Neptide
Explorer
I’ve also been thinking about dividing Tirz and Reta. Appreciate it
Less Is More: Handling the Impulse to Raise Your Dose or Stack More Peptides
- Thread starter Neptide
- Start date
Gr33dyOctopus
Explorer
That is exactly how it should be done.woundcarping said:
sheilarae74 said:
I constantly feel the pull to expand my stack, yet I'm hopelessly wishy-washy about it—it's honestly embarrassing. For the time being, I'll simply keep digging into the research and stay focused on reaching my target weight with reta. That is, unless I stumble upon a solid gb covering something I've got on my list.
If you simply purchase every option, there’s no need to make a choice…
Neptide
Explorer
Precisely. Great strategy! And yes, I could picture Test C being part of my own path down the line. Wishing you the best!
Neptide
Explorer
That's fantastic — congratulations! Really impressive.
Neptide
Explorer
I've got a vial of AOD on hand, and I plan to give it a shot. Based on what I've been hearing, the optimal approach appears to be taking it on an empty stomach and then heading to the gym.
Neptide
Explorer
I’m on board with that mindset too. If you aren’t tracking it, you can’t control it.
skeptick
Explorer
My instinct has always been that if a small amount works, a larger amount will work even better...
Naturally, that mindset has backfired on me repeatedly. Peptides included... At this point I'm running 4 different peptides...
Refer back to the first paragraph...
lessthanhalf
Explorer
My take is that this is usually the wrong way to go about it. The exception might be if you're using GLP drugs without starting from obesity, meaning you're taking them for cosmetic reasons or to lower fat percentage, which is a different situation. Outside of that, I don't believe stacking low dose GLPs, or adding other peptides on top of GLPs at low doses, is a good idea in most cases. Doing so raises the chance of side effects and allergic reactions while not delivering better results than simply using higher doses of a single GLP.
When the drug is being used for what it's meant for, treating obesity, then tuning the dose so that very long term treatment remains tolerable is critical, and that includes having reasonable hunger control. If you use tiny doses and just push through hunger, that's not really different from dieting without the drug at all, and the nonstop mental strain of restraining eating while hungry wears people down, and in the end they run out of willpower and regain the weight. What makes these drugs valuable is that they can break that cycle, ideally for good, and achieving that depends on solid hunger control. Hunger will never drop to zero unless the drug is also making you feel quite sick, because the body's appetite regulation system is extremely complex and has a lot of redundancy. But it does need to reach the point where what you decide to eat comes close to matching the calorie intake needed to lose weight and keep it off long term. The notion that you can retrain your body to accept a lower calorie diet permanently is largely wishful thinking. It's not impossible to achieve major long term weight loss without drugs or surgery, but it demands extreme lifestyle changes that must become long term unconscious habits, and the probability of succeeding at that is genuinely terrible, only a few percent. Losing weight and maintaining that loss on GLPs calls for 1 injection per week, and while better lifestyle habits are a good idea, they aren't necessary for the drugs to work.
Neptide
Explorer
Haha. That's basically my whole life. When 1 works, I can't help but go for 10.
I'm carrying extra weight, I lack self-control, and I will definitely make a drastic lifestyle overhaul so that I never return to this weight again. GLP1s make that possible for me.
Aren't we attempting to address the root problem? Not merely aiming to shed the pounds?
The OP wanted to know how to keep impulsive behavior in check so they don't escalate too quickly. Well, that same impulsive outcome-craving fixation is also responsible for a great many kilos.
GPL1s let you drop weight, but they aren't magic. Fixing the deeper problems and maintaining health is still something you have to do yourself.
Trial data can definitely be misread, so please check out some of Dr. Jones's materials on the lowest effective dose and titrating upward.
lessthanhalf
Explorer
On that point I partly agree, partly don't.
Back in 2022 I weighed 145kg, which is very overweight. At the time I thought GLP medications cost far too much for me to afford, though I had gone through the studies.
Over roughly a year I went from 145 down to 75 kg. My intake was 1600-1800 kcal/day, built mostly from lean meat, fruit, vegetables and salad — foods that are generally low in calorific density. I placed a hard ban on anything high calorie, highly rewarding or high glycaemic index, and kept protein very high at 40-50%. What I had noticed before was that even small quantities of rich, high calorie food would set off overwhelming hunger an hour or 2 afterward, and after weight loss that reaction got much stronger, and once it began it was very difficult to halt. My guess is it involves blood sugar spikes, then dips, then something going wrong in brain chemistry, producing extreme hunger. Whatever the mechanism, it is still food addiction or binge eating disorder. Between 2014, when I was 65kg, and 2022, I reached 145.
