I was offline for a few days and had time to burn, so I whipped this out 'cuz I thought some new people that read this forum might be interested.
Anabolic Steroids for Men Over 35: My Personal Experience
I am writing this, not as an expert in steroids, pharmacology, medicine or medical science, but as an average person who has gone through the experience starting to use anabolic steroids at the age of 40. It is my experience and is based upon conclusions I have drawn from doing personal research.
I am writing this because I know there are other guys out there that are over 35 and have an interest in trying anabolic steroids for their own personal reasons and would appreciate hearing the experiences of others who have gone before them. If my experiences and conclusions interest you, continue on and do your own research and draw your own conclusions to see if anabolic steroids are right for you.
Reading this over, I realize it sounds a little self-centered. Well, I could go back and edit it and make it more objective (you know, numbers, stats, the boring facts), but that would make it kind of dry and take away the subjective experience that was, to me, such a crucial part of the experience. So, at the risk of sounding egotistical, I will give it to you, unadulterated, in all its gory detail...
A little background on me:
I would say that I am a pretty average Joe, in most respects. When I was younger I lifted weights to get in shape. I was not very consistent in keeping up the discipline: I would lift, get in shape and then circumstances (work, relationships, or just plain lack of discipline) would catch up with me and I would quit and fall back out of shape.
I have always been on the fat side; the only six-pack I have ever seen was sitting on a shelf in my refrigerator. Since high school I have fought to stay slim, sometimes with good success, other time, I completely surrendered and blew up like a balloon. Along with lifting weights I did a lot of bike riding and inline skating and played some beach volleyball in the summer and racquetball from time-to-time.
So, to sum it up, physically I am unremarkable. I have never been a super-athlete nor a complete fat-ass couch potato, just one of the masses that sits somewhere between the two extremes.
How I wound up trying anabolic steroids:
In my late teens and twenties, I got into bodybuilding to lose weight and improve my appearance. I never had ambitions to go competitive; I just wanted “to be better.” I was never very muscular and never got very ripped, but I did mange to keep myself in pretty good shape most of that time and I learned a lot about the basics of weightlifting, bodybuilding and nutrition. I also learned a lot about how my body responded to diet and exercise. I looked at anabolic steroids, but never really gave it a second thought. I wasn’t that into getting “big.”
When I was in my thirties, after a divorce, I started to exercise again. Same goals: lose the fat, gain some muscle and look “better.” I improved myself, but like most guys, I noticed that it got harder every year to stay fit. If I slid a bit over the winter, the fight to get back in shape got harder every year I got older.
After 35, I really started to slide. I was deep into my career, I had my own business, I was working long hours and I had no time to exercise. My gut grew larger and my strength and endurance waned. My back problems (from a mountain bike accident in my late 20’s) grew increasingly worse and the bad knees that plague my family started to affect me. I felt like an old man climbing stairs, my knees ached I was winded quickly.
When I did try to work out and get back in shape, it seemed there was a “hump” that I was just not able to get over. I tried to start an exercise program many, many times, but my body was too sluggish and achy, I had no endurance, I was winded too fast. Even if I stuck to it for a while, the gains in muscle and the loss of fat were unimpressive; there was little to motivate me to keep exercising when there were no visible gains and it was just pain and frustration every time I went to the gym.
I tried dieting alone to lose weight, but without doing any aerobic exercise, the diets weren’t that effective. I could lose a few pounds, but the weight I lost--and more--soon came back.
I started to see that the condition I was in as an inevitable byproduct of age and I started to accept that I would be fat and unfit for the rest of my life--and that life might not be that long because I of the shape I was in.
Then, by chance I saw a box of Testoviron Depot (testosterone enathate) sitting on the shelf of a local pharmacist. (I was living in a country where steroids are legal over-the-counter). Testosterone? Hmmm. I had researched steroids before, but had never done any and the name rung a bell. When I got home I got on the Internet and started to do some research.
On the Internet I found out that indeed, testosterone was an anabolic steroid. I started to do more research on steroids and testosterone replacement therapy in men. I felt like I was on to something. This might not be the fountain of youth, but what if it was the key to get me over the hump and back into shape? Having that key would certainly be valuable.
One concern I had: I was overweight. I was 6’3” and 245 lbs. and probably over 30% body fat (a Taiyo BF scale gave me a reading of 40% shortly before I started working out--but I think that was a bit high). I wondered: should I lose some fat first? Well, I have always had a problem keeping my weight under 220 lbs. I thought, if I could add muscle, and increased my lean body mass, it might make it easier to lose weight. Also, if I could get my lean body mass up high enough, I could look good at 220, perhaps even 240 lbs. and not have to fight to keep my body under the weight that my body seemed to be determined to keep itself at. So I decided to add lean body mass (muscle) first, then work on losing the fat. That, it seemed (to me at least) was a more workable plan.
