My body is changing!

if you want a prescription for a gh secretagogue, maybe find a doc who'll write for egrifta (tesamorelin). it's designed for hiv patients with belly fat issues so off-label use gets tricky with insurance.

The way the body changes on Tirz combines better fuel partitioning with the training stimulus - more calories going to muscle repair than fat storage as insulin sensitivity improves. The calorie-burning increase through exercise compounds with the GLP-1 metabolic baseline shift in a way that neither does alone, which is why the body composition results at 7k walks a day tend to look better than the scale number suggests.

The doctor noticing changes before goal is the composition shift telling - resistance work alongside the medication shapes the result beyond just the scale number.

The progress is real regardless of where you set the bar next.

Going under 200 post-sleeve is its own milestone - the response after that surgery is hard to predict.

Congratulations - hearing it directly from your doctor is its own kind of validation.

the energy in these threads when the results are hitting for multiple people simultaneously is genuinely useful - it's hard to explain to someone outside the community how much the collective experience and validation matters when you're in the middle of your own process

You look absolutely incredible! Just starting my own journey, and honestly most excited about getting my energy back. Did yours pick up a lot once you got going?

Yeah, you're completely right. Honestly everyone in this thread has been spot on so far, working through answering each of you one at a time.

And yes, measured my stomach again Monday, down another inch. Total belly loss is sitting near 18 inches at this point. That's massive, I had a genuinely huge gut when this journey started and it's just not there anymore. Arms are getting defined too, smaller than I'd ultimately like but noticeably cut, midsection's still pretty square and blocky honestly, but that's fine, throw a shirt over it and I pass for lean easily enough.

Pretty convinced the body image distortion thing is real too, even hitting my actual goal I'd probably still feel oversized in my head.

And yeah, body composition's definitely shifting. You're right that patience matters more than speed here. It's a marathon, not a sprint.