For about a year I held around that weight ( 75kg ), yet it was difficult and hunger was almost constant even though I had built the diet specifically to keep hunger down. So in most respects I had solved the problem, using diet and behavioural strategies on myself to control eating, but there is no way it was sustainable long term. I had got to normal weight in the past but could never stay there for more than a year or 2. At some point I would give in and eat too much after being just too hungry for too long.
Then I learned that in Australia a low dose of ozempic was not super expensive, around $40/w aud. It made me less hungry, but it also brought nausea that did not improve across a year. After that I came across this forum and cheap peptides, and tirz 15mg/w plus reta 5mg/w plus cagri 0.5mg/w control hunger and cravings for not allowed foods far better. I still follow the no high calorie foods approach and have done so for 3.5 years now, but on GLP drugs it is nowhere near as hard as it was without them and feels like it might be sustainable. This absolute avoidance of high calorie trigger foods is not going to be for everyone, but it worked for me. And I got to 65kg recently at a BMI of 23.
My view of GLP drugs is that they alter appetite: you feel less hungry, you feel full after fewer calories, they produce some food aversion so high calorie foods seem less appealing, they lower cravings for high calorie foods and reduce thinking about food overall, and most importantly of all they still do this after you have lost a lot of weight, where normally hunger is massively increased.
GLP drugs also do work regardless of diet or lifestyle changes, the studies that gave the drugs alone or with diet and exercise interventions did not really show much difference in weight loss, and they improve diet choices unconsciously, people are more likely to eat and buy fresh fruit and vegetables and less likely to buy and eat ultraprocesssed food when they are on GLP drugs. They temporarily modify the functioning of some brain reward circuitry to do this.
GLP drugs are being considered as therapies for binge eating disorder, for the simple reason that they work. Most therapies for that disorder are psychological, mainly cognitive behavioural therapy , which can help, but is not very effective. In general there is a bit of an issue with a psychologist's way of viewing the disorder and a more medical therapy viewpoint. Until GLP drugs the only approved therapy was amphetamines, which help a bit but not a lot. But this field issue is a problem, in general psychologists are going to view it as a problem that needs therapy, not something fixable with drugs, so a lot of what I have seen is from their perspective which does not view them as a solution regardless of how well they work. From what I have read GLP drugs are probably the most effective therapy for binge eating disorder yet found, but this is far from the current consensus, and I would argue this is because of the way it is seen by the people who usually treat it, psychologists, who view it as a problem to be managed with therapy, usually cognitive behavioural ( which in general is a very useful and effective treatment for many psychological and psychiatric disorders, and is often better than medication )
Just from my experience GLP drugs do reduce impulsive or otherwise poorly controlled eating behaviours. Mainly by rewiring the reward circuitry so that the underlying impulse or desire for the food is weaker, and this effect works on other addictions, for alcohol, cocaine amphetamines and opioids, to the point where they are also being considered seriously as therapies for these problems and being actively researched. In my case I had decided to exclude a wide range of foods from my diet totally to bypass this problem, so it is not as easy to say how hard it would have been to start doing this on GLP's, but I can definitely say it is much much easier to stick to it long term with them , and requires a lot less mental effort fighting those impulses, because they are not as strong.
For me GLP drugs are literally lifesaving , were I to regain the 80kg I lost I would be at very high risk, well over 50% of serious cardiovascular disease over the next decade, with a risk reduced to 10-20% with GLP drugs, weight loss and statins etc. Despite having lost the weight without GLP drugs, I do see them as the closest thing there has ever been to a long term solution to obesity, short of surgery which is not without adverse effects. In general all of the research ever done on reducing obesity with diet and exercise shows initial successes with very poor long term results, with single digit percentages ever maintaining major weight loss long term. So as far as I am concerned diet and exercise , as a treatment for obesity do not work, or at best help a bit or temporarily. GLP drugs so far show weight loss and maintenance up to 5 years from start to end of study, with no trend to increased weight over time if the dose used to lose the weight is maintained, and depending on which drug, can cause an average of 15-29% weight loss, much more than diet therapies could ever achieve. And after that 5 years , when the GLP was stopped weight started going up immediately.
