My honest 2 weeks experience on Reta. Terrible.
Hi everyone,
I understand that most of the posts here are inclined towards praise of reta as a miracle drug. I can fully understand how it has helped so many people, and I am very happy for them. It is also what motivated me to also give it a try myself. However, after only 2 weeks, I decided to stop and I would just like to leave my not so positive experience here as well in case anyone else has faced the same, even if this will probably be downvoted to oblivion.
So to start off, I am not overweight but I am struggling to reach my goal weight for a while and have plateaued around 81-82 kg for almost a year now. I would like to reach 77 kg (my height 183cm), I just have some really stubborn love handles and I am hoping if I reach down to my goal weight they will finally disappear.
I have been lurking here and in other related fitness forums for a while and saw all the amazing results from reta so I thought perhaps it could help me to get the final push to reach that goal weight of mine.
And oh boi, was I right..and also very wrong at the same time. I started off on 1.3mg, I had never tried injecting anything before so this was a first, took it on a Sunday evening and slept. Monday morning after waking up, I barely feel it, still have breakfast and lunch normally, then by the evening I was already feeling like I could probably skip dinner if I wanted to. So I am thinking this is great, it’s working!
Tuesday (day 2) then comes, and the picture changes. I feel nauseous, i am forcing myself to have my breakfast and shakes. I feel no cravings at all, so yes I could pick the healthy options which is good, but I just have to force myself to eat them. And this is for every meal. I was aiming for no less than 1900 calories a day with 140g of protein. And it was really tough, ironically almost as tough as reaching the deficit when not on reta, just the other way around.
If it was only that then it would have still been ok. But the bigger problem was that I just felt very emotionally flat. Almost like it eliminated my cravings not just for food but to do anything else. I just was forcing myself to do everything else. It’s hard to describe but the closest feeling I could relate to this is like the day after going to a party and taking xtc.
Anyway by Friday/Saturday those symptoms are starting to subside, I am feeling some energy again and could do stuff and don’t have that much struggle to eat again. Sunday evening comes and and I am thinking okay maybe that’s just the adjustment period, so let’s give it another week. So I take another 1.3mg dose.
Then Monday (Day 8) is my weigh in day. I go on the scale and I see 79 kg! The week before I was 82kg! I am like wtf? How is this even possible? I am logging every calorie and I ensured that i hit 1900 calories target daily. According to my calculation I should have lost at most 0.5-0.7 kg. Maybe even a bit more if with some water weight. But 3kg? That’s nuts. I don’t want to lose it that fast either.
Now this past week has been just a replica of week 1, if not even worse…now my lifts at the gym are also affected. I had to reduce the weights for most of my exercises and I feel weaker overall. Today is Sunday and I decided I will not continue with reta. It’s just not for me I guess. I just wanted to share this on case anyone out there had had a similar experience to mine. No disrespect to anyone who has had positive experiences as opposed to mine, I am very happy for you!
If you got this far in the post, thank you for reading through!
EDIT:
Wow this kind of blew up and I am kind of getting some hate. I am sorry if I offended anyone? Let me add some context based on some of the comments:
- I did not reconstitute the reta myself, it was a pre-filled 40mg pen that I purchased from a pharmacist (unofficially obviously), apparently it’s a well known grey market brand in the field. I wont mention no names or sources as that’s not the point.
- The pen starting dose is 2mg, it takes 12 clicks to reach that dose. So instead I chose 8 clicks to get a 1.33mg dose. My reasoning was not very scientific. I just casually saw what people here are injecting and I thought to myself I have a pretty strong appetite ( the week before I was eating around 3K+ on avg) so I thought maybe 1.3mg is ok as starting dose
- writing this post and reflecting on the experience made me realise that yes I might have gone into this too naively, but we all make mistakes so no need for some of the harsh judgements. We live to learn. Hopefully if someone who hasn’t started yet reads this and understands that better take it easy at first
Thanks again