Reta REALLY speeding up weight loss?

Sage_1999

Well-known member
Hi everyone,

I've been experimenting with Reta for about a month now and something's up. Some background: I recently completed a dieting phase, where I dropped around 45 lbs (from 190 lbs to about 145 lbs). Initially, I was losing weight rapidly, but it slowed down to like half a pound a week, despite consistent tracking (within +/- 10%).

Now that I'm on Reta, I'm losing 1.5-2.5 lbs weekly. It's a huge change, considering I haven't significantly altered my diet, exercise, or activity (I actually cut back cardio due to the sudden weight decrease). My gym performance is still pretty good, so I don't think I'm losing muscle.

Has anyone else experienced this? Could it just be water (I feel a bit more dehydrated), or could Reta have a metabolic impact even when you're already fairly lean?

What do you all think?

PS: I'm taking around 3mg weekly
 
I don't care that you're losing more on Reta, what bothers me is that you're losing almost 3 lbs a week when you're already only 145 lbs. I think a guy at 145 is way too skinny. You need to slow down before you disappear. I lost 25 lbs from 245 to 220 and now I wish I had lost less. Are you nuts?
 
Switching to Reta did break my weight loss stall too, or at least made it much faster. As you lose weight, it naturally slows down. It was way easier going from overweight to healthy than healthy to skinny.

I kinda agree with Nat2004 about losing too much. Health should be the main thing. Some reserves, decent muscle mass, and a well-rounded diet are ideal.
 
BMI is not that useful, especially for people who lift weights. The OP sounds like they're in the gym a lot, so they're probably more muscular than the average person and BMI is even more off.

Without knowing body fat percentage, this is all speculation. 143 at 8% BF is very different than 143 at 20%
 
Well, I'm working on it. I'm not obese anymore, and I'm trying to get to <20% bf.

GLP-1s are popular in the fitness community for cuts, so BMI is pointless. The OP seems to be part of that community.

But I think we should ignore BMI for anyone who works out, since everyone here should be lifting weights. So this metric should be useless for most people here.

There are some health risks just around size, but most of them are related to fat mass. I would rather be 180lb with 150lb of muscle than 160lb with 120lb of muscle, even though the latter is a lower BMI.
 
BMI isn't useless, it's just not enough. You need BMI and FFMI to find your target weight. Knowing both gives a good picture, but neither alone is enough.

Also, someone who is near the low end of healthy body fat and overweight is VERY muscular.
 
Yeah, that was uncalled for. We didn't know OP's height and there are people with eating disorders. Calling him "pathetic" is unhelpful.

I don't listen to guys who think men have to look a certain way. Then again I'm nonbinary, so my body goals would probably offend him too. 😊
 
To answer your question, Reta can "kickstart" your metabolism.

Be careful since you're already lean. You're borderline underweight. Take care of yourself. You only get one body.
 
Many experts disagree. https://web.archive.org/web/2022120...com/health/why-so-many-think-the-bmi-is-trash https://healthcare.utah.edu/healthf...rs-suggest-new-approach-calculate-your-health https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2021/05/21/health-measure (I can cite hundreds more.)

We've used a metric that wasn't meant for health as a health marker because insurance companies found it useful for populations. It's cheap, easy, and works well enough at a population level. But things that work for populations aren't always useful for individuals.

You're misunderstanding me. I'm making an extreme example. But for most people, the more lean mass you have the lower your body fat at any given weight and the more wrong BMI is. And that's before we talk about height or fat distribution. I don't have to be an IFBB pro to be healthy and still be overweight by BMI. A 5'8 male with 150lb of muscle and 30lb of fat is overweight by BMI but only ~16.7% bf. BMI doesn't have to be wildly off for it to be unrelated to your health.
 
When I was on RETA, my muscles were not as toned. So, muscle loss. I switched to Survo and that stopped. Muscle is coming back.
 
Back
Top