In people especially with severe obesity including those with binge eating or food addiction disorder, GLP drugs help to fix the problem. The appetite regulation system in long term obesity gets broken somehow, in a way that is not fully understood as the appetite regulation system is extremely complicated, redundant and full of all sorts of feedback loops. Until GLP drugs there was nothing that really worked , best previous drugs had at best 5-8% weight loss, and weight loss surgery is no picnic. And weight loss , good diet and exercise do not fix the broken appetite regulation system. After weight loss , especially massive weight loss, energy expenditure is quite a bit lower than would be expected for a person of that age and activity level, and hunger is higher than normal. This is the impossible state of trying to maintain weight loss without GLP's. Having to stick to a lower than normal, low calorie diet long term, despite your body telling you it is hungry all the time, which is exactly what I have experienced, requiring 1600-1800 kcal/day to be weight neutral. Which is why so few people succeed in long term weight loss from diet and exercise, so it does not really help to develop excellent eating and exercise patterns, a very small percentage can do it, and develop unconscious habitual patterns of new behaviour with exercise and diet , so that weight can be maintained without constant mental effort in controlling eating, but even then the basic energy equation is fighting you , requiring less calories in at the same time as more hunger. The only fix for this problem that exists so far is GLP drugs.
And taking them long term benefits health, reducing risks of many diseeases related to obesity, so it is not a trade off of weight control for bad health outcomes, you get both better health and lower weight. So long as side effects do not reduce quality of life while taking them, there are very few downsides to GLP drugs. Apart from the extreme cost if you are using the legit versions.
Back in 2022 I weighed 145kg, which is very overweight. At the time I thought GLP medications cost far too much for me to afford, though I had gone through the studies.
Over roughly a year I went from 145 down to 75 kg. My intake was 1600-1800 kcal/day, built mostly from lean meat, fruit, vegetables and salad — foods that are generally low in calorific density. I placed a hard ban on anything high calorie, highly rewarding or high glycaemic index, and kept protein very high at 40-50%. What I had noticed before was that even small quantities of rich, high calorie food would set off overwhelming hunger an hour or 2 afterward, and after weight loss that reaction got much stronger, and once it began it was very difficult to halt. My guess is it involves blood sugar spikes, then dips, then something going wrong in brain chemistry, producing extreme hunger. Whatever the mechanism, it is still food addiction or binge eating disorder. Between 2014, when I was 65kg, and 2022, I reached 145.
For about a year I held around that weight ( 75kg ), yet it was difficult and hunger was almost constant even though I had built the diet specifically to keep hunger down. So in most respects I had solved the problem, using diet and behavioural strategies on myself to control eating, but there is no way it was sustainable long term. I had got to normal weight in the past but could never stay there for more than a year or 2. At some point I would give in and eat too much after being just too hungry for too long.
Then I learned that in Australia a low dose of ozempic was not super expensive, around $40/w aud. It made me less hungry, but it also brought nausea that did not improve across a year. After that I came across this forum and cheap peptides, and tirz 15mg/w plus reta 5mg/w plus cagri 0.5mg/w control hunger and cravings for not allowed foods far better. I still follow the no high calorie foods approach and have done so for 3.5 years now, but on GLP drugs it is nowhere near as hard as it was without them and feels like it might be sustainable. This absolute avoidance of high calorie trigger foods is not going to be for everyone, but it worked for me. And I got to 65kg recently at a BMI of 23.
My view of GLP drugs is that they alter appetite: you feel less hungry, you feel full after fewer calories, they produce some food aversion so high calorie foods seem less appealing, they lower cravings for high calorie foods and reduce thinking about food overall, and most importantly of all they still do this after you have lost a lot of weight, where normally hunger is massively increased.
GLP drugs also do work regardless of diet or lifestyle changes, the studies that gave the drugs alone or with diet and exercise interventions did not really show much difference in weight loss, and they improve diet choices unconsciously, people are more likely to eat and buy fresh fruit and vegetables and less likely to buy and eat ultraprocesssed food when they are on GLP drugs. They temporarily modify the functioning of some brain reward circuitry to do this.
