1st cycle - anavar - questions, advice, etc

[letigre]

I've been reading up on steroids, and I'm pretty sure I want to do a cycle of anavar.

I've been training for over 5 years and my diet is spot on - I like my body, I look cute in a bikini, I just want to look a little harder and more athletic. I've been lifting heavy for years (this year, mostly 1rm's and powerlifting style) and I'm excited about the potential strength gains I will get from anavar too.

Is 2.5mcg a day way too conservative, or should I start with 5mcg?

I was planning to do a big cut anyhow and run ECA for the next 4 - 6 weeks, I know you can do these together (ECA + anavar), but do you think I should just do anavar since its my first cycle and I'd wanna make sure all the results I'm getting are from that and not ECA? What do you think?

I understand that the gear will only support whatever my diet and training is oriented towards, so I figure it might not be bad to just do them together since I'll primarily be looking for sides... but otherwise with a good diet and training protocol, I can expect to get leaner and maintain or gain muscle doing anavar + ECA, right?

Please do not ask for sources - LK

I've done my research and I'm ready to go. I want to keep on my current plan and probably start the anavar in late October or the first week of November.

Thanks.

[PillarofBalance]

I would suggest you keep researching. There are some major flaws in your post. 5mcg - I think you mean 5MG to begin with. Some of what you said shows a fundamental misunderstanding of Anavar and anabolics in general.

I'd suggest you:
1. Post up an intro thread in new members section
2. Read the rules that can be found in new members section
3. Do not ask for sources again
4. Read in the female forum to see how other woman have successfully used anavar.

Good luck!

[letigre]

I would suggest you keep researching. There are some major flaws in your post. 5mcg - I think you mean 5MG to begin with. Some of what you said shows a fundamental misunderstanding of Anavar and anabolics in general.

I'd suggest you:
1. Post up an intro thread in new members section
2. Read the rules that can be found in new members section
3. Do not ask for sources again
4. Read in the female forum to see how other woman have successfully used anavar.

Good luck!

Hi. Sorry, I actually clicked on the FAQ and I didn't see any explicit rules and then went off to do an intro post where I DID see the rules for new members I was coming back to edit

What am I misunderstanding about steroid use? I've read A LOT of the threads in the female forum and a lot on other sites. Help me understand?

[PillarofBalance]

I've been reading up on steroids, and I'm pretty sure I want to do a cycle of anavar.

I've been training for over 5 years and my diet is spot on - I like my body, I look cute in a bikini, I just want to look a little harder and more athletic. I've been lifting heavy for years (this year, mostly 1rm's and powerlifting style) and I'm excited about the potential strength gains I will get from anavar too.

Is 2.5mcg a day way too conservative, or should I start with 5mcg?

I was planning to do a big cut anyhow and run ECA for the next 4 - 6 weeks, I know you can do these together (ECA + anavar), but do you think I should just do anavar since its my first cycle and I'd wanna make sure all the results I'm getting are from that and not ECA? What do you think?

I understand that the gear will only support whatever my diet and training is oriented towards, so I figure it might not be bad to just do them together since I'll primarily be looking for sides... but otherwise with a good diet and training protocol, I can expect to get leaner and maintain or gain muscle doing anavar + ECA, right?

Please do not ask for sources - LK

I've done my research and I'm ready to go. I want to keep on my current plan and probably start the anavar in late October or the first week of November.

Thanks.

Hi. Sorry, I actually clicked on the FAQ and I didn't see any explicit rules and then went off to do an intro post where I DID see the rules for new members I was coming back to edit

What am I misunderstanding about steroid use? I've read A LOT of the threads in the female forum and a lot on other sites. Help me understand?

be glad to help! I've bolded the pieces of your original post and we'll take those in order.

Looking harder and more athletic is largely a product of your diet. You will look harder because anavar is great for muscle pumps. Once you come off though, you don't want to go all soft. So, you say diet is spot on - Lets review it.

