An AWESOME Transformation
and a rant on steroid moralizing
I saw this great transformation on the timeline today
-This post is brought to you by neurovolt that I took this morning
Brian looks amazing. I said as much. He went from 30% bodyfat to looking like a superhero. His before and after was the result of getting SERIOUS and remaking his whole identity.
Great guy and ive enjoyed following him. I believe he works with clients as well
But but but did he use anabolics?
Sure did, he was and is quite open about it.
But testosterone doesnt lift the weight or follow the diet for you.
This kind of change doesnt happen without being absolutely DIALED IN with training, nutrition, discipline on all levels.
I already know the grumbling is starting
I think this kind of transformation is INSPIRING.
Not everyone shared my opinion though.
The comments were a mix of respect and admiration, and spiteful resentment and browbeating.
Because he’d used anabolics, aka steroids, aka your-hard work-and-total transformation of your physique is meaningless, get-fucked-Im-a-better-more-moral-person-than-you
Brian had a sense of humor about it, and as mentioned he himself is 100% open about his anabolics usage.
I was probably more upset about it than he was, and recorded a RANT in my car on the bullshit moralizing around anabolics/PEDS/TRT
Ive seen similar arguments now about people losing weight GLPS.
You Dont DESERVE to feel good or be recognized for what you did for yourself, because you didnt suffer enough for it.
For essentially all of human history, we’ve regarded greed, gluttony, and sloth as moral failures, and categorized them as sins.
Consequently, the fitness industry (and society at large) for man years considered obesity to be character defect, and a willpower failure.
This was judgmental without question, and let us say the judgements were correct, but being judgmental has had a very poor track record of fixing peoples behavior at scale.
Working on “mindset” and the infinite multitude of fat loss gurus and fitness pros failed to stop the rise of obesity. So did religion for that matter. Whether you gave your life to Christ and were saved or believed in Allah and Muhammed as his prophet…
People were are are still fat. Calling things a sin doesn’t sufficiently stop people. Especially not with consumption.
And as obesity was studied as a medical disease, we learned that was an extremely challenging situation to fix. Yes, it required a calorie deficit and exercise, but breaking the psychosomatic, neuroendocrine, hormonal cascade and all its loops that reinforced counter-health behavior was a seemingly intractable problem at scale.
Then GLPS came along. They reduced the hunger drive, drove down the mental fixations, and allowed people FINALLY, for the first time in history, to change their behavior in the more “moral” direction.
Obesity rate is going down finally as a result.
That is the power of technology.
Technology exists to improve the human condition and lower the cost of an outcome. Technology is the application of knowledge to achieve a goal, in a way that can be replicated.
A GLP is a technology in the same sense that an antibiotic is. Or insulin.
Or testosterone for that matter.
Someone identified a mechanism, isolated the signaling involved, and produced a molecule that does a job the body is supposed to do or unable to do.
Now the objection is that the weight came off the wrong way.
Or the muscle was gained in the wrong way.
We can use medicine and technology everywhere else in our life to relieve stress and achieve our goals faster, BUT fat loss and muscle gain MUST be done “naturally” to be respected.
The “RIGHT” Way is you Fail repeatedly over and over again and are in poor health until you figure it out “naturally”
The RIGHT Way is you can only make gains naturally and slowly, and if youre not genetically blessed, haha fucking get over it. Too BAD you skinny fuck.
I find this patently absurd. Every year of your life spent obese is a tragedy and no one gains anything from it.
Nor is spending life weak and struggling against the genetic hand you’ve been dealt. Life is not fair. We accept that.
But why cant we improve the odds for ourself?
Everywhere else in Life, you are considered SMART for Getting results with efficiency and figuring out a better way.
You can hire a coach to learn a skill and hire a CPA to save taxes and hire experts to get the job done right
but with the BODY, now its a problem.
That brings me back to the anabolics conundrum
Ive always been open that Im a natural lifter. I dont use testosterone. Not out of any sense of moral superiority, but because I genuinely dont have the desire for it. I started lifting in HS for female attention. It worked. My test levels are good, my quality of life high, Im happy with how I look. Training is a part of my identity. I dont have good genetics for size or strength, but I also have reasonably decent “hormonal” profile naturally, thank you Mom and Dad.
That said, I recognize that for many men, they are suffering, their life is not what it could be, and their suboptimal hormonal state is behind it.
Testosterone replacement therapy is about far more than muscle. Restoring androgen levels improves bone mineral density, insulin sensitivity, visceral fat, sexual function, and makes men feel alive again.
You gain nothing by being in a Low T, low energy state. You only lose.
TRT is a godsend for guys everywhere.
There are also men who simply want to be BIG and Muscular and Strong.
Thats great. We can psychoanalyze this to death if want about the edge cases and the guys with “bigorexia”, but wanting to be strong with muscles is as natural a masculine a desire that a man can have.
So men uses steroids (testosterone) to achieve this.
There are also men who want to be OPTIMIZED and desire a heightened state of performance and well being. Maybe they dont absolutely need TRT, but they want the enhancement.
If using anabolics improves your life, use them.
If you dont care about for them, then dont. You have free will.
My desire is simply, I want people to be happy and healthy.
Be responsible in whatever form of enhancement you use. And track your biomarkers accordingly.
If you are a man or woman interested in hormone replacement therapy, TRT, and want the most qualified medical guidance and supervision, contact Velocity Health.
I am 78 and have used TRT for many years. I keep my testosterone levels in the mid-range. My new PCP thought I was too old for TRT, so he cut my dose by 50% despite my objections. I am a bit smarter than my dumb PCP. I simply combined testosterone gel with DSMO to increase the absorption, and it's working as intended!
100 percent all of this. I have been working out like a fiend for about 7-8 years, and dropped a lot of weight through that. But I couldn't seem to build muscle. At 45, I checked my T level and - it was mid-range at best (400's). Got on TRT, didn't change anything and suddenly I started building muscle and dropping fat like crazy, in a way I hadn't even during newbie gains. In a year when demands of travel and dealing with a crisis seriously cut into my number of workouts, my gains are better than last year when I hit every workout perfectly.
If you're not getting the results you want, and there's a way to get to them that, if used responsibly, won't harm you - I just can't see why people would be opposed to that. But like you said, there's that built-in programming that we need to suffer more, I guess. Great post.