My experience as a new Reta user

[Scraps]

Hi everyone. Before I got going I wanted comparison data, so I figured I'd share my own experience for anyone else in the same spot.

Some background: I'm a man, 40yo, 6 foot tall. In the past I worked as a martial arts instructor and had a few fights, so I was strong and athletic, though nobody would have described my physique as bodybuilder-like. A few years back, following a couple of injuries, I quit training almost entirely. My job keeps me very sedentary, so the weight crept on fast.

Natural loss was sluggish and all over the place. Staying consistent meant living on a huge deficit, and it was dragging me down.

After doing some reading I settled on Reta. Before starting, at my heaviest, I was 225lb and 30% bf.

I couldn't decide on a starting dose, but went with 2mg. The first injection brought on fairly extreme gastric distress. Put bluntly, the gates of hell opened and everything ive eaten since I was 6 years old shot out of me with just about enough thrust to achieve near earth orbit. The results showed up fast, though. Not surprising given how much water weight I dropped over the first 2 days.

It calmed down fast, and I began noticing genuine changes. Reta isn't the best at quieting food noise, I know, and I'd have to agree. Food still crosses my mind quite a bit, yet most of the time I simply have no hunger. When I do eat, fullness hits almost immediately, but soon after I sometimes want more. It's as if my appetite got cut by 50%, while my capacity to eat got cut by 90%.

A few weeks in I moved up to 3mg, since that appetite suppression just wasn't showing up. Nothing new in terms of side effects, but I adapted pretty fast and the hunger came back stronger.

For 5 weeks now I've been on 4mg. During the first 2 weeks at 4mg I got the skin sensitivity. Not painful, but clearly there. My wife was using it as well, though at 3mg the sensitivity was unbearable for her. She switched to Tirz.

I step on the scale every day. Most days show a small drop, and it rarely bounces upward. On average I'm shedding about 2.5lb weekly, and I've gone from 225 down to 193. Hunger is a bit more noticeable now, but since I seem prone to the sides I don't want to keep pushing the Reta higher, so I'm considering adding a bit of Tirz to help.

Honestly, I'm slightly disappointed with how the weight loss is going. My goal weight was 185, but truthfully once I'm there I suspect I'll still need more to lose the last of the belly fat. My arms look far more defined, my legs never carried fat, but the middle section still seems a little fluffy!

My first dose was on the 1st of May, and these days I take it every 6 days.

Lean mass loss worried me too, but I'm at 23%bf now, so out of the 30lb lost I count 22lb as fat. My goal is no longer a number on the scale, but reaching 14% bf before I rebuild lean mass.

I hope this helps anyone new who's just starting and may end up on a similar path.

 

[BNLFL]

Everything's fine apart from 1 issue — though that's just how I see it. Stepping on the scale daily is going to make you crazy. It certainly did for me. 1 day the number drops, the next it climbs a lbs or two. So I weigh myself 1 time per week. Since 1/9/26 I'm down 50lbs, and only 5lbs remain before I hit goal. Those final 5 seem like a bitch. Last week I put on 0.2lbs. Not a big deal in the grand scheme, but coming off an average of 2.2lbs/week, it was a shock.

 

[notfatanymore123]

One bit of advice. Do some exercise, at least a little. Keep a set of resistance bands at work. Spend 5 minutes an hour lifting. Get a brisk walk in at lunch. That will very likely double what you get out of this.

 

[Scraps]

Yeah, I get why stepping on the scale every day turns some folks off. Since I work as an analyst, though, a single weekly reading feels way too vague for my taste! I know weight can swing by as much as 1kg within a day, so I keep that in mind. Still, as I mentioned, pretty much each day has shown at least a small drop.

 

[Scraps]

notfatanymore123 said:

One bit of advice. Do some exercise, at least a little. Keep a set of resistance bands at work. Spend 5 minutes an hour lifting. Get a brisk walk in at lunch. That will very likely double what you get out of this.

Yeah, that's honestly the area where I struggle most at the moment. Since I'm already on TRT, I've been leaning on it to try to limit lean mass loss, but I know I need to put in more effort on my own. At the moment I don't belong to a gym, though I plan to start training at home again, even if it's just some light bodyweight work.

