Osta Shred Final Review - A tale of two cycles
Starting Stats:
Weight - 193.6lb
Est. BF% - 17
Ending Stats:
Weight - 191.1lb (- 2.5)
Est BF% - 15-16 (- 1-2)
Highlights:
- Solid muscle retention... seemingly ZERO muscle loss while in a calorie deficit
- Improved mood (first half of cycle)
- Greatly improved sleep (first half of cycle)
- Moderate joint/tendon feeling improvement (nothing crazy, but some injuries seemed a bit better)
- Fat loss on par with diet (first half of cycle)
Lowlights:
- Lack of fat loss (second half of cycle)
- Lethargy (especially mornings and afternoons - second half of cycle)
- Complete loss of libido (second half of cycle)
- Lack of quality sleep (second half of cycle)
- Bloating (on and off throughout, nearly continuous in the second half)
- Loss of strength (throughout cycle)
Thoughts:
So, as you can see from the highlights/lowlights above (or if you've been reading/following along) this cycle was like night and day difference depending on where in the timeline you look. The first few weeks (4-5) were mostly as advertised - improved mood, sleep, fat loss, etc.; Then, for whatever reason (from my experience I would attribute this to the beginning of suppression) the effects seemed to not only diminish, but to disappear completely, and even go backwards a bit. This seemed to continue through the end of my cycle and as I write this I feel that this is certainly a case of suppression getting the better of my body and the osta no longer being able to outwork my natural hormone imbalance. It seems that somewhere around week 4-5 the suppression effects began to take over and the sides/problems became apparent. my ratings below refelct my overall thoughts on the ENTIRE cycle (which is an average of the goods and bads through the stages).
Ratings:
Muscle retention - 5/5 : the hands-down best aspect of this product. I both look and feel as big as I did on day 1, even with some fat loss and a constant deficit throughout the entire cycle
Fat Loss - 1/5 : even at its high point, this was not an area that I progressed in very quickly. All of the losses could be attributed to diet alone
Mood/"feel" - 2/5 : the earlier on in the cycle, the better this was... while I was never in a "bad" mood, the effects were non-existent by the end. The lethargy that came on later in the cycle was quite unexpected and not very pleasant.
Sleep - 3/5 - early to mid point of the cycle was the high point for this... as the cycle went on, it got worse and worse until it was actually below "normal" for me. At the high point thouhgh, this was one of the most enjoyable parts of the run (deep sleep, vivid dreams, waking refreshed, etc). At the low, quality was down, dreams were rare(er) than normal, and mornings were a struggle to get out of bed.
Strength - 0/5 : I had hoped to keep most if not all of my strength while cutting, but this was painfully apparent from early on. All maxes went down significantly, pretty much on par for a heavy cut for me.
Sides - 1/5 : The only reason I rate this as a 1 is that there were barely any for the first few weeks... However, once the cycle was well on its way, issues began coming along regularly. The level of suppression that I feel (judging by libido, lethargy, sleep, strength, etc) is surprisingly high. This was one of the biggest disappointments for me as I did not expect to have nearly as much of an issue as things ended up getting to.
Overall Rating: 2/5
-The amount of sides and the level of (assumed) suppression in the latter half of the cycle, paired with lack of fat loss and overall strength loss was the major reasoning behind the low rating. If the cycle had only been 4 weeks, this would have received a 3-4, but running the product as-designed/directed, this was not the case. My thoughts are that the dose of osta (25mg) is probably too high for this long (8 week) of a cycle, which lead to the issues in the latter weeks. I would not purchase this product to run as directed. If I were to run osta (or ostashred specifically) again, I would dose it lower (15-20mg max) and for a shorter duration (4-5 weeks). From what I've experienced, this product, unfortunately, offers only slightly better sides than a true ph/ds or mild steroid cycle, while not offering any or nearly as much in the way of benefits/gains (strength/size/fat loss/etc).
Thank you to Afi140 and strong supplement shop for the opportunity to run this. Even though it was not what I had hoped for, it was a good learning experience nonetheless.
I'll keep checking the log here for a couple weeks in case anyone has any questions or thoughts... Feel free to critique and comment on whatever! Thans for following along.