IMO if you want to look more athletic you want muscle hypertrophy. You don't get that much from powerlifting.

Anavar is dosed in milligrams not micro grams. 5MCG of anavar would be sub-therapeutic.

ECA = Fatburner... Anavar doesn't = fat burner.

You can gain muscle using anavar or you can preserve muscle using anavar (to a degree). But you don't gain muscle or preserve muscle based on the use of anavar. Its all about diet.

Spend some time on this board and get to know the ladies here - and the guys and the wealth of info you'll be exposed to will blow your mind. I don't know much compared to about 90% of the guys and gals on here so you're in for a treat. So stick around and keep reading.

[letigre]

be glad to help! I've bolded the pieces of your original post and we'll take those in order.

Looking harder and more athletic is largely a product of your diet. You will look harder because anavar is great for muscle pumps. Once you come off though, you don't want to go all soft. So, you say diet is spot on - Lets review it.

Fair enough. I think what my diet lacks si enough protein. I think I would look more the way I want if I ate closer to 200g per day, but honestly, I struggle to hit 140 - 160g per day. Sometimes I'll be totally ON IT, and averaging 175g - 185g, but I've never maintained that beyond a week or two.

I weight 150lbs/5'8 -- I competed at 142lbs in 2009. My calories are anywhere from 1500 - 1800 per day. Lots of healthy fats, anywhere from 30 - 50% of calories and the rest is carbs like oats, sweet potato, berries & maybe an apple a day.

IMO if you want to look more athletic you want muscle hypertrophy. You don't get that much from powerlifting.

Yeah, you're right. But usually I would do a strength set at the beginning of my workout, say bench press. And then the rest would be supersets, usually 10 reps per set. So I was doing other stuff too.

Anavar is dosed in milligrams not micro grams. 5MCG of anavar would be sub-therapeutic.

ECA = Fatburner... Anavar doesn't = fat burner.

Right, my bad... details, details! LOL.

What I'm thinking with the ECA + anavar is that the ECA will act as the thermogenic and the anavar will help preserve/build muscle and the overall result will be a leaner, more athletic looking me. I've seen others on this forum say they stack ECA +anavar and I've seen it recommended. Is it not going to work that way?

So yeah... my diet is good, but could be better with the protein. I just struggle to eat that much. And prior to last year, I wasn't even getting 150g except when I competed in 2009. So it has improved, but it was hard even to bring it up to that. I do see better results and even when I can stay at 200g for a week or two, I feel and look leaner within days... its just a lot of work to eat that much! I know, I know... i'm dont expect sympathy, lol. If you want the results you gotta do the work. Eating realtively moderate to high fat works best for me, as well as lots of veges and keep a little bit of fruit in there, like the berries and green apples, otherwise I feel so deprived. This is something that works to keep me looking the way I like (except for more muscular and athletic, hehe) and i can totally stick to ths diet, so I dont really want to change it much, unless absolutely necessary.

[SHINE]

ur first? whatever sassy69 says, she is the best

[dryvrgrl]

if youve been lifting heavy 5 years, you should be harder
Eat more hirte a coach get diet REALLY on track work on program
i did my first bb show on 10 mg of var a day for the last 10 weeks that was it

[AllTheWay]

there is tons of good info on here and lots of people who are around to help.

it seems like many women retain water with var so the ECA might help some with that or maybe some albuterol or clen to keep the water down.

i would start at 5mg and move up if need be. seems like going up to 10mg is where most women get the most benefit without needing to go higher.

your calories look very low to me if you want to gain size or strength that is. i am 5'8" and i keep my calories around 1800-2000 (or i should havent been very good at it lately and am getting extra fluffy) i would definitely fill in with more protein.

and as shine says, ask Sassy to weigh in and give her opinion. she is extremely knowledgable!

[Ms.Wetback]

I have ran it a number of times and get awesome results out of 5mg twice a day 8 hours apart. Water is an issue with me but if I watch my sodium intake I seem to deal with it fairly well. If you can start off on 2.5mg twice a day and then bump it up to 5mg twice a day.

