## YouTube Summary Subscribe at https://www.youtube.com/@Dark.Rebuild if you prefer video format. ::youtube[{"videoId":"27PFfdrEAeE"}] ## Current Stats - **Week 23 Weight:** 260.6 lbs - **Weekly Change:** -3.8 lbs - **Total Progress:** -76.0 lbs - **Retatrutide:** 12mg (Split dosing Monday and Thursday) - **HGH:** 4iu daily (2iu AM fasted before gym, 2iu before bed) - **Testosterone Cypionate:** 150mg weekly (3x 50mg) - **SLU-PP-332:** 10mg daily (5mg AM, 5mg PM) - **GHK-Cu:** 2.5mg daily ::gallery[{"images":["https://retatrutidelog.com/uploads/a6d2ea76-a9c9-484b-931b-618eca6a1c3a.png","https://retatrutidelog.com/uploads/fc175ace-1c7f-483e-9ed5-04151401651b.png","https://retatrutidelog.com/uploads/b2335069-1412-4c24-a0b4-71d37d90130a.png","https://retatrutidelog.com/uploads/1f8506eb-e35a-48de-be90-66417e7bd5a4.png","https://retatrutidelog.com/uploads/6590deb9-b2f0-4ef7-a1df-dd7cbcf4b6e8.png","https://retatrutidelog.com/uploads/2d07043f-a0ae-4f96-85d1-71a8389041ff.png","https://retatrutidelog.com/uploads/721c948e-6b2d-4380-8be3-52857003401f.png"],"captions":["","","","","","",""]}] This week I'm including both the bedroom comparison shots (to maintain consistency with my starting location) and standalone bathroom shots. The lighting in my bathroom shows the changes more clearly, but I need to keep the bedroom location consistent for the side-by-side starting comparisons every week. Finally, some real scale progress again. After two weeks of fighting water retention, I'm down 3.8 lbs this week to 260.6 lbs. More importantly, I figured out exactly what was causing the retention and how to fix it. Even though I knew there would be a transition period while adding strategic carbs back into my diet, the body's reaction caught me off guard. Let me walk through what happened, why it happened, and how I solved it. ## The Carb Reintroduction Timeline Back in Week 19, I made the call to add white rice into my daily meal plan. The plan was 1 cup total: half a cup with breakfast and half a cup with dinner. My thought process was breakfast would be within an hour of lifting and should likely get used immediately, and dinner would help with recovery and prep me for fasted training the next morning. Boy did my body react to this, and I was kind of shocked at how quick the reaction was. **Week 20:** First week with carbs, dropped 2.4 lbs. Thought I nailed it. **Week 21:** Gained 2.2 lbs. All water. I could see it in my face and midsection. Tried not to panic and told myself to trust the process. **Week 22:** Stayed the same weight. Scale showed I gained 2 lbs of water but lost 2.2 lbs of fat, netting out to neutral. Trying not to get in my head about the scale not moving the direction I wanted, I started to take a closer look at things, trying not to make a knee jerk change. All I changed was adding about 45-50 grams of carbs extra per day on top of what I was already consuming, which was very low. ## Glucose Testing: The Carbs Weren't the Problem I pulled out my [Keto-Mojo meter](https://amzn.to/4pYuXnu) and started taking my glucose fasted in the morning, right after working out, and an hour after consuming carbs to see what the peak was. What I saw was that I was very well adjusted and my body switches fuel sources very quickly. For example, one morning: - **Wake Up (Fasted):** 83 mg/dL - **Post-Workout (Immediate):** 74 mg/dL - **1 Hour Post-Breakfast:** 88 mg/dL This curve showed me that the carbs aren't directly to blame. They're likely going into my liver and muscles and getting used just as fast. The working muscles are screaming for fuel and pulling it right in. So I was kind of baffled. Then I figured it out. ## The Sodium-Carb-Insulin Connection Here's the physiological breakdown of exactly why my body reacted that way. I effectively created a "perfect storm" for retention, and then solved it with a "biological flush." ### The "Sodium-Carb Multiplier" (Why it got worse) When I was on low carb, my high sodium intake wasn't an issue because my insulin levels were low. **The Mechanism:** Insulin signals your kidneys to reabsorb sodium. When insulin is low (keto/low carb), your kidneys freely excrete excess sodium. **The Change:** As soon as I added carbs, I spiked insulin. - **Step 1:** Insulin told my kidneys to stop flushing sodium and start hoarding it. - **Step 2:** Glycogen supersaturation. Every 1 gram of carbohydrate stored as muscle glycogen holds 3 to 4 grams of water. - **The Result:** The sodium pulled water in, and the glycogen locked it down. I went from a "flow-through" system to a "storage" system overnight. I was eating the same high-sodium diet I'd been eating for months, but now insulin was telling my body to hold onto all of it. ### The "Flush Paradox" (Why drinking water worked) It feels counterintuitive ("drink water to lose water"), but drinking 100-120 oz per day (about a gallon) triggered a hormonal dump. **ADH Suppression:** When you flood your system with water, your brain suppresses Anti-Diuretic Hormone (ADH), also called Vasopressin. **Aldosterone Signal:** Your body realizes it's not dehydrated, so it downregulates Aldosterone, the hormone responsible for holding onto sodium. **The Flush:** Once ADH and Aldosterone drop, your kidneys open the floodgates. They dump the excess water and take the trapped sodium out with it. I weighed myself each morning watching the effect of drinking massive amounts of