a fatter body.

Last point - maybe you’re doing all of this. You have a leaner more muscular smaller body. Muscle weighs more than fat, so weight might not drop, but the body is leaner and healthier. Your goal is not to lose weight, it is to lose fat. The number on the scale is not the real metric that matters.
 
Kyli said:


Hey Everyone,

I'm taking Reta now for about 2.5 Month. Currently 2.5mg 2x Week. And the weight really went down. In this time I lost about 14kg. But now for about 1.5 Weeks (since I added Tesa to my stack), the weight even went up. My CW is currently 131kg, the lowest weight was 129kg. And now currently I have no idea, what to do next. Because now I'm at a point, where I'm also loosing my motivation.

The 130kg mark is some kind of a magical number for me. It was my weight for a long time. Even with 5x Week Sport (15 years ago), I wasn't able to get below it.

Besides Reta, currently I do IF from 17/18:00 to 12:00. tbh. the weeks before I was eating a strict carnivore diet. But the last 2 weeks I got more fruits, well because of the summer I want to eat some Watermelons, Raspberries, e.g. But I'm still in a deficit of about 750-1.000 kcal / day.

You know, when I started with Reta, nearly every day I got a new lower number on the scale. But now... It's depressing....

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Tesa causes water retention. Water weights. Now you got it.
 
I'm on a high fat diet. But it's not carnivore anymore. Lets say it, Carnivore + Fruits. But still no processed food junk. Currently I don't exercising more than regular work in household and garden.

ultima thule said:


Tesa causes water retention. Water weights. Now you got it.

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I know. Currently I'm at a point, where I even doubt, if Tesa is even the right way...
 
Kyli said:


I'm on a high fat diet. But it's not carnivore anymore. Lets say it, Carnivore + Fruits. But still no processed food junk. Currently I don't exercising more than regular work in household and garden.

I know. Currently I'm at a point, where I even doubt, if Tesa is even the right way...

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I think people add Tesa to their stack too early. And with all due respect, ya are the one as well. It is peptide which I would add when the body fat is really low, but still stubborn belly fat doesn't want to vanish. I'm chasing 10% body fat level, and when or if I achieve it, and still have no visible six pack, gonna consider using Tesa. Imo no point to start it while having more than 10 - 12% bf....
 
Tesa does not improve/increase weight loss. It is an established and well-researched drug. The recomposition effects also reverse after stopping.
 
I experienced a stall from weight loss with Tirz (I know its different lol) I lost quickly at first, then it slowed or stopped for a couple months, and now my loss is slow but consistent. I know the depressing feeling, and I had those same thoughts you do.

My suggestion is focus on finding your Reta dose and timing that works best for you and dialing that consistency in. Find the dose that produces the effects you want, and sit there for as long as you can. You are only 2.5 months in lovie!!! These drugs work, we just have to give them the time they need to do so...

Tesa makes you retain water (from what I hear) can I ask why you added that to your stack?
 
Stace_wow said:


Tesa makes you retain water (from what I hear) can I ask why you added that to your stack?

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The idea behind Tesa was to get rid of the visceral fat. Because I think it's more important than the SQ fat tissue. I know, that the fatty acids, that are going to be released still needs to be oxidized and burned. But the visceral fat around the belly area is my main problem. And I wanted to get rid of it asap.
 
ultima thule said:


I think people add Tesa to their stack too early.

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^ this.

Kyli said:


the weeks before I was eating a strict carnivore diet. But the last 2 weeks I got more fruits, well because of the summer I want to eat some Watermelons, Raspberries, e.g. But I'm still in a deficit of about 750-1.000 kcal / day.

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You’re holding water from the Tesa and from the extra carbohydrates you’ve added through fruit over the past two weeks.

Kyli said:


But now for about 1.5 Weeks (since I added Tesa to my stack), the weight even went up.

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I’d be willing to bet that most of the weight you’ve gained over the past few weeks is water.

Kyli said:


The idea behind Tesa was to get rid of the visceral fat. And I wanted to get rid of it asap.

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You’ll still lose visceral fat without Tesa as long as you’re losing weight. You can worry about targeting it specifically once you’re closer to your goal weight, if needed.
 
I don't get adding in tesa for visceral fat when reta is already a visceral fat bazooka. Would not even consider until I was at goal weight and just focused on recomp. Just one opinion.
 
It is not really a true stall or plateau unless you have been on decent doses of the drug for a year or more.

At this point you have lost a lot of water weight and probably a fair bit of fat as well with -14kg in 2.5 months, just as a guess 5kg water and 9 of fat. then you added in a drug that causes fluid retention, Tesa, so any short term changes after that are likely fluid retention, and this extra fluid will stay there till you stop the tesa. If the number of calories you eat per day has not changed you are almost certainly still losing fat at the same rate regardless of what the scales say.

You are not losing weight at an excessive rate, 1kg per week at most. No idea what side effects if any, but why not increase the dose of reta? And why are you losing motivation so soon? Is the diet/exercise you are sticking to, hard to stick to? Are you hungry all the time? All of these can be fixed by increasing the dose to make it more tolerable, by making you less hungry.