After doing a couple months of research, I took a leap and decided to try anabolic steroids. Nothing big, just a moderate cycle of Testoviron Depot and Deca, with some Dianabol and Winny thrown in for good measure. I had started lifting weights a few months earlier and I had been making some progress, but like I stated before, the progress was slow. My strength was going up very slowly, but I was still far shy of my maximum strength when I was in my 20’s and there was little noticeable muscle growth to the eye.
Once the steroids kicked in though, things changed--and changed fast!
What happened when I finally tried anabolic steroids:
About three weeks into my first cycle I went to a new gym--one that had weights measured in kilograms, not pounds. I calculated the proper weight in kilograms and set up for my bench press. I planned on doing a set of three reps near my maximum weight. When I started lifting, the weights went up too easily; I did a set of twelve reps and racked the weights and tried to figure out how I could screw up something as simple as multiplying by 2.2! Well, it turns out, I hadn’t--the steroids had kicked in!
During my first cycle I was astounded at how fast my strength and size increased. Each trip to the gym was a new record weight for almost every exercise. I started to see muscles growing almost daily. After six weeks I almost started to get scared at the amount of muscle I was putting on--it all seemed unreal! Bulges started to appear on the outside of my quads and a nice inverted “V” appeared above my knee. My delts started to spring up where they used to be--but bigger. My chest and lats filled out and my pear shape started to invert back into its former “V” shape. It was almost like looking at another body in the mirror, a body that I thought I would never have again, but there it was, right in front of me, and it was mine! And it wasn’t just me that noticed the difference: friends started commenting on how much better I looked and once again, I started to notice that I was getting looks from women. Damn that felt great!
If the only result I had looking and feeling better about myself, that would be OK, but the process I had started, encouraged me to do more.
Putting on muscle is still putting on weight. I started to notice that my aerobic capacity was limiting my workouts. Well, I liked the way things were going and I wasn’t about to let anything get in the way of more success, so I stopped smoking and got out the bike. In a mater of a few weeks, I was doing 1-2 hours of bike riding three or four days a week and on the weekends I was occasionally doing four to six hour rides.
My backaches went away. My knees stopped hurting. Strengthening my muscles relieved, if not eliminated, the pain in my back and my knees. I could exercise more and harder now and not worry so much about the pain and injury.
While I was on my steroid cycle I started to eat better. Why screw up a good workout with a pizza or fries? Post-cycle I was motivate to do more and I dieted and lost almost 30 pounds of fat in a few months, which made the muscle gains I made look all that much better, not to mention greatly reducing my risk of cardio-vascular disease.
So, a few months after I finished my first cycle, I was stronger than I ever was. I had bigger muscles than I ever had. My bad back was better. My bad knees stopped aching. I had lost 30 lbs of fat and I was doing aerobic exercise four or five days a week. I stopped smoking. I was eating better. I had reduced or eliminated many of the risk factors associated with cardio-vascular disease and lung cancer. And I felt great.
Conclusions:
It’s hard for me to believe I made a bad choice!
Now I am not feeling like a twenty five year old, that’s impossible. But I am feeling like I am in better shape than I was at twenty five and certainly I feel and look better than most of the guys I see around me that are my age. That really feels great!
So what I learned is that turning forty years and being in poor physical shape is not the end of the line. There is hope! With a little help from the pharmacist, I quite literally changed the person that I am. I still feel there is a lot of room for improvement, but now I feel like there is hope for me to achieve those goals. I will probably still never see a six-pack anywhere but in my refrigerator, but I believe that I have started a process that will keep me far healthier as I grow older.
I am on my second bulking cycle now. I figure after this cycle, I will have the size and strength I want. I might do a few more cycles to help me lose weight and gain definition, but I don’t see myself doing massive amounts of steroids regularly. I value my re-found health.
I do see anabolic steroids as a useful too for older guys to get over their humps, get back on track and get in shape. Used intelligently and in moderation, anabolic steroids, in my opinion, are an option for men over 35. It’s not a wonder drug, but it’s a useful tool to accelerate the process of getting in shape.
Could I have accomplished all this without steroids? Perhaps. If I worked hard for three to five years, I could be where I am at after six months--if I could have gotten over the hump through sheer willpower alone. But that’s a big “if.” Something tells me that no amount of willpower alone could have gotten me over it.
A closing note:
I took anabolic steroids on my own and not under the supervision of a doctor. That is probably unwise, but I don’t know if I could find a doctor in the country where I live that has the knowledge I would require to do what I wanted to do. But in the USA there seems to be plenty of doctors willing and competent to do hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which could have similar (though probably less dramatic) results. For anybody that is interested in pursuing HRT, I think it is a viable and potentially safer option. Knowing what I know now, if I lived in the US and I was considering using anabolic steroids, I certainly would have at least looked into HRT as a viable option.
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Originally Posted by Autgrfan98
