Weight loss is a secondary benefit for me....

[rkbleddyn]

Nice work on the beer. Liquid carbs is what beer is, and I doubt anything else packs on pounds quite the same way. Despite being on Tirz, and despite my appetite being wiped out by it, I'm aware that putting away 5 beers would still be easy for me. That's a big part of why I stay away from alcohol — honestly the main part — because I enjoy it far too much. A GLP-1 that removed my desire for beer would be nothing short of a miracle drug.

It's a secondary benefit in my case as well. Same goes for my wife. Over 2 years have passed since she began Semaglutide, and she's down 40 lbs. Pre-diabetic was her status, plus she had other problems too. For well over a year now she's been sitting at her goal weight, and her labs look freaking amazing — I'm definitely jealous. And through all of it her dose has stayed at .25mg, never higher.

As for me, my BP has been brought down by Tirz more than by any BP med I've tried, and my labs have gotten better too, my glucose especially, which went from 106 to 83. There are still 29 lbs I need to shed, I appear to be stuck, and at only 1.5mg I'm still dealing with GI sides. My appetite is zero. The slowing of gastric emptying is an effect I really hate, even though it has benefited me.

 

[ChicagoFit]

Airborne Daddy said:

So for roughly 18 months I've cycled through all of the big 3, and/or stacked glp1's together. During the first 4 months I dropped about 22lbs, and after that nothing. The scale won't budge. I figured my nightly 1500 calories of alcohol were to blame. So I stopped drinking for more than a month (well, 5 beers spread across 35 days) and only lost one more pound. I bumped the gym up to 5x a week and began walking with my dog wearing a 30lb pack, a mile here and a mile there, still no movement on the scale.

From day one I've been a slow responder, and now I'm pretty sure it's the pam gene or something wrong with my thyroid.... started at 249, currently 226. I take 9mg reta/6, and sometimes 9mg tirz every 6 days. The good news? I began with stage 2, borderline stage 3 fatty liver plus liver fibrosis F2 (F4 means cirrhosis)....A1C was 6.3, glucose 114 and triglycerides 399. TODAY no fatty liver (3%) fat. Moved to stage F0-F1 fibrosis, A1C is 5.5, glucose 92 and triglycerides 158.... My point is even if you dont lose the 50lbs or 100lbs you wanted, dont write off the other benefits. Cutting my drinking 95% surely helped, but 35 days doesnt explain all the improvements. Continue Mission.

@Airborne Daddy This brought me genuine happiness to read. I'm aware of how much you give to this forum, your efforts to keep up with peptide developments, and your commitment to bettering your own life. It makes sense that you'd feel frustrated when the scale doesn't move as much as you'd hoped. But you actually did something better: you changed the way you define what real success looks like. I can recall plenty of moments in my own life when I measured myself against other people, only to realize that comparison steals your joy. The only fair benchmark is who I was before. Today you gave me that reminder, and I'm thankful for it.

 

[Airborne Daddy]

WLBLD said:

Airborne Daddy said:

WLBLD said:

Airborne Daddy said:

So for roughly 18 months I've cycled through all of the big 3, and/or stacked glp1's together. During the first 4 months I dropped about 22lbs, and after that nothing. The scale won't budge. I figured my nightly 1500 calories of alcohol were to blame. So I stopped drinking for more than a month (well, 5 beers spread across 35 days) and only lost one more pound. I bumped the gym up to 5x a week and began walking with my dog wearing a 30lb pack, a mile here and a mile there, still no movement on the scale.

From day one I've been a slow responder, and now I'm pretty sure it's the pam gene or something wrong with my thyroid.... started at 249, currently 226. I take 9mg reta/6, and sometimes 9mg tirz every 6 days. The good news? I began with stage 2, borderline stage 3 fatty liver plus liver fibrosis F2 (F4 means cirrhosis)....A1C was 6.3, glucose 114 and triglycerides 399. TODAY no fatty liver (3%) fat. Moved to stage F0-F1 fibrosis, A1C is 5.5, glucose 92 and triglycerides 158.... My point is even if you dont lose the 50lbs or 100lbs you wanted, dont write off the other benefits. Cutting my drinking 95% surely helped, but 35 days doesnt explain all the improvements. Continue Mission.

It seems like your health is improving a lot, even if you haven't hit the target you set. You brought up thyroid—have you gotten it tested yet with a complete panel (including antibodies to check for Hashimoto's too)?

Nope, though I plan to get it done via Labs MD or that other service I recently tried, Fitronics I believe..... in the past tsh and uptake came back within range, but t3 and free sat right at the lowest acceptable end. t4 was never tested. Appreciate it man.....

