Do steroids make you gain weight?
Yes, of course.
Next question!
Oh, you wanted a little more detail? What kind of weight do steroids make you gain? And how much? Read on and we’ll take a look in depth at just how you can expect using steroids to impact on your weight.
Muscle Mass
Of course steroids make you gain weight by building extra muscle. This goes without saying, seeing as it’s common knowledge that muscle weighs more than fat. Of course this is one of the primary goals of many athletes and casual users who opt to use steroids. In order for this to be effective though, you’re also going to need to consume lots of protein and train hard in order to provide the stimulation and the fuel to encourage muscle growth.
At the same time as building muscle though, steroids will also very likely help you to lose fat. Steroids are used by bodybuilders, fitness models and many others who want to gain ‘lean’ muscle mass and look ripped. This woks because steroids increase anabolism which in turn increases both muscle gain and the metabolism. The result is a powerful, lean look.
Likewise, athletes will often lose fat while using steroids because they allow them to work out more intensively with less breaks and with less time to recover. This increased exertion means more calories are burned, which in turn means the bodybuilders look much leaner than they otherwise might.
Understand the difference here: weight isn’t important. It’s body composition that is important.
More Factors and Considerations
Now though, you might be wondering why some bodybuilders look puffy and seem to gain the fat kind of weight when they use steroids.
And one of the big answers to this is that steroids can also occasionally encourage water retention and fat storage. This is particularly true if you use steroids like Dianabol which are androgenic in nature. These steroids work by increasing testosterone via the androgen receptors and in some cases, this can lead to an increase in oestrogen as well. That’s because oestrogen can be made from testosterone in the body.
This then causes the effects of oestrogen, which include gynaecomastia (potentially) and retention of water weight. This is the reason that a bodybuilder or athlete primarily interested in building lean muscle would look for a muscle hardening steroid like Anadrol or Deca rather than Dianabol.
Another consideration is the ‘steroid gut’ which is also known as ‘palumboism’. The good news is that this has little to do with steroids specifically but is rather the result of multiple drugs and supplements being used in conjunction.
Bear in mind too that some steroids are specifically used for losing weight and fat, as are some other illegal performance enhancing drugs such as ‘clenbuterol’.
The good news? There are also completely different alternatives to using steroids at all – such as the supplements from CrazyMass which are known for providing all the same benefits as steroids but with none of the downsides or risks. Crazy Mass supplements don’t cause water retention (because they don’t raise testosterone high enough to make oestrogen a factor) and they don’t cause palumboism.