[sassy69]

What they all said. I'd venture that your hypertrophy limitation is your diet. I'm 5'7" and I do my competition cuts on ~1700 cals. If you want more size I'd suggest you schedule a bulker phase at some point. It is hard to eat a lot if you're not used if you want to post your usual diet we can look at some places where you can increase (doesn't have to be for now but for some thoughts going forward).

Aside from some of the confusions on mcg/mg and stacking things, I think you've got the jist of a cycle. Here's my recommendation if your goal is primarily to finetune where you are at now:

- post your diet (meal by meal w/ portion sizes) and we can see what you're working with now - often small tweaks can optimize very easily

- Depending on what you have available - if you have 2.5 mg or have tabs that you can split, start at 5 mg split in half - half in the AM / half in the PM (split e.g. 12 hrs apart) for 2 weeks. This mostly just to check for your reaction to it and make sure you didnt' get something that isn't actually anavar (e.g. faked w/ winstrol or dbol or tbol). Var genrally takes 10-14 days to hit 'full strength' - you should notice first - increased sensitivity "down there", then possibly increase in acne / oily skin hair, and most likely when you hit 'that time of the month' you'll probably not get a period w/ the flow - you can expect to experience the usual stuff that comes w/ it (whatever is 'usual' for you) in terms of mood swing, water retention, etc. But usually the flow stops while you've got an AAS in your system. It will normally come back within a couple months after you stop the cycle (specifically the first full month after the compound has cleared your system - ref: detection time for anavar = 3 weeks). Each person's hormone profile is unique and the interaction of it w/ AAS is going to be unique - but what I described is the usual. Just takes some time for your body to figure out WTF is going on w/ your hormone levels. And possibly some water retention. It shouldn't be bad. If it is, you can try dropping your dose down or try some OTC diuretics like dandelion root. If its really bad either you have that reaction to it, or its not anavar. Hard to know when you're dealing w/ other-than-doctor-prescribed stuff. No guarantees when you choose to go to the dark side.

- Either if you can't split your tabs or you have cleared the initial 2 weeks 'on', increase to 10 mg /day - again if you can, split the dose in half AM/PM (this matches closer to the half-life of anavar which helps reduce spikes from more widely seperated dosing, thus more controlled sides - so much about cycling is about keeping even levels in your system.

- Recommend you include some acidophilus in your supplement pile as any AAS or hormone manipulator can promote 'bad' vaginal bacteria and result in yeast infections. One thing you want to avoid while cycling is going on antibiotics. Those damn things stress your system and you're already beating on it w/ a cycle.

And then you can easily run at 10 mg/day for 10-12 weeks w/ no issues, and no need to taper off or do PCT or anything.

The ECA stuff is just a fat burner - its not interacting w/ your hormones so it doesn't matter if you include it or not w/ anavar. As you said, if your goal is to cut, you can run it w/ var towards that goal. You can google for ECA components if you want to build your own or use an OTC product as it says on the bottle.

One of the primary things that anavar gives is better recovery - so you'll find that you are stronger, but also that you can take more heavy work on your body and recover better. One thing to keep in mind is that you will be coming off, so expect your strength to drop some and you may notice some more aches and pains than you did while 'on' because of that. This is one of the things that comes w/ cycling. It is exactly that - cycling - you have a phase to build or cut, and then a phase to clean out / recover and then continue on to your next phase of whatever it is you want to do (whether another cycle or not) - just like a bulker and then a cutter phase - you're forever changing and rarely stay the same.

