Want to cry, my cut was way worse than I expected, really disappointed.
I’m in exactly the same boat I was in during my early 30s when I’d put on weight and, whenever I tried to cut, I’d lose as much muscle as fat. Back then, I trained with Pete Wall at City Gym (ex-Junior IFBB champ who beat Lee Priest, so he knew his stuff). He was the first to highlight that I might have low testosterone, as my cut wasn’t going according to plan. I honestly thought being on 200mg of test would have spared my muscle.
I really wish I’d taken a DXA and photos before my January cut, stupid, I kept meaning to do it, then some things came up, and before I knew it I was three weeks in, so I didn’t see the point.
I went from 87 kg to 81 kg. I estimate my starting body fat at 13.5%, ending up at 10.7%. I really wanted to be just under 10%, so body fat wise I was close. I’d need to lose another ~1 kg of fat to hit 9.9%.
For reference, my last DXA in May showed total mass of 83 kg, lean 70.2 kg, 12.6% body fat. I’m now 80 kg total, 68.8 kg lean, 10.7% body fat.
Looking at it relative to my last scan, I’ve lost 2 kg of fat and 1.4 kg of muscle but it’s actually worse than that if you consider I started at 87 kg and 13.5% body fat. It looks like I’ve lost about 3kg of muscleand 3kg fat.
Good news is my bone mineral density is still improving, I'm getting very close to normal, from my start of borderline osteopenia.
I stopped Reta two weeks ago and have started increasing my calories slightly. Could this just be down to water/glycogen? I really thought two weeks would have been enough for things to settle. I was only on 2mg a week, slowly titrated up, hitting my protein targets 2g per kg.
Going to get blood work booked for next week, get started on P5P then get on cycle. Hoping this will get me back to nearer my Jan starting point with a little less fat.