First Cycle in a long time
I am going to start a short 8 week cycle in the next 7 days. I have 2 cycles under my belt but both were done when I was back in my 20's, last one in 2007. First cycle was test cyp only at 500mg/week for 12 weeks and second was test cyp at same dose with dbol kicker and equipoise at 400mg/week for 12 weeks. PCT was with clomid and nolva and I had nolva on hand during cycle but no gyno issues.
I got into grad school and my family got much bigger when we started having more kids. So with school and family I stopped working out as much and noticed last year that I was more fat and fit. So I started back in the gym, been back a good 6 months now consistently and diet is in check. I weighed in this am at 204 lbs with 16% bodyfat with the calculator, and I'm 36 years old.
I've been feeling pretty down lately and got blood work done for medical check 3 weeks ago, had them check my test and total was 200 with free test of 42 - so I got put on TRT but my family doc put it at 200mg cyp/week. I didn't argue at all because I figured I'd end up doing this on my own.
I'm looking to keep some small gains going during this cycle while shedding some of these pounds, so I will be calorie deficient and doing more cardio than usual, but I don't want to lose any muscle if I can help it. The reason for the short cycle length is that I will be taking my family and some friends on a vacation just over 8 weeks from now and I don't want to run into problems with being on cycle while traveling out of the country. I can take my TRT dose with me as long as I have a Rx for it so I plan on shooting that, in addition to my test prop starting 1 weeks before my cycle ends and then while I'm on vacation for that week. I don't have pct planned because I will just be cruising on my TRT from now on. I also don't have any hcg planned in here but have been reading more and more about it - I know that some guys on TRT recommend it for improved feeling of well being and nut size, but my doc didn't say anything about it. So it's something I plan on talking to him about in 3 months at our next appt but I don't plan on using it this time around because I want to see how I feel without it at this point.
Cycle is:
Test prop 150mg EOD x 8 weeks only
Test cyp at 200mg/week starting week 7 and continuing there for cruise on TRT dose
Arimidex at .25 daily for E2 levels and Nolva on hand
Any advice or tips are appreciated, thanks
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I don't plan on cycling right now - but I wanted to get some input on the cycle for when I do start AND I wanted to see how often I should be pulling labs as I am not confident that the pcp doing my TRT dose will do them often enough but I also don't want to pay for lab work every 4 weeks if I don't need to.
It seems that pulling labs after 6 weeks on the TRT dose should give me a good baseline and I can check that again at 12 weeks just before my next appointment. Any thoughts? Should I make a post about these questions in the TRT forum to get it off of here?
RustyhookerYou just started trt at a very high dose. Let your body normalize a few months. Get your true baselines adjusted.
Dont cycle....
Another thought I just had is that once I get the dose of TRT stabilized - will I not be affecting it at all with a cycle in the future, will we need to adjust the TRT dose after a cycle?
Yes.
No.
This process will take a while. Your doc should be requesting a blood work in about 3 months, he'll check your levels, and modify your dosage as required, and repeat the process. When he is satisfied that your levels are consistent, he'll let you loose with a 6 month or annual blood work schedule. That is when you can plan cycles and plan to be finished with your cycle several weeks before your scheduled blood work.
Be proactive. Partner with your doctor. Be your own advocate. (see next paragraph) Tell him you've been researching on the internet and have questions about half lives and esters. If he hasn't done so already, tell him you want to learn how to give yourself injections. Involve your wife, I had mine come in to learn how to inject my gluts. (This was prior to switching docs who suggested sub-q)
Your doc might decide to up your dose at the end of two weeks, ask him if you could try once a week injections first, or, as an injection every week is an arbitrary convention why not every 10 days? What about changing esters?
ok - so hold off on the cycle and wait for TRT to stabilize? The doc that is doing this is my family medicine doctor in a small town. I mis-spoke before as the dose he put me on is 200mg every other week. I asked him about doing weekly injections and he said that it shouldn't make much of a difference doing weekly versus every two weeks. I planned on doing 100mg every week and I know that even more frequent dosing is better for on cycle but I wasn't sure about doing it for TRT. Another thing is he wanted me to take B12 injections every two weeks along with my TRTdose - I know that these can be mixed and to watch my red cells on this as well as hbg/hct. My B12 so I didn't do it with the first injection, but I think this is something that should be ok to do as long as I keep a close watch on the labs, right?
Any advice you all can give me on the different blood work or frequency that I need to get them would be appreciated as I can get blood work done anytime. I assume I need to find out what dose I can be on to keep my test levels in the upper range of normal and this is the reason for not starting a cycle now?
I don't mind waiting on my cycle, definitely not in a rush for anything. However, I don't want to start a new topic again when I do get the dose stabilized so can you please comment on this. I will hold off on the cycle for 3-6 months until I get a good baseline established for my TRT dose. too long or too short? THanks
You just started TRT a week ago and you want to start a cycle as well? This is not a good idea. Trt takes a while to get stabilized and you need to pull multiple bloods to see where you're at during the process. I would go a year before thinking about a cycle.
You can make great gains on your trt dose if you put the effort and diet into it.
Let me also say that full blood panel was done - lipids are normal with ldl at 101, hdl at 52, trigs at 120. tsh, cbc, cmp, prolactin, b12 were all normal. Folate was slightly high at 47.3nmol/L. Doc didn't check my LH/FSH levels before he started TRT. Unfortunately I took my first shot last week so I'm sure that has affected them but I plan on getting everything pulled after I finish. Should I get the LH/FSH pulled now even though the exogenous test cyp will have lowered them after 1 shot.
No point in getting LH/FSH levels now since you have already pinned. You are going to make it very difficult to find a proper trt dose by starting a cycle now. There is a lot of bloodwork over a significant amount of time that needs to be done to dial in your trt dose and you are now throwing a huge wrench into things by prematurely running a cycle now.