Ask them to run the complete panel including free & reverse, plus the 2 antibody tests. My results came back in range, and I was the one who had to request those, after which it was "oh u have hashimotos". Seriously.... I hope you manage to get it sorted out! I'm still working on it ha ha

Bro, years back I remember requesting thyroid labs, and she did tsh uptake plus t3 total and free....everything came back normal. Yesterday I went through my self paid labs from labs md and noticed that back in 2017 my tsh and t3 were good, but t4 total and free were way low....so I ordered thyroxin from our indian friends and booked a blood test for 78.00 tomorrow. I'm going to check baseline, then go with 50mcg a day and retest at 6 weeks. After that I'll let my PA know what she needs to do.....

WLBLD said:

Airborne Daddy said:

WLBLD said:

Airborne Daddy said:

So for roughly 18 months I've cycled through all of the big 3, and/or stacked glp1's together. During the first 4 months I dropped about 22lbs, and after that nothing. The scale won't budge. I figured my nightly 1500 calories of alcohol were to blame. So I stopped drinking for more than a month (well, 5 beers spread across 35 days) and only lost one more pound. I bumped the gym up to 5x a week and began walking with my dog wearing a 30lb pack, a mile here and a mile there, still no movement on the scale.

From day one I've been a slow responder, and now I'm pretty sure it's the pam gene or something wrong with my thyroid.... started at 249, currently 226. I take 9mg reta/6, and sometimes 9mg tirz every 6 days. The good news? I began with stage 2, borderline stage 3 fatty liver plus liver fibrosis F2 (F4 means cirrhosis)....A1C was 6.3, glucose 114 and triglycerides 399. TODAY no fatty liver (3%) fat. Moved to stage F0-F1 fibrosis, A1C is 5.5, glucose 92 and triglycerides 158.... My point is even if you dont lose the 50lbs or 100lbs you wanted, dont write off the other benefits. Cutting my drinking 95% surely helped, but 35 days doesnt explain all the improvements. Continue Mission.

It seems like your health is improving a lot, even if you haven't hit the target you set. You brought up thyroid—have you gotten it tested yet with a complete panel (including antibodies to check for Hashimoto's too)?

Nope, though I plan to get it done via Labs MD or that other service I recently tried, Fitronics I believe..... in the past tsh and uptake came back within range, but t3 and free sat right at the lowest acceptable end. t4 was never tested. Appreciate it man.....

Ask them to run the complete panel including free & reverse, plus the 2 antibody tests. My results came back in range, and I was the one who had to request those, after which it was "oh u have hashimotos". Seriously.... I hope you manage to get it sorted out! I'm still working on it ha ha

Were you the one who started iodine drops?

 

[Airborne Daddy]

MFGamesta said:

Airborne Daddy said:

So for roughly 18 months I've cycled through all of the big 3, and/or stacked glp1's together. During the first 4 months I dropped about 22lbs, and after that nothing. The scale won't budge. I figured my nightly 1500 calories of alcohol were to blame. So I stopped drinking for more than a month (well, 5 beers spread across 35 days) and only lost one more pound. I bumped the gym up to 5x a week and began walking with my dog wearing a 30lb pack, a mile here and a mile there, still no movement on the scale.

From day one I've been a slow responder, and now I'm pretty sure it's the pam gene or something wrong with my thyroid.... started at 249, currently 226. I take 9mg reta/6, and sometimes 9mg tirz every 6 days. The good news? I began with stage 2, borderline stage 3 fatty liver plus liver fibrosis F2 (F4 means cirrhosis)....A1C was 6.3, glucose 114 and triglycerides 399. TODAY no fatty liver (3%) fat. Moved to stage F0-F1 fibrosis, A1C is 5.5, glucose 92 and triglycerides 158.... My point is even if you dont lose the 50lbs or 100lbs you wanted, dont write off the other benefits. Cutting my drinking 95% surely helped, but 35 days doesnt explain all the improvements. Continue Mission.

Reta has been shown to essentially wipe out fatty liver disease. Even if your weight has stayed about the same, do you notice feeling better day to day? Getting up in the morning....That kind of thing.

Yep, absolutely.

 

[Airborne Daddy]

rkbleddyn said:

Nice work on the beer. Liquid carbs is what beer is, and I doubt anything else packs on pounds quite the same way. Despite being on Tirz, and despite my appetite being wiped out by it, I'm aware that putting away 5 beers would still be easy for me. That's a big part of why I stay away from alcohol — honestly the main part — because I enjoy it far too much. A GLP-1 that removed my desire for beer would be nothing short of a miracle drug.