Eating fruits like raspberries or watermelons are not going to hurt unless you are trying to stay in ketosis, the number of calories per gram in either of them is tiny and you would have to eat kilos per day to get any significant number of calories in , to the point where it is likely impossible not to lose weight eating a lot of them, as you just cannot eat that many kilos per day of those types of low calorific density fruits, no matter how hard you try, and your gut is likely to give up from that much fruit long before the calories become relevant. I actually used this strategy to help maintain my weight before I found grey glps, eating a kilo or 2 of strawberries or raspberries with high protein yoghurt per day.
 
^ This, it’s likely water retention, which is common with tesa and will likely settle in a few weeks. You’re still very early in your lifelong health journey. Be patient and focus on how you feel as opposed to the number on the scale
 
ColdSmoke said:


^ This, it’s likely water retention, which is common with tesa and will likely settle in a few weeks. You’re still very early in your lifelong health journey. Be patient and focus on how you feel as opposed to the number on the scale

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I added gh back in right after starting Reta and initially gained more lbs than I had lost but it started coming down again after about 2 weeks.
 
lessthanhalf said:


And why are you losing motivation so soon? Is the diet/exercise you are sticking to, hard to stick to? Are you hungry all the time? All of these can be fixed by increasing the dose to make it more tolerable, by making you less hungry.

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Well, I can try to pin next time 3mg instead of 2.5mg. Or to add Cagri to the stack.

Well, tbh. I have no idea, why I'm loosing the motivation. Maybe because I want instant gratification? Or because I saw nearly every day a new number on the scale but now the effect is gone?

And about the food noise and hunger... I don't know. Even if I ate the last time at 17:00 and will work in my garden the next day in the morning, I have no problem to eat the first time at 12 or 13:00. But it's a strange feeling. I don't feel that I'm hungry. But something is in the background. It's like when I say that I'm not angry and my GF says: I see, that you are angry.

Also there is the fact, that I tried to go under 130kg before, even for a long time and was not able to. Even with prescribed medication. I've been taking Alvalin at that time.

Redz said:


I added gh back in right after starting Reta and initially gained more lbs than I had lost but it started coming down again after about 2 weeks.

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ok, I did a little bit more research and decided to continue with Tesa for some time. I will take 2mg / day. Mo-Fr. Let's see, how it will develop.

You know, somehow even through writing with you guys, it gives motivation back. 🥰
 
At 2.5 months you're just getting started. And, your body is adapting to the new "system" now in place with reta/peptides. Are you using a smart scale? Maybe you are losing fat and gaining water weight? Also, you should really consider some amount of resistance training. Maybe something as simple and exercise bands if you're not interested in the gym/lifting.

For me, I've experienced multiple stalls and had mini panics because it feels so good seeing the scale drop. But I started measuring my actual waistline. It continued to improve despite the weight remaining the same. I have been consistently adding in resistance training, getting 10k / ok on average, etc. So some of my "stall" was due to some muscle mass/adding water.

For reta, I do one bolus instead of splitting up over the week. For the majority it was E6D but after my recent stall (nearly at my body fat % goal and things just get harder here/your body adapts), I've moved to E5D. Seeing some improvement, though I intend to ultimately return to the 6 days routine and lower to a maintenance dose.
 
I know what you mean about losing motivation but if your dose is enough, it becomes more of a minor annoyance than something that will derail you. I would have given up over ten times by now, because there are always parts of the process where you think about how long it's taking, why is it slowing down, you can't believe that you'll ever reach your goal, etc. A week and a half or even three or four weeks is just noise if you know you're eating at a deficit.

For the last month I was also retaining water and was bloated much of the time (possibly because I'm taking sermorelin) and my weight barely went down. But I knew I was eating at a deficit and that it would pass, and the scale started to go down again just this week.
 
As a few pointed out, CICO is a very hard and fast rule. Energy in - out = surplus or deficit.

What people struggle with is energy out because we don't really know the exact expenditure. We can only make an educated guess.

Retatrutide is the only GLP drug amongst many that directly increase BMR, but even then you can't cheat CICO.

I totally get your struggle. Before I started reta, 240lb was my hard plateau and short of 5 day water fasting, nothing worked. Now I am on TRT, reta and some anabolics so I am got some muscles and tehcnically still over 240lb, but my waist circumference reduced by 10cm.

You havne't told us how much you consume daily.
 
Honestly, I don't get it. Yesterday I was at about 130,5kg and today in the evening I'm close again to my lowest weight of 129.2kg. And this after drinking a lot of water, 2L bottle of water + 1-2L Tea and another liquids. But I also was working today on my car in the sun and my T-Shirt was sweaty after that. So after drinking and without pooping I'm back again at my minimal weight. And it kinda feels good. But last time, I upped the dose of reta by 0.5mg / 1mg Week.

Let's see, how the journey will continue. The worst side effect so far is, that my shorts are falling down 😉
 
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