I'm on 5 IU daily from a UGL source found here on the forums, 2 in the AM, 3 in the PM. Been on it over 2 months. So far, haven't noticed many obvious effects, good or bad. I think my hunger is a lot higher and my beard grows quicker, but haven't noticed any recovery or skin benefits yet. I don't feel like I'm retaining water and haven't had the joint pain or carpal tunnel people talk about, but I've read it can cause water retention. I just got back a DEXA scan today that showed over the past 40 days since my last scan, I've gained 0.3 lbs of fat and 6.8 lbs of lean mass, which feels like A LOT of lean mass to gain in just over a month. My last scan on July 30th had me gaining 4.4 lbs of lean mass. I know there's a margin of error, water retention, and also food still digesting could all be factors that are increasing my lean mass, but I'm hoping some of it is actual gains.

For context, I started lifting weights last August and trying to cut weight. I was 317 lbs, probably 45% body fat. I started taking Tirz, lost about 90 lbs over the course of a year, but around April this year my progress stalled. Tirz effect was not as strong and my weight loss slowed as I went from a 1000 cal deficit to like a 3-500 cal deficit, till eventually back to maintenance/surplus. In June, I started taking GH because I was looking for ways to keep losing "fat" ( i don't care what my actual weight is, but I'd like to lower body fat percentage.).

After about a month and half on GH, I hadn't really lost much weight. I was only down like 5 lbs since my last DEXA scan three months prior. My Macrofactor calorie counting app was kind of going crazy, lowering my energy expenditure by a lot as well. If you're familiar with the app, it tracks the calories you enter with your actual weight changes over time and gives a pretty accurate indication of what your actual TDEE is. But I think because it was set to the goal of losing weight and I wasn't losing weight with the calories being entered it assumed my expenditure was much lower than it actually was, but in fact it was due to the GH being lipolytic while also increasing muscle protein synthesis, so I was infact recomping. I decided to test that theory by getting a DEXA scan(the July 30th one) which is how I found out that in the past 3 months, my weight had only changed by 5 lbs, but I had actually lost 9lbs of fat and gained 4.4 lbs of "lean mass."

What I'd like to know, but probably impossible to know for sure, is how much of that is actual muscle? As I mentioned in the other thread, I ended up stopping Tirz due to insurance issues. Took 5 weeks off, and now started Reta at a low dose but titrating up. I've been eating a lot more over the past 2 to 3 months, so that combined with the GH leads me to believe I'm recomping, however as I mentioned in my most recent thread, I feel like a lot of my lifts are plateauing and some of them I've even had to back down a bit on, so not sure what's going on.