GLP drugs are being considered as therapies for binge eating disorder, for the simple reason that they work. Most therapies for that disorder are psychological, mainly cognitive behavioural therapy , which can help, but is not very effective. In general there is a bit of an issue with a psychologist's way of viewing the disorder and a more medical therapy viewpoint. Until GLP drugs the only approved therapy was amphetamines, which help a bit but not a lot. But this field issue is a problem, in general psychologists are going to view it as a problem that needs therapy, not something fixable with drugs, so a lot of what I have seen is from their perspective which does not view them as a solution regardless of how well they work. From what I have read GLP drugs are probably the most effective therapy for binge eating disorder yet found, but this is far from the current consensus, and I would argue this is because of the way it is seen by the people who usually treat it, psychologists, who view it as a problem to be managed with therapy, usually cognitive behavioural ( which in general is a very useful and effective treatment for many psychological and psychiatric disorders, and is often better than medication )
Just from my experience GLP drugs do reduce impulsive or otherwise poorly controlled eating behaviours. Mainly by rewiring the reward circuitry so that the underlying impulse or desire for the food is weaker, and this effect works on other addictions, for alcohol, cocaine amphetamines and opioids, to the point where they are also being considered seriously as therapies for these problems and being actively researched. In my case I had decided to exclude a wide range of foods from my diet totally to bypass this problem, so it is not as easy to say how hard it would have been to start doing this on GLP's, but I can definitely say it is much much easier to stick to it long term with them , and requires a lot less mental effort fighting those impulses, because they are not as strong.
For me GLP drugs are literally lifesaving , were I to regain the 80kg I lost I would be at very high risk, well over 50% of serious cardiovascular disease over the next decade, with a risk reduced to 10-20% with GLP drugs, weight loss and statins etc. Despite having lost the weight without GLP drugs, I do see them as the closest thing there has ever been to a long term solution to obesity, short of surgery which is not without adverse effects. In general all of the research ever done on reducing obesity with diet and exercise shows initial successes with very poor long term results, with single digit percentages ever maintaining major weight loss long term. So as far as I am concerned diet and exercise , as a treatment for obesity do not work, or at best help a bit or temporarily. GLP drugs so far show weight loss and maintenance up to 5 years from start to end of study, with no trend to increased weight over time if the dose used to lose the weight is maintained, and depending on which drug, can cause an average of 15-29% weight loss, much more than diet therapies could ever achieve. And after that 5 years , when the GLP was stopped weight started going up immediately.
In people especially with severe obesity including those with binge eating or food addiction disorder, GLP drugs help to fix the problem. The appetite regulation system in long term obesity gets broken somehow, in a way that is not fully understood as the appetite regulation system is extremely complicated, redundant and full of all sorts of feedback loops. Until GLP drugs there was nothing that really worked , best previous drugs had at best 5-8% weight loss, and weight loss surgery is no picnic. And weight loss , good diet and exercise do not fix the broken appetite regulation system. After weight loss , especially massive weight loss, energy expenditure is quite a bit lower than would be expected for a person of that age and activity level, and hunger is higher than normal. This is the impossible state of trying to maintain weight loss without GLP's. Having to stick to a lower than normal, low calorie diet long term, despite your body telling you it is hungry all the time, which is exactly what I have experienced, requiring 1600-1800 kcal/day to be weight neutral. Which is why so few people succeed in long term weight loss from diet and exercise, so it does not really help to develop excellent eating and exercise patterns, a very small percentage can do it, and develop unconscious habitual patterns of new behaviour with exercise and diet , so that weight can be maintained without constant mental effort in controlling eating, but even then the basic energy equation is fighting you , requiring less calories in at the same time as more hunger. The only fix for this problem that exists so far is GLP drugs.
And taking them long term benefits health, reducing risks of many diseeases related to obesity, so it is not a trade off of weight control for bad health outcomes, you get both better health and lower weight. So long as side effects do not reduce quality of life while taking them, there are very few downsides to GLP drugs. Apart from the extreme cost if you are using the legit versions.
5byfive
Explorer
Working as a therapist focused on addiction and eating disorders, my view is fairly firm: BED has been placed in the wrong category. It fits far better under substance abuse disorders. The psychological and neurological processes involved line up much more closely with that framework. With substance abuse problems, GLPs appear to offer some benefit — not a cure, but in my view they will likely be recognized as a meaningful adjunctive treatment — and my expectation is that they would perform even more strongly for BED.
Beyond that, I suspect they may also prove useful for other eating disorders. In terms of brain mechanisms, eating disorders and substance abuse disorders share considerable overlap. Just don't say this to anyone in the ED therapist world. I have never encountered a group so closed off, so convinced of their own moral high ground, so sealed within their own bubble. Bring up GLPs at all and they will show up with pitchforks. Getting these medications accepted as a treatment is going to be an uphill battle.
lessthanhalf
Explorer
Reading between the lines of google scholar papers, my hunch about the territorial disputes surrounding BED and GLP's wasn't far off.
