Should I use steroids?

[Judge Dredd]

My main concern is my liver. I have an alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency. From what I remember of my trips to see specialists over the years, I don't have a very severe case.

I've never suffered any of the common symptoms.

The worst thing that happened was the fact that my liver wasn't capable of breaking down fats (according to my physician). It stores it. So basically, if I don't work out... The fat piles up, and eventually I'll need a liver transplant.

The doctors didn't think I'd live past my 20th birthday.

I'd like to say they were wrong, but I haven't gotten there yet. I won't be 20 until December.

My question is, should I use steroids ? I know they're toxic to the liver, but here's the thing... I'll need a new one regardless.

Even eating right and exercising can't reverse the damage that's already been done. I have a fatty liver. It's not gonna go away.

Steroids might speed up the process of killing my liver. That's the only thing I'm worried about.

Other than having a fatty liver, I'm completely healthy. Well, almost. I'm a healthy fat guy lol. I weigh 255 lbs and I'm about 30% body fat.

My goal is to lose weight, not turn into the hulk. But I'd also like an athletic advantage.

Edit:

To be a bit more specific about my intentions...

I want to go from looking like this:


To looking like this:


My goal isn't to be some massive body builder.

I realize that once I come off the steroids, I'll lose quite a bit of strength. But I can always get it back. I work out as it is. That much isn't going to change once I come off. I just want to use them to help me get to (or at least closer to) my goal in a period of time that I couldn't otherwise do it in.

I want to do it by September. 4 months.

[David LoPan]

Two things first off. With a health person your age you should NOT take AAS steroids period! Read this and it will help you understand why, http://forums.steroid.com/anabolic-s...-steroids.html Second off is that you have a way to high body fat to even think about AAS at this time regardless of your age.

You have an inherited disorder so that complicates things a lot. How are your lungs and liver doing? When did you see your doctor and have a full work up done? Blood, Pulmonary and liver scan. IMO you should know the answer to this questions before you even asked it. You need to talk to your doctor, learn everything you can about your alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency and be your advocate. Without hitting up the old google to find the answer, I thought one that has alpha 1 did not show symptoms until their 20 to 30's.

Sounds like the best place for you is to go hit up these two parts of the forum. NUTRITION RESOURCE FORUM and LIFTING TECHNIQUE'S & WORKOUT QUESTIONS

[Chicagotarsier]

Step 1: Get blood work done before anything.

Step 2: Read the forums front to back..here and other places.

If you are just looking for an advantage I would say this....

The body can naturally have a T level up to around 1200 unless you are a super freak. Just having a T level that the body can naturally produce (albeit via supplements) puts you above 99% of all humans. You do not need to cycle or do some hulk forming process to see the difference.

I was low T (68) and in great pain (Did not know it) but was still in the gym 6x a week for 2 hours and swam a total of 30 miles a week. I got my initial trt dose and in 4 weeks went from looking fat and dumpy (though in shape) to losing 6 inches on the waist and my arms looking sweet. I have no plans to be a hulk but seeing the rewards for my hard work are worth it. Just my 2 cents.

Many ways to achieve this but the safest is and always will be the good ole 1:1 test! If you are normal for your age on bloodwork and keep the dose just enough to be level but give you 1000-1200 you should see some really good improvements. In a nutshell...proper trt.

[Live for the PUMP]

No!!

[Chicagotarsier]

^^^^^^ Hahaha Roid bad..need John Candy Body gooddddddd lol

[redz]

Definitely not cycling though you could get your test levels checked to see if you are a TRT candidate.

[David LoPan]

Step 1: Get blood work done before anything.

Step 2: Read the forums front to back..here and other places.

If you are just looking for an advantage I would say this....

The body can naturally have a T level up to around 1200 unless you are a super freak. Just having a T level that the body can naturally produce (albeit via supplements) puts you above 99% of all humans. You do not need to cycle or do some hulk forming process to see the difference.

I was low T (68) and in great pain (Did not know it) but was still in the gym 6x a week for 2 hours and swam a total of 30 miles a week. I got my initial trt dose and in 4 weeks went from looking fat and dumpy (though in shape) to losing 6 inches on the waist and my arms looking sweet. I have no plans to be a hulk but seeing the rewards for my hard work are worth it. Just my 2 cents.

Many ways to achieve this but the safest is and always will be the good ole 1:1 test! If you are normal for your age on bloodwork and keep the dose just enough to be level but give you 1000-1200 you should see some really good improvements. In a nutshell...proper trt.

Read his post, he has an underlying condition and he is 19! His goal is to lose weight and high BF would mean NO to anyone unless maybe it is somone like you that has low t and needs it for medical reasons and is under a doctors care.

[redz]

Disregard my post I thought he was the guy in the first pic I didn't read the 19 years old part. Don't do it!

[Judge Dredd]

I recently saw my physician. He requested blood work a while back to run the test to check the levels of what ever it is he's looking for in my liver. They were normal.

As far as my lungs go, I can run 3 miles at a steady pace keeping my heartrate between 145 and 160 and still not be gasping for air.

My lungs are perfectly healthy.

I used to have asthma as a kid, but I "grew out of it" lol. Just like my allergies. The smallest things like loose pollen in the air used to make it hard for me to breathe.

They first discovered the A1AT deficiency when I was 12. The asthma and everything started when I was 8 though. And ended when I was 18. It more or less lasted 10 years.

And since my 18th birthday I've been losing weight steadily.

Partially due to exercising, but there's something more. It's like something kicked my metabolism into overdrive when I turned 18.

For 3 months I ate 3 meals a day. One being 2 slices of toast with peanut butter for breakfast, salad with diced chicken and cheese with ranch dressing for lunch, and a large donair poutine for supper. Fries, cheese, gravy and donair meat. EVERY DAY for 3 months. On top of that, no exercise. Plus at the time I would easily go through a 2L bottle of Pepsi a day.

