+ 1 RETA not for bodybuilders at least me!
I will start by saying Reta definitely works, appetite suppression, bloods look better, and higher metabolic rate because of the glucagon agonist. But it’s not for me and I do not think it is the right move for most bodybuilders. I have ran it twice. Once through the summer of 2025 5mg a week. and 10 weeks of my 20 week contest prep this year got up to 6mg a week. Competed May 23. Won my open class in classic physique! Below ore the issues I have with it and why I most likely will not use it again.
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Wrecks my sleep I am very regimented with my sleep in bed by about 8:30pm ( I get up at 4:30am). It makes me wake up at 2:30am every night wide awake. Ruins my HRV down about 30 points. Usually my RHR is mid 50s to 60 tops and it made it go up to 70-74.
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It really helps with food noise when in a hard contest prep positive but I have no issues getting in the food even when I do refeeds when calories are 4500-5500. But the issue I have is I never could really fill out its like the glucagon effect just runs through carbs I was always super flat no matter what.
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It definitely burns hard earned muscle tissue. I started this prep at 270 and weighed in at 223. I’m 6’3”. At 270 I definitely had plenty of fat to come off but I still had vague out lines of abs and still had veins in my legs. It seems like it always just kept me soft and really couldn’t get that full hard look that I’m used too. Reason I was able to pull off an okay show day look was because I loaded carbs heavy 5 days out and drank almost no water on check in day and almost no water on show day.
Summary
Main reasons I feel it is a huge negative for bodybuilders
1. Wrecks sleep, ruins recovery
2. Makes it really hard to pull glycogen in to muscles can’t fill out
3. Burns through muscle in my opinion because of the glucagon agonist not just because of the caloric deficit
These are my real world honest experiences.
Curious to how other people handled Reta.
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I run 1.5 mg a week and it helps keep the bloat and seems to increase my metabolism. When i first started i was using 2.5 mg a week and got down from 280 to 240 lbs in 4 months it was pretty amazing! Now i just maintain and stay around 244-250 at 12-13% body fat. When i run it my bp goes down and it makes me feel a lot better while I'm running TRT. You got to find what works for you and Reta definitely works for me.
I run a 1mg a week and love it. It improves all my lipids when im abusing gear.
Any negative sides for you at 1mg. Maybe that is the key running it very low dose?
I’ll agree with 1 and 2 but not 3. I’ve done dexa scans and gained muscle in a deficit on Reta. So can’t say it burns through muscle IME. As far as being flat constantly, I fixed that by dropping fats way down and swapping them for significantly more carbs. I’m at 25g fat per day, 275g protein, rest carbs. Got down to 6% at 3500 cals per day. Have since dropped it to ~2500 to dig that last 1-1.5% off. But to 6% that meant ~540g carb per day in a deficit. Now for the last stretch that’s still almost 300g carbs per day. Most than many would be doing while prepping.
Congrats on the win
This is all theory based off of my experience so take it with a grain of salt. But my conclusion is the glucagon agonist is always forcing the liver into Gluconeogenesis so it is always converting amino acids and some fat to glucose but I fell it is converting way more amino acids AKA muscle tissue into glucose causing the loss of muscle in my case. obviously this may affect everybody differently but not good in my case. Just my 2 cents.
Yup I understand. You gotta use and do what works for you.
TheParrotManI found the same thing, ran it for 2 months and I just switched to Tirz. Reta is just overkill imo
yeah unfortunately i agree with you its a great drug for lose fat fast but for bodybuilding prep it doesn't work. Tirzaptide was better. Overall if you are doing a prep diet the old fashion way. Stims and calorie deficit with cardio.
I was thinking about trying Tirzepatide since it only targets GLP and GIP. Did you get any negative sides from it? Poor sleep? Elevated heart rate? HRV? I have always done cuts/contest prep the old-fashioned way but thought this new tool would be a help but the cons far outweighed the pros.
extreme fatigue mostly.
Thanks for summing this up the way you did. I had the same issues also as you stated in your summery. Sleep for sure and never felt like I was filling out like I normally would in the past, while running a good amount of gear. I don’t think I will run it on cycle again as I always looked flat on it