It's a secondary benefit in my case as well. Same goes for my wife. Over 2 years have passed since she began Semaglutide, and she's down 40 lbs. Pre-diabetic was her status, plus she had other problems too. For well over a year now she's been sitting at her goal weight, and her labs look freaking amazing — I'm definitely jealous. And through all of it her dose has stayed at .25mg, never higher.

As for me, my BP has been brought down by Tirz more than by any BP med I've tried, and my labs have gotten better too, my glucose especially, which went from 106 to 83. There are still 29 lbs I need to shed, I appear to be stuck, and at only 1.5mg I'm still dealing with GI sides. My appetite is zero. The slowing of gastric emptying is an effect I really hate, even though it has benefited me.

My wife is the same—she dropped 30lbs in 3months while taking 6mg of tirz.

 

[Airborne Daddy]

Collo4sho said:

Nice work sticking with it for the long haul and getting outcomes beyond the scale. On reta, now at 5mg, I've dropped roughly 25lbs over 4 months. One thing I picked up on pretty early as an extra perk: my knees hurt less. No doubt the lifestyle adjustments played a part, but the repeated hard landings at Sicily DZ and the pounding miles walking up and down the Ardennes did lasting damage that's now somewhat easier to live with. Glad to see updates like this, Airborne!

Ohh those Ft. Bagg drop zones... Salerno slipped your mind.

 

[ChicagoFit]

 

[WLBLD]

Airborne Daddy said:

WLBLD said:

Airborne Daddy said:

WLBLD said:

Airborne Daddy said:

So for roughly 18 months I've cycled through all of the big 3, and/or stacked glp1's together. During the first 4 months I dropped about 22lbs, and after that nothing. The scale won't budge. I figured my nightly 1500 calories of alcohol were to blame. So I stopped drinking for more than a month (well, 5 beers spread across 35 days) and only lost one more pound. I bumped the gym up to 5x a week and began walking with my dog wearing a 30lb pack, a mile here and a mile there, still no movement on the scale.

From day one I've been a slow responder, and now I'm pretty sure it's the pam gene or something wrong with my thyroid.... started at 249, currently 226. I take 9mg reta/6, and sometimes 9mg tirz every 6 days. The good news? I began with stage 2, borderline stage 3 fatty liver plus liver fibrosis F2 (F4 means cirrhosis)....A1C was 6.3, glucose 114 and triglycerides 399. TODAY no fatty liver (3%) fat. Moved to stage F0-F1 fibrosis, A1C is 5.5, glucose 92 and triglycerides 158.... My point is even if you dont lose the 50lbs or 100lbs you wanted, dont write off the other benefits. Cutting my drinking 95% surely helped, but 35 days doesnt explain all the improvements. Continue Mission.

It seems like your health is improving a lot, even if you haven't hit the target you set. You brought up thyroid—have you gotten it tested yet with a complete panel (including antibodies to check for Hashimoto's too)?

Nope, though I plan to get it done via Labs MD or that other service I recently tried, Fitronics I believe..... in the past tsh and uptake came back within range, but t3 and free sat right at the lowest acceptable end. t4 was never tested. Appreciate it man.....

Ask them to run the complete panel including free & reverse, plus the 2 antibody tests. My results came back in range, and I was the one who had to request those, after which it was "oh u have hashimotos". Seriously.... I hope you manage to get it sorted out! I'm still working on it ha ha

Bro, years back I remember requesting thyroid labs, and she did tsh uptake plus t3 total and free....everything came back normal. Yesterday I went through my self paid labs from labs md and noticed that back in 2017 my tsh and t3 were good, but t4 total and free were way low....so I ordered thyroxin from our indian friends and booked a blood test for 78.00 tomorrow. I'm going to check baseline, then go with 50mcg a day and retest at 6 weeks. After that I'll let my PA know what she needs to do.....

WLBLD said:

Airborne Daddy said:

WLBLD said:

Airborne Daddy said:

So for roughly 18 months I've cycled through all of the big 3, and/or stacked glp1's together. During the first 4 months I dropped about 22lbs, and after that nothing. The scale won't budge. I figured my nightly 1500 calories of alcohol were to blame. So I stopped drinking for more than a month (well, 5 beers spread across 35 days) and only lost one more pound. I bumped the gym up to 5x a week and began walking with my dog wearing a 30lb pack, a mile here and a mile there, still no movement on the scale.