 

[notfatanymore123]

Scraps said:

notfatanymore123 said:

One bit of advice. Do some exercise, at least a little. Keep a set of resistance bands at work. Spend 5 minutes an hour lifting. Get a brisk walk in at lunch. That will very likely double what you get out of this.

Yeah, that's honestly the area where I struggle most at the moment. Since I'm already on TRT, I've been leaning on it to try to limit lean mass loss, but I know I need to put in more effort on my own. At the moment I don't belong to a gym, though I plan to start training at home again, even if it's just some light bodyweight work.

Do push-ups, sit-ups, and squats. Perform as many repetitions as possible. 3 sets, 3 days per week.

 

[nkresho]

You're counting on reta to carry too much of the load here. Meeting it halfway is genuinely necessary. A fitness tracker showing 10k steps every day. Heavy lifting 2-4x each week. Those really aren't optional. Particularly when you're only 40. Sorry if that comes across as blunt.

If you ever come off reta, I can picture a scenario where you end up with more fat than you began with. Are you planning to stay on reta forever? What's your plan for getting off?

Being in a caloric deficit without anything driving muscle gain (or retention) means you're definitely burning through muscle, which lowers your resting metabolic rate. Without the stamina, you'll end up looking like a flabby marathon runner.

I really don't want to ask this, but how are your macros? Are you hitting enough protein?

What do your labs show for t? Is E2 where it should be? Are you running an ai?

 

[HouseCat]

Scraps said:

Yeah, I get why stepping on the scale every day turns some folks off. Since I work as an analyst, though, a single weekly reading feels way too vague for my taste! I know weight can swing by as much as 1kg within a day, so I keep that in mind. Still, as I mentioned, pretty much each day has shown at least a small drop.

Plenty of folks prefer stepping on the scale every day for exactly that reason—you end up with so many readings that no single one feels as emotionally loaded, or carries as much "weight," haha

Sadly, my own relationship with the scale is messy enough that I can't do it more than 2x per week. It's a bummer, since those data points would be really useful to me. And there's at least 1 peer-reviewed paper indicating that weighing daily ranks among the strongest predictors of keeping maintenance weight off (that was before GLP-1s existed, so I'd assume maintenance meds are probably part of the best predictors these days.)

 

[lessthanhalf]

nkresho said:

You're counting on reta to carry too much of the load here. Meeting it halfway is genuinely necessary. A fitness tracker showing 10k steps every day. Heavy lifting 2-4x each week. Those really aren't optional. Particularly when you're only 40. Sorry if that comes across as blunt.

If you ever come off reta, I can picture a scenario where you end up with more fat than you began with. Are you planning to stay on reta forever? What's your plan for getting off?

Being in a caloric deficit without anything driving muscle gain (or retention) means you're definitely burning through muscle, which lowers your resting metabolic rate. Without the stamina, you'll end up looking like a flabby marathon runner.

I really don't want to ask this, but how are your macros? Are you hitting enough protein?

What do your labs show for t? Is E2 where it should be? Are you running an ai?

I disagree very strongly with that perspective, at least when it comes to shedding weight or fat. Nothing there is exactly false, but it amounts to guidance on how to proceed without reta, rather than alongside it, or else using reta only at lower doses with weaker effects while treating everything like a standard diet and exercise regimen. Better eating and more movement are not bad things in themselves, yet as a long-term weight loss plan they fail, or at minimum they fail over the long haul for all but a small minority. That kind of approach is built more around maximizing strength and physique than around weight reduction.

In practice, not everybody possesses the time, energy or drive to exercise in ideal amounts, and plenty of people struggle to do any at all, particularly those with severe obesity. So although activity is beneficial for health, it is not an absolutely required component of losing weight through GLP drugs. Choosing to use the GLP drugs for weight loss even without exercise leaves you far better off than doing neither. Frequently, beginning exercise once weight has come off is simpler and comes with lower injury risk than exercising while obese.