Not healthy...

Guess what. Despite the fact that I was eating unreal amounts of unhealthy and fatty foods, I lost 30 lbs. Averaging 10 lbs a month. On that diet, with no exercise...

I dropped from 286 to 255.

Now I'm actually trying.

Going to the gym every day (no days off, at all. whether I'm in pain or not, I'm in the gym).

I do 20 minutes of cardio, keeping my heart rate between 145 and 165. I choose to use the bikes for the simple fact that I'm most comfortable on them. I do that before and after my workout.

I split up the muscle groups throughout the week

- Legs/Biceps
- Chest/Triceps/Biceps
- Shoulders/Abs/Calves/Biceps
- Back (I specifically make a point to do dead lifts to focus on my lower back, it's one of the fattier areas of my body)/Biceps

I change up the order randomly. I literally don't plan anything until I'm at the gym, I just go with what ever I'm feeling at the time.

And right now my diet is normal. I eat a lot of stir fry (mostly with beef and chicken, but I'm stuck eating white rice because my dad hates brown rice). Also eat a lot of pasta. It's a semi-regular supper for us. We use whole wheat noodles though, not white. Same with our bread.

I don't know how much salt is added, cause my dad's girlfriend usually dishes it out and calls me when it's on the table already.

Other than that, I cut pepsi out completely. No more pop, no more poutine.

Breakfast is usually toast and peanutbutter, lunch stayed the same, only thing that really changed was the third meal.

I drink about a gallon of chocolate milk in the run of a month. I mix my casein with it every now and then because I get sick of the taste of it in water.

I've been in the gym 3 solid weeks now. I took 5 days off due to being sicker than a dog, if it wasn't for that I'd be on my 5th week right now instead of my 4th.

Since I started I've dropped from 258 to 252 lbs (that's my exact weight, I always round up to the nearest 5).

[Judge Dredd]

Should probably tell you that that picture isn't actually me. I'm not quite that big. I'm a little slimmer than that lol. They're just pictures I pulled off google. I'm already well on my way from that starting point. I'm about a third of the way there.

To give an example of progress in terms of strength:
My biceps are weak, I use bitch weights. I can only curl 20 lbs. Started out only being able to curl 15.

For hamstring curls and leg extensions, I lift 90 lbs.

For hack squat, I put on 100 lbs. Started at 90. And for leg press I'm at 140, but 3 weeks ago started at 90 lbs.

For back exercises I'm at 80 lbs (pull down exercises). For lower back I only do 50 lbs.

For my weighted crunches I hold a 35 lb plate to my chest.

Tricep pull down started at 60 lbs, and in 3 weeks I'm up to 120 lbs still not hitting failure at 10 reps.

On chest I'm using 20 lb dumbells, same for shoulders (unless I'm doing an overhead lift then it's 50 lbs on a barbell)

Generally I'll do 3 or 4 exercises targeting each group. So on the days that I do back/biceps, I'll do 3 or 4 bicep exercises (3 sets, 10 reps for each set ON EACH EXERCISE. Same for pretty much everything else unless I'm feeling overly energetic, then I'll go to 15 reps).

Does this give you enough of an idea of what it is I do in the gym?

All together I get about a solid hour of cardio. 20 mins before and after my work out, but 10 minutes of walking to get to and from the gym. So roughly 60 total.

And in the gym I wear a hoodie, and I always sweat through both layers of clothing. Visibly. So anyone saying I'm not pushing myself is just incorrect lol.

[Judge Dredd]

Read his post, he has an underlying condition and he is 19! His goal is to lose weight and high BF would mean NO to anyone unless maybe it is somone like you that has low t and needs it for medical reasons and is under a doctors care.

I've actually never had my testosterone levels tested. But I was told that they won't peak until around the age of 25.

It's a strong possibility that it's low though. The physician talked about it once... It was either that or I had abnormally high levels of estrogen. Which ever it was it wasn't good, and he wanted me to get it tested but I never did (didn't start taking him seriously until recently).

[Times Roman]

"I'm going to need a new liver anyways"?????

I advocate the safe and intelligent use of steroids .

what you propose sounds neither safe, nor intelligent.

Accept your limitations, and deal with it.

That's almost like someone with asthma telling me they don't mind smoking cigarettes because they feel that at some point, they will need new lungs.

[Honkey_Kong]

Judge Dred, to be honest, I don't think you should be using steroids .

At your age, you definitely shouldn't do it. Besides, your goals are not impossible to achieve naturally. What I recommend doing is refining your diet even more and making changes to your workout regimen.

You really shouldn't be working out every day. Give your body a chance to recover. You'll make a lot more progress and reduce the chance of injury. Great bodies aren't made in the gym, they're made in the kitchen and while resting. When you go to the gym, you need to give it 100%, but you need plenty of rest for your body to recover from the stress the workout put on it.

If you work on those two aspects, you'll make a lot more progress without risking health.

[Black]

The best thing I've read is that you have a plan. You've set up a routine and you are already making progress. Browse around the 'lifting/workouts' section and read up on different training methods to further expand your exercise education.

Then head over to the nutrition section. This will make all the difference. Read up on which types of food to eat and how much. Learn about finding your BMR and TDEE.

After you get a list of foods, go with your dad and his girlfriend to the store when they shop for groceries. Pick out stuff for yourself (I'd hope they wouldn't deny you food) and then try to replace healthier options for the food they pick out. Try and introduce them to new foods as well.

I read that you don't have a job, money, etc., so try the things above in the meantime. Eating the correct foods is going to make you lose fat. Steroids are the last thing you need right now. Be smart and don't neglect your health.