From day one I've been a slow responder, and now I'm pretty sure it's the pam gene or something wrong with my thyroid.... started at 249, currently 226. I take 9mg reta/6, and sometimes 9mg tirz every 6 days. The good news? I began with stage 2, borderline stage 3 fatty liver plus liver fibrosis F2 (F4 means cirrhosis)....A1C was 6.3, glucose 114 and triglycerides 399. TODAY no fatty liver (3%) fat. Moved to stage F0-F1 fibrosis, A1C is 5.5, glucose 92 and triglycerides 158.... My point is even if you dont lose the 50lbs or 100lbs you wanted, dont write off the other benefits. Cutting my drinking 95% surely helped, but 35 days doesnt explain all the improvements. Continue Mission.

It seems like your health is improving a lot, even if you haven't hit the target you set. You brought up thyroid—have you gotten it tested yet with a complete panel (including antibodies to check for Hashimoto's too)?

Nope, though I plan to get it done via Labs MD or that other service I recently tried, Fitronics I believe..... in the past tsh and uptake came back within range, but t3 and free sat right at the lowest acceptable end. t4 was never tested. Appreciate it man.....

Ask them to run the complete panel including free & reverse, plus the 2 antibody tests. My results came back in range, and I was the one who had to request those, after which it was "oh u have hashimotos". Seriously.... I hope you manage to get it sorted out! I'm still working on it ha ha

Were you the one who started iodine drops?

Watch out—that isn't something you should just start taking on your own. In some cases t3 may be necessary so the body can convert it into t4, or a desiccated option such as nature thyroid could be a better fit (I've read it helps certain people and comes with fewer side effects, etc).

No, but I probably ought to, rather than sitting around until the hashimotos sends my thyroid into failure. My loss is extremely slow too.

It's wild that we're the ones who have to tell the doctors what needs to be done!

Have you experimented with changing your diet, or the kinds of foods you eat?

 

[Sasquatch]

Alright Daddy-O, guess I'll share my own breakdown as well:

2-10-25 330# (starting at 2.5mg)

4-23-25 306# (10mg)

11-30-25 280# (6mg)

2-10-26 270# (10mg)

5 months dicking around, climbing to 20mg.

Then I chose to halve the dose for upkeep

7-8-26 266# (10mg)

7-13-26 270# (10mg)

8-10-26 marks 72 weeks. Matches what the studies show. Anyone want to guess my number?

Beats me, but my hunch is it's partly my alcohol tolerance getting totally wrecked plus a few sneaky medication interactions, yet I can barely handle half a glass of wine. American light beer barely counts as alcohol anyway so . . . fine to drink if you're just looking to pee.

Congrats! Ol' Buddy! Thanks for all the support and laughs through this whole ride.

 

[Selenium]

Mara_aa said:

Airborne Daddy said:

So for roughly 18 months I've cycled through all of the big 3, and/or stacked glp1's together. During the first 4 months I dropped about 22lbs, and after that nothing. The scale won't budge. I figured my nightly 1500 calories of alcohol were to blame. So I stopped drinking for more than a month (well, 5 beers spread across 35 days) and only lost one more pound. I bumped the gym up to 5x a week and began walking with my dog wearing a 30lb pack, a mile here and a mile there, still no movement on the scale.

From day one I've been a slow responder, and now I'm pretty sure it's the pam gene or something wrong with my thyroid.... started at 249, currently 226. I take 9mg reta/6, and sometimes 9mg tirz every 6 days. The good news? I began with stage 2, borderline stage 3 fatty liver plus liver fibrosis F2 (F4 means cirrhosis)....A1C was 6.3, glucose 114 and triglycerides 399. TODAY no fatty liver (3%) fat. Moved to stage F0-F1 fibrosis, A1C is 5.5, glucose 92 and triglycerides 158.... My point is even if you dont lose the 50lbs or 100lbs you wanted, dont write off the other benefits. Cutting my drinking 95% surely helped, but 35 days doesnt explain all the improvements. Continue Mission.

I really appreciate you opening up about your experience. Honestly, this ranks among the most meaningful and motivating things I've come across on here in a while.

The shifts in your health markers are nothing short of astonishing. Reversing from F2 fibrosis plus stage 3 fatty liver all the way to what amounts to a healthy, normal liver (just 3% fat!), and at the same time getting your A1C and triglycerides fully in order, is a huge win. It's obvious your body prioritized repairing your organs and essentially rescuing your life before anything else.

Training at the gym 5x per week and rucking with a 30lb pack is going to pack on a significant amount of muscle and bone density. There's a very good chance you're in the middle of a major body recomposition, shedding fat while adding dense muscle, which is exactly why the scale won't budge. On top of that, after giving up that much alcohol, your metabolism and hormones need months to properly recalibrate, even when your liver has already started celebrating.