water while eating the same high-sodium diet with the added carbs. It worked. ## Diet Adjustment: Rice Moved to Breakfast Only After a couple days of testing, I pulled the carbs from dinner. I noticed that with rice in the evening, there was some bloat the next morning. So about mid-week I pulled the rice from dinner and moved it all to breakfast where I just vacuum it up and move on. I'm now eating a full cup of rice with breakfast, still seeing the same glucose curve, and interestingly enough my body is dropping back into ketosis in the evening. I noticed my ears burning hot and red, usually a signal that I'm in ketosis. Pulled out the Keto-Mojo again, checked ketones, and sure enough I was at a **7.2 GKI** which puts me at a low level of ketosis. I effectively hacked the system. I'm eating simple carbs to refuel after lifting weights and then at some point just shifting right back into fat burning. Nice. I'm going to keep the diet just the way it is: rice in the AM, about a gallon of water to keep the high sodium in check, and let my body do its thing. ## Waist Measurement: 40.07 Inches This week's tape measurement around my abdomen (about 2 inches above belly button): **40.07 inches**. That's down from 40.9 inches last week (**-0.83 inches in one week**) and down from 45.31 inches on October 10th (**-5.24 inches total in 2 months**). The midsection continues to shrink even when the scale was playing games with water retention. This is why I'm tracking tape measurements weekly now. The scale can lie, but the tape measure doesn't care about glycogen or sodium. ## New Order: HGH and Retatrutide Restocked Just received an order from my normal source: - **2 kits HGH** (10 vials × 15iu per kit = 300iu total): $180 ($90 per kit) - **1 kit Retatrutide** (10 vials × 15mg = 150mg total): $140 - **Shipping:** $60 USD ($20 per item) - **Total:** $380 **Cost per unit with shipping:** - **HGH:** $0.73 per IU ($220 total ÷ 300iu) - **Retatrutide:** $1.07 per mg ($160 total ÷ 150mg) An interesting change with my normal source: they started shipping from California. I heard from them at one point they had some customs issues with orders, so I guess their solution is to do a big order to a US staging warehouse and ship domestically from there. Because there's a change to the process, I'm going to send a vial off to [Finnrick Labs](https://finnricklabs.com) again as a spot check. I'll document the testing process and results when they come back. ## YouTube Daily Content Launched This week I started doing daily content: pre-gym and post-gym videos uploaded every morning around 6:30-7:30am. Saturday will continue to be the weekly summary that gets embedded in these blog posts. I'm still fumbling my way through figuring out what to cover in the daily content, but I hit my goal of doing something every day this week and I plan to keep that up for a while. The consistency is the goal right now, quality will improve as I figure out the format. If you want to follow along with the daily updates, subscribe at [@Dark.Rebuild](https://www.youtube.com/@Dark.Rebuild). ## RENPHO Scale Report: Week 23 Body Composition ![report (19)-1-fotor-20251213143255.png](https://retatrutidelog.com/uploads/27f48b73-b92b-47ab-b55c-a496a4e138de.png) The [RENPHO smart scale](https://amzn.to/4rMH6Ok) showing fat loss this week compared with last week. Fat mass keeps going down, the trend we're looking for, and I have the water in check now too. **Week 23 vs Week 22 changes:** - Weight: 260.6 lbs (down from 264.4 lbs, **-3.8 lbs**) - Body Fat Mass: 71.4 lbs (down from 74.8 lbs, **-3.4 lbs fat**) - Body Fat %: 27.4% (down from 28.3%, **-0.9% drop**) - Muscle Mass: 176.4 lbs (down from 176.8 lbs, **-0.4 lbs**) - Body Water Mass: 138.6 lbs (down from 139.0 lbs, **-0.4 lbs water**) The water is finally coming off. Fat mass dropped 3.4 lbs, water dropped slightly, and muscle mass stayed essentially stable. Body fat percentage continuing to trend down from 28.3% to 27.4%. ## StepUp Challenge: Week 23 Update
Group Name retatrutidelog
Number of current members 8
Date Range 2025-12-05 to 2025-12-12
Sum of total steps of all members 451,455 steps
Avg daily steps of all members 7,165 steps/day
Total distance covered by group 205.21 miles [330.25 kms]
Weekly Wrap-up: 451K+ steps and 205+ miles covered with 8 members. Average daily steps: 7,165/day.
If you'd like to join our group, you can use the [direct group invite](https://join.thestepupapp.com/zW07S5) or read about [why I started this challenge](https://retatrutidelog.com/posts/my-step-count-is-trash-started-a-group-to-fix-it). ::sourceguide[{ "headline": "Need a source? ", "description": "Quick access to my supplier's contact info.", "buttonText": "Get Contact Info", "variant": "gradient" }] --- **Disclaimer:** The information provided on this site is for **educational and informational purposes only** and reflects my **personal experiences and opinions**. It is **not** intended as medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Retatrutide is an **investigational drug** that is **not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration** for any use outside of clinical trials. Always consult a licensed healthcare professional before making any decisions regarding medications, supplements, or medical treatments. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Some links on this site may be affiliate links.