Their concern that anorexic patients might use them doesn't strike me as entirely unfounded.
Dietitians have also published plenty of papers arguing GLP drugs are harmful.
What a shame, because my takeaway is that for addictions and BED alike, GLP's appear to be among the most promising and effective treatments, working even when someone isn't actively trying to solve the problem, and overdoses landing people in the emergency department are cut in half among those who happen to be on GLP's. Still, these kinds of issues restrict the research that gets funded, since it clashes with how people see the world.
Having dealt with addictions to both drugs and food myself, I strongly agree there are some fairly significant parallels. Even my approach to handling it looks similar: I simply have to accept that certain chemicals hook me very easily and must be avoided completely, and extending that same reasoning to foods that trigger the same intense reactions appears to be working, complete avoidance, because for me the just a little won't hurt mindset genuinely doesn't work.
Their concern that anorexic patients might use them doesn't strike me as entirely unfounded.
Dietitians have also published plenty of papers arguing GLP drugs are harmful.
What a shame, because my takeaway is that for addictions and BED alike, GLP's appear to be among the most promising and effective treatments, working even when someone isn't actively trying to solve the problem, and overdoses landing people in the emergency department are cut in half among those who happen to be on GLP's. Still, these kinds of issues restrict the research that gets funded, since it clashes with how people see the world.
Having dealt with addictions to both drugs and food myself, I strongly agree there are some fairly significant parallels. Even my approach to handling it looks similar: I simply have to accept that certain chemicals hook me very easily and must be avoided completely, and extending that same reasoning to foods that trigger the same intense reactions appears to be working, complete avoidance, because for me the just a little won't hurt mindset genuinely doesn't work.
BNLFL
Explorer
There's no other right response.woundcarping said:
sheilarae74 said:
I constantly feel the pull to expand my stack, yet I'm hopelessly wishy-washy about it—it's honestly embarrassing. For the time being, I'll simply keep digging into the research and stay focused on reaching my target weight with reta. That is, unless I stumble upon a solid gb covering something I've got on my list.
If you simply purchase every option, there’s no need to make a choice…
Smiter
Explorer
Setting aside eating disorders or substance abuse disorders, when you examine the mental side, it becomes obvious that a major driver behind obesity's stubbornness is poor hunger regulation. Ghrelin has to be part of that picture. In the same way, cravings connect to dopamine. And the likeliest explanation for ghrelin being so out of control in people with obesity may not be simple ghrelin overproduction, but rather leptin resistance.
Individuals are accountable for what they choose and do. None of that rules out hormones influencing the mind. That much cannot be disputed. So once someone recognizes the problem, they should follow it with intentional effort and steps aimed at fixing it. If someone must stay on GLPs for life because they can't manage their hunger pangs, then beyond just weak willpower and poor self-control, it's also a clear indicator of a brain that isn't working properly, possibly brought on by long-term exposure to the unregulated activity of the offending hormone.
If leptin resistance is at the root, checking your satiety is a solid way to find out whether that applies to you. On the satiety index, potatoes rank highest. When people still want high-calorie foods after being satiated by potatoes, that points to leptin resistance being in play.
My approach would be to use GLp's until the body clears the leptin resistance, and as time passes, healthy routines should rewire the brain away from unhealthy ones. There's a reason Atomic Habits is among the most read books in the world.
Individuals are accountable for what they choose and do. None of that rules out hormones influencing the mind. That much cannot be disputed. So once someone recognizes the problem, they should follow it with intentional effort and steps aimed at fixing it. If someone must stay on GLPs for life because they can't manage their hunger pangs, then beyond just weak willpower and poor self-control, it's also a clear indicator of a brain that isn't working properly, possibly brought on by long-term exposure to the unregulated activity of the offending hormone.
If leptin resistance is at the root, checking your satiety is a solid way to find out whether that applies to you. On the satiety index, potatoes rank highest. When people still want high-calorie foods after being satiated by potatoes, that points to leptin resistance being in play.
My approach would be to use GLp's until the body clears the leptin resistance, and as time passes, healthy routines should rewire the brain away from unhealthy ones. There's a reason Atomic Habits is among the most read books in the world.
UpDownLeftRightAS*
Explorer
Neptide
Explorer
Without a doubt. That's exactly right. Quality of Life! That's what I'm aiming for.
Mr. Blonde
Explorer
HahahaCMA Pooky said:
Holding out for @Mr. Blonde to show up and simply tell me to blast it!