On the scale you may be a slow responder, but from a metabolic standpoint, you're a superstar.

Thanks once again for showing everyone that health means far more than a single number on a scale. Continue mission indeed!

Is that chatGPT talking?

 

[Selenium]

Airborne Daddy said:

MFGamesta said:

Airborne Daddy said:

So for roughly 18 months I've cycled through all of the big 3, and/or stacked glp1's together. During the first 4 months I dropped about 22lbs, and after that nothing. The scale won't budge. I figured my nightly 1500 calories of alcohol were to blame. So I stopped drinking for more than a month (well, 5 beers spread across 35 days) and only lost one more pound. I bumped the gym up to 5x a week and began walking with my dog wearing a 30lb pack, a mile here and a mile there, still no movement on the scale.

From day one I've been a slow responder, and now I'm pretty sure it's the pam gene or something wrong with my thyroid.... started at 249, currently 226. I take 9mg reta/6, and sometimes 9mg tirz every 6 days. The good news? I began with stage 2, borderline stage 3 fatty liver plus liver fibrosis F2 (F4 means cirrhosis)....A1C was 6.3, glucose 114 and triglycerides 399. TODAY no fatty liver (3%) fat. Moved to stage F0-F1 fibrosis, A1C is 5.5, glucose 92 and triglycerides 158.... My point is even if you dont lose the 50lbs or 100lbs you wanted, dont write off the other benefits. Cutting my drinking 95% surely helped, but 35 days doesnt explain all the improvements. Continue Mission.

Reta has been shown to essentially wipe out fatty liver disease. Even if your weight has stayed about the same, do you notice feeling better day to day? Getting up in the morning....That kind of thing.

Yep, absolutely.

Cagrilintide might be worth looking into — it suppresses appetite through a pathway that isn't the same as GLP-1s.

Even if the number on the scale has barely budged, it's still a win that all your other markers improved. People in weight loss communities use the term "NSV"s — non-scale victories — because not every gain shows up on the scale. Body recomposition is one example: fat goes down while some muscle goes up, so the scale hardly moves.

 

[Mara_aa]

Selenium said:

Mara_aa said:

Airborne Daddy said:

So for roughly 18 months I've cycled through all of the big 3, and/or stacked glp1's together. During the first 4 months I dropped about 22lbs, and after that nothing. The scale won't budge. I figured my nightly 1500 calories of alcohol were to blame. So I stopped drinking for more than a month (well, 5 beers spread across 35 days) and only lost one more pound. I bumped the gym up to 5x a week and began walking with my dog wearing a 30lb pack, a mile here and a mile there, still no movement on the scale.

From day one I've been a slow responder, and now I'm pretty sure it's the pam gene or something wrong with my thyroid.... started at 249, currently 226. I take 9mg reta/6, and sometimes 9mg tirz every 6 days. The good news? I began with stage 2, borderline stage 3 fatty liver plus liver fibrosis F2 (F4 means cirrhosis)....A1C was 6.3, glucose 114 and triglycerides 399. TODAY no fatty liver (3%) fat. Moved to stage F0-F1 fibrosis, A1C is 5.5, glucose 92 and triglycerides 158.... My point is even if you dont lose the 50lbs or 100lbs you wanted, dont write off the other benefits. Cutting my drinking 95% surely helped, but 35 days doesnt explain all the improvements. Continue Mission.

I really appreciate you opening up about your experience. Honestly, this ranks among the most meaningful and motivating things I've come across on here in a while.

The shifts in your health markers are nothing short of astonishing. Reversing from F2 fibrosis plus stage 3 fatty liver all the way to what amounts to a healthy, normal liver (just 3% fat!), and at the same time getting your A1C and triglycerides fully in order, is a huge win. It's obvious your body prioritized repairing your organs and essentially rescuing your life before anything else.

Training at the gym 5x per week and rucking with a 30lb pack is going to pack on a significant amount of muscle and bone density. There's a very good chance you're in the middle of a major body recomposition, shedding fat while adding dense muscle, which is exactly why the scale won't budge. On top of that, after giving up that much alcohol, your metabolism and hormones need months to properly recalibrate, even when your liver has already started celebrating.

On the scale you may be a slow responder, but from a metabolic standpoint, you're a superstar.

Thanks once again for showing everyone that health means far more than a single number on a scale. Continue mission indeed!

Is that chatGPT talking?

I need my 2nd cup of coffee before I can do that. I'm going to treat that as praise. I'll make sure to tell ChatGPT that you like how I write.