The same holds for eating patterns. GLP drugs suppress appetite, which is their primary mechanism, so a calorie deficit and weight loss should occur even with no special effort. Raising protein intake is sensible, 1.5g/kg/body weight, to limit muscle loss during weight loss. GLP drugs also nudge food choices toward healthier options without deliberate effort. A better diet is sensible, but the drugs do not strictly require it to work.

The best result is improved diet, exercise and weight loss, all of them maintainable over the long term. Still, using these drugs to lose weight and winding up with "the physique of a flabby marathon runner without the stamina", even if unfit and eating a non ideal diet, will nonetheless improve overall health and sharply lower the odds of a large number of serious long term health problems.

As for exit strategies, I am not at all convinced there is much to gain by treating these drugs as a short term treatment, since that essentially strips away their single biggest advantage over diet and exercise for weight loss: unlike diet and exercise, they are easy to keep taking, and therefore easy to keep the weight off long term, as long as you do not stop them. If you do stop them, most people will regain most of the weight. With more severe obesity it is a no brainer, stay on them forever, you will be thinner, have higher quality of life and be protected from a lot of serious long term health problems. For less severe obesity or overweight persons it is less critical, but only because the health risks are less dramatic, while the underlying process is no different, the only treatment I know of short of surgery that reliably produces and maintains weight loss long term is GLP therapy continued indefinitely. I suspect that in the not too distant future a very substantial percentage of the population will be on them, just like statins or blood pressure medications, especially if cheap enough and preferably in tablet form.

 

[Scraps]

HouseCat said:

Scraps said:

Yeah, I get why stepping on the scale every day turns some folks off. Since I work as an analyst, though, a single weekly reading feels way too vague for my taste! I know weight can swing by as much as 1kg within a day, so I keep that in mind. Still, as I mentioned, pretty much each day has shown at least a small drop.

Plenty of folks prefer stepping on the scale every day for exactly that reason—you end up with so many readings that no single one feels as emotionally loaded, or carries as much "weight," haha

Sadly, my own relationship with the scale is messy enough that I can't do it more than 2x per week. It's a bummer, since those data points would be really useful to me. And there's at least 1 peer-reviewed paper indicating that weighing daily ranks among the strongest predictors of keeping maintenance weight off (that was before GLP-1s existed, so I'd assume maintenance meds are probably part of the best predictors these days.)

Sure, I get why that approach works for others. Personally, I prefer to spot patterns as fast as I can. Logging every day lets me connect changes in my weight to my water intake, my activity level, and what kinds of food I ate.

Numbers alone might not mean much, but once you add in what happened on the days before, the whole situation becomes clearer. That's how it works for me, anyway!

 

[Scraps]

nkresho said:

You're counting on reta to carry too much of the load here. Meeting it halfway is genuinely necessary. A fitness tracker showing 10k steps every day. Heavy lifting 2-4x each week. Those really aren't optional. Particularly when you're only 40. Sorry if that comes across as blunt.

If you ever come off reta, I can picture a scenario where you end up with more fat than you began with. Are you planning to stay on reta forever? What's your plan for getting off?

Being in a caloric deficit without anything driving muscle gain (or retention) means you're definitely burning through muscle, which lowers your resting metabolic rate. Without the stamina, you'll end up looking like a flabby marathon runner.

I really don't want to ask this, but how are your macros? Are you hitting enough protein?

What do your labs show for t? Is E2 where it should be? Are you running an ai?

Hey, thanks for getting back to me — no harshness taken. I knew I was dumping a massive block of text, so in places I probably trimmed things too far, and I get why that could have made you sigh in frustration.

My daily activity has a ceiling. I'm at a desk for an emergency service 12/13 hours a day, and I rotate between day and night shifts. So when I'm on shift, getting to 10k steps simply isn't something I can manage. An under-desk bike crossed my mind, but I doubt it would actually deliver much value.

Genuine recomposition doesn't seem realistic to me. What I intend to do is drop my weight through the caloric deficit first, then dial the reta back so the deficit shrinks or I can run a surplus and add muscle.

Going by the numbers I laid out earlier, the fat I'm shedding is 3x what I'm losing from everything else, and that "lean mass" figure will take in water and glycogen from the point I began.

