Week 3- Log 4 ( 12th Janto 17th Jan)
I have injected 2mg reta by
@ZenithHealth on Friday arvo. Thursday is was my due date but I wanted to see how I feel if I am not on it, does my hunger increases exponentially or not. I felt same as how I felt on Wednesday or Thursday, maybe just a tad bit more hungry on Thursday late arvo and night but no hinger pangs in the morning of Friday.
I didn’t weigh myself for a while as that’s not the main parameter for me measure my progress but this morning I was
49.5kg
Sleep, Hunger & Training Update
So last time I mentioned I was having trouble sleeping. Over the past days, I’ve made a few changes and things have improved a lot. Apologise for late logging as I was trying to fix my sleep etc and put my devices away early on in the evening. Things I have changed/fixed:
Sleep hygiene
Dim lights, Orange / Amber light ; mimics fire. Our caveman brain thinks it’s night and get ready to go to bed
I put my phone away at least an hour before bed. On days I can’t completely avoid it, I use a screen filter that turns the display fully orange (max setting). My eyes actually feel sleepy when I look at the orange screen. At night, blue light messes with circadian rhythm and tricks the brain into thinking it’s daytime, so this made a big difference.
Along the same lines, I’ve stopped turning on white lights in the evening. About an hour before bed, all the lights in my house are amber/orange, including the bathroom. I even use an orange/yellow lamp in the bathroom.
Tryptophan- around 5 mg
It's an essential amino acid. To me if it't not converted into Melatonin, my body will use it some other way. I take it 2 hours before bed time I didn’t want to rely on melatonin directly. Even though people say melatonin isn’t addictive, I feel like if you keep giving the body something pre-made, it eventually reduces its own production. Tryptophan helps the brain produce its own melatonin, so I chose that route instead.
Sleep sound/ White noise
One issue I had earlier was waking up in the middle of the night. To fix that, I started playing sleep sound music. Now, even if I wake up briefly, it puts me back to sleep almost instantly.
Meditation
I do this specific form of meditation called “ Sleep meditation” . You put awareness in different part of your body and conscious let all the tension release on body part at a time. I do this and in no time I drift into sleep. Also, It makes me feel I am taking care of my body and mind not just the body.
Ever since doing this, sleep hasn’t been an issue. Because my sleep improved, a lot of other things fixed themselves. I’m no longer waking up with hunger pangs, no morning bloating, everything feels calmer. The bloating I was experiencing earlier seems very cortisol induced in my case. Once my sleep normalized, within a day or two all that bloating disappeared.
I usually take
500 mcg of KPV for my injection site reactions, but on days when I wanted my belly to look completely flat, I tried
1 mg the night before, and honestly my stomach looked snatched.
I think the intense hunger I was feeling earlier was a mix of cortisol and GH stimulation. Since I’m taking a GH stimulant, I probably needed to titrate my
retatrutide a bit more. Cortisol increases hunger hormones, and because I wasn’t sleeping, cortisol was high. Now that sleep is fixed, I’m not waking up hungry anymore.
Training & Strength Update
Strength-wise, I just saw small improvements. Nothing crazy, but noticeable. I’ve been doing core /TVA exercises every second or third day; depends how I am feeling with my recovery
Today, for example, I did lat pull downs. Previously I was doing
25 kg for 10 reps. Today, after warm-up sets I did
30 kg for 10 reps. That’s the first clear strength increase I’ve seen. Other lifts are still around the same, but this is progress.
Nutrition
I’m eating pretty consistently. I’m not tracking macros perfectly, but I always weigh as its more sustainable for me. I tried calorie counting app but I don’t think I can do it long term. I just copy the meals that I have tracked with the app before and repear the same meal combo
- Around 1200–1300 calories
- About 130 g protein per day
- Roughly 3 meals
- Trying to aim to hit atleast 2 g protein per kg bodyweight- For satiety as well
- About 100 g protein source per meal ( like 100 gm of fisg/ lean beef/ chicken)
- About 100g of carbs source per meal ( like 100gm cooked rice/ Sweet potatoes)
I know calories are low and technically I should eat more, but I genuinely don’t feel hungry right now.