12 Week Keto Test Ethanate Cut w/ IMF

[WorkingOT]

So I figured I'd throw up a plan here because I haven't seen many Testosterone/Keto Cycles up anywhere honestly. It's going to be Test E Only with roughly 20g of carbs/day sided with Arimidex 0.5mg twice/week. I'm going to be dosing 120mg every Mon/Fri, starting next Monday, run for about 12 weeks, focusing more on core Powerlifting throughout the week. Just wrapping up my first week of keto, haven't really gotten past the keto flu portion of it yet (I do sip on Himalayan Pink Salt electrolyte water throughout the day, it helps a lot).

I'm really intrigued not only for the results from a standard keto diet (first one), but also paired with a test cut (which surprisingly works quite well for me on my normal particularly terrible dieting), plus my partner is doing Intermittent Fasting Keto as well, so I figured I'd hop on the IMF portion of it until I get sick of it, then just straight keto or both who knows?

I'd say the hardest part so far has been going to the grocery store and seeing all the food I can't eat, makes me feel bad for diabetics.

 

[3J]

whats up man.. interesting concept...

going keto and doing IF.. ive never heard of someone trying that..

whats your feeding window going to be? what are your macros/calories going to be?

what are your current stats? what are your goals?

IF and keto plus powerlifting is a bad mix imo

 

[WorkingOT]

I tried the whole Intermittent thing for a few days and would much prefer eating when I'm hungry than only having an 8h eating window, you could lose crazy weight fast but it made my initial gym workouts very difficult. I recently got some keto test strips and found although I had been eating about 50g net carbs (at most) some days, I'd already gone into ketosis because the amount of ketones in my urine are very high, so I'm ideally shooting for 20g of carbs per day but with leniency up to 50g, since it hasn't taken me out yet.

I have had some good news. I was 202lbs on around May 15 and I'm already down to 187ish (I haven't even been remotely close to the 180s in like 2 years), like crazy weight loss but don't look any different, and the diet isn't overly unnecessary (just expensive), just getting past the keto flu sucks serious ass.

Main goal was to lose weight around the midsection for digestional health reasons (really bad heartburn daily, could feel my esophagus every morning, and had to take PPIs every morning, as well as developing GERD, constantly having to take gravol among other pain meds, and brutal panic attacks), had heartburn maybe twice in the last month post-weight loss, haven't had a panic attack in forever, appears to be mostly related to my bad diet and those extra pounds killing my guts.

Now that that's not really an issue, I'm focusing on Fat Loss>Strength>Building Muscle, until I get to the point where I deem my BF% is low enough, I'll focus on Strength>Building Muscle>Fat Loss, where I may just say screw the keto because I don't think 3 months of it is going to be necessary, but it's an extraordinary base if you have bad dieting, post-keto an entire library of delicious foods become available, just more carbs and less junk.

I haven't spent too too much time on tracking my fat/protein macros, as I have been building recipes around them with as little as many to no carbs per meal (especially snacks and sweets ***128521. I'd say I'm hitting protein relatively close to 1:1 for my LBM count, I was 15% BF at 200lbs (@6'4" people say I tend to look good at that weight) a few months ago, so it's not overly too difficult to eat 150g of protein a day from my usual 300g protein bulking diets, plus I have meat snacks all the time too to get in all my fat/protein macros while filling the gap where carbs used to be. And we'll fat is just easy, I haven't been tracking it really, I'd say it's hard to eat a couple hundred grams of fat daily after being brainwashed into believing fat is bad for you and having damn near 0 fat daily, but I'll be getting on that one soon too.

Been mostly trying to get into full cycle progression mode, doing my weekly measurements, do a bi-daily weight check, trying to get into a regular meal plan, staying hydated as possible, and getting lots of sleep. I've concluded that I'm going to remove 1 working set per Superset because the keto has me totally gassed in the gym failing hard on my second last set.

 

[WorkingOT]

BTW I look nothing near my profile picture, that's how I'd dream to look after this cycle. I want to get cut and stay cut.

 

[scorob777]

Main goal was to lose weight around the midsection for digestional health reasons (really bad heartburn daily, could feel my esophagus every morning, and had to take PPIs every morning, as well as developing GERD, constantly having to take gravol among other pain meds, and brutal panic attacks), had heartburn maybe twice in the last month post-weight loss, haven't had a panic attack in forever, appears to be mostly related to my bad diet and those extra pounds killing my guts.