[letigre]

SASSY - thank you sooooooooo much! you know, i appreciate all you guys telling me to slow my roll, because i do clearly see now that i need to work on eating enough for hypertrophy. its something i've vaguely hummed and hawwed about, but until i wrote out this thread, i didnt clearly see how it was holding me back. i guess i'm falling into the cliche trap of the girl afraid to eat more because i think its gonna make me fat. i also think that until now, i didnt really have a reason to work on it, because i'm generally happy with how i look and my performance, but now that i'm thinking about bringing gear into the mix, its made me stop and pause to see how i can really tighten up my game before i take this next step (if i do... see... IF... you all have made me rethink a bit).

my plan now is to focus on eating 175 - 200g proten a day (i average about 130 - 160g if i just eat intuitively), and try to be consistent about getting 1700 - 1800 calories a day. lets see what happens over the next few months if i am consistent. then, next year... if i still feel i could benefit from a cycle of anavar, i'll try it then

This is what I ate today, but I planned out my meals meticulously and then stuck to that plan. Meal 2 is everything I ate around my workout, bunched into 1 group.... so I had that over about 3 hours. 1 apple and PB about 30 - 40 minutes before i went to the gym, 1 scoop of whey pre-workout and 1 scoop postworkout with some yams.

Its about 8pm and i have 1 more meal left and that'll be my eggwhite/cinnamon/hemp/flax "pancake". I am not hungry AT ALL, and probably wont be until midnight, lol. But I'll still eat that pancake. Let me now what you think.

Food Log - Sun, Sept 25th 2011

[letigre]

DRYVRGRL - hey lady... thanks, i'm gonna focus on my diet, probably til the end of the year. i think thats the best idea for now. just make eating a higher amount of protein a habit.

ALLTHEWAY - hi! i am going to try to eat a few hundred more cals and protein -- i mean, we're coming into the right season for that anyway, right? hehe... i actually dont think this is going to make me fluffy, but even if it did, it doesnt matter because we're gonna be all covered up anyway! summer is gone! boo!

MS. WETBACK - hihi to you too! i also have severe water retention issues, most noticable at TOM and when I eat wheat products. Otherwise its under control. Thats one thing that worries me about anavar... I dont wanna be a bloated mess! I guess I'll never know how I'll react unless I try it. may not be an issue for me, however... it probably will be, since I am sensitive to retaining water anyhow.

[sassy69]

If your goal right now is hypertrophy, the increase in protein will be great, but I'd also suggest you up the carbs a bit as well. When I've done bulker phases and doubled my carbs and cals, my lifts doubled in some cases. Protein is the muscle builder, but carbs are your fuel. What I'd suggest is doing a bit of a lean bulker where you're increasing your carbs on your heavy lifting days and dropping it on your off or cardio-only days.

[letigre]

SASSY.... arrgghhh! I have to admit... I am a bit of a carbophobe jacking up my carbs scares the bejesus out of me. I also have a couple of beach vacations planned this winter, so I still want to stay lean. BUT... years ago, I took a diet break and just ate whatever the hell I wanted (only tracked protein) and, actually, that was also the first time i did a real strength program (5x5) and I sprouted these awesome shoulder caps, lol

I was not lean at all, but you could see them, clearly!!! They were great, haha!

I'm actually being REALLY generous with myself today with the carbs, I usually keep it under 80g unless its a moderate day or a refeed day (I usually do that every Saturday, just relax a bit... have a social meal, indulge in carbs throughout the day, no binging). This is probably something I need to get over too. I am much better than i ever was about carbs since going gluten-free. I think a lot of the ills i blamed on eating carbs was actually because I am gluten sesnitive. It doesn't make me physically sick, but I do look noticably bloated if i eat anything more than a nibble or a mouthful wheat related. So since I discovered that, i've played with my carbs a bit and I do eat more of them in general... even when i eat a lot of carbs, I get no water retention or any crazy instant weight gain like I used to.

Though... today was an extremely high fiber day, so I really only had 98g of carbs that my body will actually use as energy. I'll try to keep it up over 100g on training days, maybe 150g as an upper limit and see how I go.

[yadira0020]

Hi guys, quick question. Can anavar be used during bulking, or is it best during a cutting phase. Also, what are ECAs? I know they are thermogenics, but what kind. Any suggestions on those? Still bulking but looking to cut in March. Thanks!