Protein is dialled in — it's the anchor of my calorie intake. I get at least 1g/kit daily, and if a craving does hit, it'll be chicken, an egg or two, or possibly a protein shake.

The TRT comes via a clinic, and with 1 year in and things settled, labs happen every 3 months. Every marker came back fine apart from E2, which ran slightly high. My guess is the extra adiposity drove it. Right now I'm on 0.5mg of Anastrozole each week, though I'm hoping to come off it once body fat comes down.

Thanks once more for replying — I really do appreciate it.

 

[nkresho]

Sure thing — my comment came from viewing you as somebody who recalls being in excellent condition as a physically active martial artist. The aim was encouragement rather than criticism, so it seems it landed the right way. On top of that, being under 200# at 6' tall suggests you have the ability (you can handle the workouts), though it sounds like the obstacle to training is scheduling or where it sits among your priorities. I completely understand both. From what I've seen, when your priorities line up, you'll naturally come up with inventive solutions to reach what you're after. Put another way, if training mattered enough to you, you'd surely make room for it.

Getting off the ai would be my first move, whatever it takes. Over the long haul, I genuinely believe test only TRT is the best route. Dial everything in so e2 stays managed without needing synthetic suppression. I wish it weren't the case, but working out helps here too. Dropping the fat certainly will, though you aren't holding much of it anyway.

Supplements that may help with estradiol:

• If you aren't already on Zinc, I'd strongly suggest adding it. 15-30mg per day
  
• D3 (20+mcg) together with k2 (100-200mcg) each day
  
• Boron too, 3-10mg per day
  
• Magnesium glycinate (I prefer taking it before sleep since it can aid sleep a bit). roughly 400mg per day
  
• Plus a good omega 3 (I gave the enteric coated NOW brand a try recently and they're much better at avoiding that awful burp-up.

These aren't strictly tied to estrogen, but a methylated multivitamin and a methylated b complex are solid additions for overall wellbeing. Particularly while you're lowering calories and probably narrowing the range of foods you eat.

About the exit strategy — when I made that remark, I wasn't thinking short term, more about the idea of what happens once you hit your goal weight? Dropping reta to a maintenance dose is one option, but do you really want to rely on it forever? I'm a big fan of reta and what it's done for me and for others so far, yet honestly I think everyone should have a lifelong plan for after the goal is reached. It isn't testosterone, where you're in it for life (as I am), but I'd personally prefer not to need it daily if that's possible.

 

[Scraps]

No worries at all, man. Sure, I get that habits tend to outlast motivation. The problem for me is that I can't squeeze it in unless I give up either extra sleep or family time.

Starting the AI was something I felt genuinely reluctant about, since I'm aware it's not ideal for the long haul. Still, the high E symptoms were hitting me hard. The sequence has to be: bring that under control first, drop the weight alongside it, then lower the Reta so a clean bulk becomes possible.

Once I carry more muscle, my BMR ought to climb enough that I won't have to eat at such a low calorie value to prevent weight gain. Back before Reta, doing 4 solid high intensity sessions each week, I had to keep under 1600 cals a week to shed weight. That amount was simply too small to sustain!

Appreciate all the supplement ideas, I'll definitely check them out. I took a magnesium supplement for a stretch but honestly felt nothing from it. That's basically been my result with nearly every supplement. Someone gave me 3 months of mushroom gummies, and several friends swore they were incredible for them, yet I noticed absolutely nothing!

 

[nkresho]

During my first appointment at a TRT clinic, they kept steering me toward Thorne multivitamins. The visit itself was great, but that Thorne line costs a fortune (this was a boutique clinic). Spending $80 every month on vitamins isn't something I want to do. They convinced me that vitamins matter and that methylated forms have advantages, yet their own product didn't win me over...

So I went to amazon and picked up vitamins that were mostly the microingredients brand. Basically the following day. Much less money, and you get roughly 3 months' supply out of it.

After going through quite a few articles, the supps listed above seem to be broadly regarded as solid additions to TRT. I may have overlooked a couple more.