The PPI's are a really really bad idea, you should cut them out for the rest of your life. Some or all of that GERD may be coming from the pain meds, so it turns into a vicious cycle. Stop taking the too. If you want to cure it for good look into taking with a meal papaya extract tablets and digestive enzyme tablets. There are also a host of things to do like not eating until you are full (so acid doesn't back up your throat), not eating near bedtime (so you don't lay down with a full stomache). Your problems there are not having too much acid, they are having not enough. Bromelain and betaine can also help. Look it up on the internet. Once you realize the problem is not enough acid and taking too long to empty your stomache you'll be on the road to healing yourself.

For the keto flu if you feel like shit try drinking a glass of water with a teaspoon of sea salt in it. If you feel better quickly you aren't eating enough salt.

 

[WorkingOT]

I actually use 1/8th tsp of crushed pink Himalayan salt in a 1L bottle and drink it throughout the day, it helps a lot with the keto headaches, plus taking a 1ADay vitamin with supplemental magnesium/calcium/potassium because low amounts of either can lead to pretty brutal symptoms and side effects from electrolyte imbalance.

That's why I'm weaning myself off the Tecta, it's meant to be used short term, and being in my early 30s, I'm not really looking forward to bone fractures (one ridiculous long term side effect) especially when I'm taking Arimidex which dries out my joints. Long term use of PPIs are terrible and I'm glad this diet has cured me of it's usage. I'm kinda that guy that rarely uses pharmaceutical medicine, but in the last 6 months it was damn near cocktails daily. Plus I was prescribed an antidepressant for my panic attacks which I'm glad I only have to use for extreme worst case scenarios, haven't needed it for 3 months now.

 

[WorkingOT]

Got my first month's progress pics done, pretty remarkable difference so far. To add, I've been taking Melanotan 2 twice a week to work on my tan for the summer, already gone through 14mg since May 15 (for a guy that never tans, this shit is remarkable), also helps with fat metabolism and the libido increase is definitely a plus as well.

Somewhat abandoned the full on keto because it's impractical and expensive, plus I've already lost a considerable amount of fat. Will be doing carb cycling for the remainder of the cycle, working out Mon-Fri and loading carbs on the weekend with no exercise, but staying as low carb throughout the week as possible. Already noticed a subtle difference in my deltoid definition (hasn't changed in like 4 years) and my vascularity is up, starting to see veins in places I haven't seen veins in a long time. Also I started taking the Holy Grail stack, minus the pygeum because of it's AA effects on DHT (I will experiment a little bit with it while on cycle to see if it actually does hinder libido much like finasteride and spirolactone do, except I'm skeptical it will have that much of an effect because it's a natural product and not pharmaceutically prepared to block DHT). I was really hoping to run albuterol alongside this cycle, but since I've been taking L-arginine everyday, I've noticed it already on it's own, provides thermogenic effects at as low as 1000mg/day, feels as if I'm taking clen, it's quite bizarre, but very effective for $20 for a 100 day supply.

 

[WorkingOT]

So far so good on the Pygeum, I've never experienced a dht blocker that didn't totally nullify my sex drive, plus if it helps reduce excessive body hair as well that's another plus.

 

[WorkingOT]

Already lost an absolutely ridiculous amount of body fat on cycle so far, pretty hard to believe that 240mg/week plus a half decent diet and ZMA could have such astounding effects for weight loss, I look and feel like a whole new person.

Strength has gotten pretty great too. Gotten to bodyweight for almost every workout besides barbell overhead press (90lbs for 6 reps) and bench press (165 for 8 reps), hoping to get my bench to bodyweight (190lbs) by the end of September, every week it seems like I can add an extra 5lbs.

Going to be taking Pygeum during my PCT because the rebound effect of it is insane. As soon as you stop taking it, you get a tremendous burst of DHT (although the lost effect while taking it is barely noticeable), hopefully propelling my lost free test from being on cycle to normal baseline levels combined with Clomid, so when I stop taking both in October, I should be able to maintain most (if not all) of my strength. I'm actually looking forward to see how much I actually weigh afterwards because my weight has stayed roughly the same.