Anavar/Leaning Out

[Daisy_Girl]

I want to start off saying I know that no AAS alone will make a person lean. I was sitting around the LAX airport yesterday thinking about the whole "getting lean" process, dieting, etc. and the question about how Anavar helps a person "get leaner" was interesting to me.

It's just that I often see people refer to Anavar as helping them lean out (in conjunction with clean/hi prot diet and solid exercise program). Is there something "special" about Anavar that helps people get lean faster - when everything else is dead-on? Is it just that it helps preserve the muscle while dieting?

Just curious.....

 

[spatts]

I think anavar is "preferred" because of the low sides. As you suggested, it helps by maintaining muscle while in a hypocaloric state, which keep the metabolism up, among other things. I'm sure test and other AS/AAS can get the job done, but anavar can do it with few, if any, sides.

 

[Austrian]

non-aromatizing AS like ox lower estrogen levels when taken alone. lower estrogen -> lower protective effect on fat cells and lower water retention.
they lower estrogen because they inhibit LH/FSH secretion which in turn leads to lower testosterone production in males, and since testosterone is the only source for estrogen it depresses this also. In females, things work almost the same way, they also produce testosterone first but it is immediately aromatized in the ovaries. The suppressing effect is the same percentage wise but to a greater extent in absolute terms.
there are negative sides to this also, bad blood lipids being one of them. in a study with obese men, they switched from oxandrolone to nandrolone because blood lipids got so bad. Ox was superior to testosterone in reducing body fat though. I guess that they could have gotten the same result with stanozolol, methenolone, trenbolone or any other non-aromatzing AS. read:


Oral anabolic steroid treatment, but not parenteral androgen treatment, decreases abdominal fat in obese, older men.

Lovejoy JC, Bray GA, Greeson CS, Klemperer M, Morris J, Partington C, Tulley R.

Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70808-4124, USA.

OBJECTIVE: To compare the effects of testosterone enanthate (TE), anabolic steroid (AS) or placebo (PL) on regional fat distribution and health risk factors in obese middle-aged men undergoing weight loss by dietary means. DESIGN: Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial, carried out for 9 months with primary assessments at 3 month intervals. Due to adverse blood lipid changes, the AS group was switched from oral oxandrolone (ASOX) to parenteral nandrolone decaoate (ASND) after the 3 month assessment point. SUBJECTS: Thirty healthy, obese men, aged 40-60 years, with serum testosterone (T) levels in the low-normal range (2-5 ng/mL). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Abdominal fat distribution and thigh muscle volume by CT scan, body composition by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA), insulin sensitivity by the Minimal Model method, blood lipids, blood chemistry, blood pressure, thyroid hormones and urological parameters. RESULTS: After 3 months, there was a significantly greater decrease in subcutaneous (SQ) abdominal fat in the ASOX group compared to the TE and PL groups although body weight changes did not differ by treatment group. There was also a tendency for the ASOX group to exhibit greater losses in visceral fat, and the absolute level of visceral fat in this group was significantly lower at 3 months than in the TE and PL groups. There were significant main effects of treatment at 3 months on serum T and free T (increased in the TE group and decreased in the ASOX group) and on thyroid hormone parameters (T4 and T3 resin uptake significantly decreased in the ASOX group compared with the other two groups). There was a significant decrease in HDL-C, and increase in LDL-C in the ASOX group, which led to their being switched to the parenteral nandrolone decanoate (ASND) after 3 months. ASND had opposite effects on visceral fat from ASOX, producing a significant increase from 3 to 9 months while continuing to decrease SQ abdominal fat. ASND treatment also decreased thigh muscle area, while ASOX treatment increased high muscle. ASND reversed the effects of ASOX on lipoproteins and thyroid hormones. The previously reported effect of T to decrease visceral fat was not observed, in fact, visceral fat in the TE group increased slightly from 3 to 9 months, although SQ fat continued to decrease. Neither TE nor AS treatment resulted in any change in urologic parameters. CONCLUSIONS: Oral oxandrolone decreased SQ abdominal fat more than TE or weight loss alone and also tended to produce favorable changes in visceral fat. TE and ASND injections given every 2 weeks had similar effects to weight loss alone on regional body fat. Most of the beneficial effects observed on metabolic and cardiovascular risk factors were due to weight loss per se. These results suggest that SQ and visceral abdominal fat can be independently modulated by androgens and that at least some anabolic steroids are capable of influencing abdominal fat.