Post-mortem on my failed cutting stack — what I got wrong
37 posts
Running this for accountability and so others don't repeat the mistakes.
What I tried (12 weeks):
- Tirzepatide 5mg weekly
- AOD-9604 300mcg AM pre-fasted
- CJC-1295 no-DAC 100mcg + Ipamorelin 200mcg pre-bed
- BPC-157 250mcg daily Sub-Q
- L-carnitine oral 2g daily
Goal: lose 12kg in 12 weeks while training 5x/week and 'using all the tools.'
What actually happened:
- Week 1-4: dropped 5kg. Felt like a hero.
- Week 5: training quality tanked. Strength dropping fast.
- Week 6-8: -1kg total. Sleep wrecked despite the GH stack. Appetite suppressed to the point I was eating 1400 kcal most days. Mood dipping.
- Week 9: pulled AOD and cut tirz to 2.5mg.
- Week 10-12: stabilized. Ended -8kg from start, but LBM down 2.4kg per DEXA and VO2max DOWN 4% from baseline. Resting HR up. Cortisol AM elevated.
Diagnosis:
- Stacking 3 fat-loss-active compounds (tirz + AOD + GH sec) was redundant and drove me into aggressive caloric deficit without feeling it.
- 5x training on a 1400 kcal diet was a recipe for overtraining.
- The GH stack was doing less than I thought in a severe deficit — GH lipolysis is real but it's a marginal effect vs the diet gap.
- I ignored performance markers (lift numbers, HR) in favor of scale weight.
Lessons: one fat-loss lever at a time. Protect performance as a constraint, not an afterthought. Scale weight is not the KPI.
15 Replies
94 posts
AOD-9604 is barely useful in most stacks on its own. Layered on top of a GLP-1 you're paying for a compound that's adding almost nothing marginal. Cut it first would've been my call.
- CJC-1295 no DAC · 100 mcg · pre-bed · sub-Q
- Ipamorelin · 200 mcg · pre-bed · sub-Q
- BPC-157 · 250 mcg · 2x/day · sub-Q
37 posts
@stackbuilder agree in hindsight. I was anchored on 'AOD is 'fat-loss peptide'' without doing the math on marginal contribution over tirz.
119 posts
Thanks for writing this. Post-mortems are the most valuable posts in this forum and the rarest. The overtraining diagnosis is right — 5x training + 1400 kcal + GH sec + GLP-1 is a stacked deficit that the body flags by dropping the expensive tissue (LBM, cardio fitness).
44 posts
The 1400 kcal floor is the giveaway. Tirz at 5mg suppresses appetite such that many users land in a deficit they wouldn't pick manually. The protocol needs a kcal floor, not just a cap.
- Tirzepatide · 5 mg · weekly · sub-Q
41 posts
Big lesson in this post: performance markers are the canary. Lift numbers and resting HR catch overtraining 2-3 weeks before the scale or body comp does. Protect them or you lose the cycle.
115 posts
AOD-9604 famously failed its phase 2 obesity trials. The mechanism (GH fragment with fat-loss-only properties in rodent models) doesn't translate in humans at practical doses. I'd classify it as 'marketing peptide.'
71 posts
One-at-a-time is the golden rule people constantly ignore. Isolation of variables isn't a purity thing, it's a you-can-actually-fix-a-problem thing.
- BPC-157 · 500 mcg · 2x/day · sub-Q
- GHK-Cu · 2 mg · nightly topical · topical
30 posts
Similar to my failed Q1 cut. Different stack but same pattern — too many levers, too little food, dropped strength and didn't notice until it was bad. Appreciate the writeup.
37 posts
@dexa_devotee that ratio is the most painful number in the whole post. It's the one I'll bring to the next cycle as the hard constraint.
45 posts
2.4kg LBM loss on a 12 week cut is on the high end of what's acceptable even for an aggressive protocol. Target is usually <1:4 ratio of LBM:fat loss. You were roughly 1:2.3. That's the data that says 'too aggressive' independent of how you felt.
205 posts
Rebuild protocol suggestion: 6-8 weeks maintenance at +300 kcal, protein 2g/kg LBM, training volume held, no fat-loss compounds. Add CJC/Ipa if you want to push LBM recovery. This is the 'reverse cycle' that most people skip and it's the difference between a cut that stuck and one that didn't.
- CJC-1295 no DAC · 100 mcg · pre-bed · sub-Q
- Ipamorelin · 200 mcg · pre-bed · sub-Q
- BPC-157 · 500 mcg · 2x/day · sub-Q
36 posts
Hexaclinic's advice is money. The rebuild is the cycle. Most people end cuts and just go back to 'normal' and wonder why they regain.
46 posts
This is exactly the kind of honest post that makes protocol-discussions useful. Thanks for taking the time.
- Sermorelin · 200 mcg · 5x/wk AM · sub-Q
- BPC-157 · 250 mcg · 2x/day · sub-Q
8 posts
20 posts
Learning a lot from the failures posted here. Thanks for not just posting wins.