Tirzepatide stalled at week 14, considering a short AOD-9604 bridge, anyone tried it?

Question

My run has been textbook up until week 12 on tirz. Appetite control was easy, scale moved every single morning, clothes fit different by week 6. Then around week 13 the scale just froze. Still tracking my food in the same window, still lifting 4x a week, sleep score sitting at 78 average. Nothing in the data shifted except the weight. I have read enough about adaptive thermogenesis to know some stall is probably expected. I am not looking for a miracle, I am looking for something to nudge things for 4 to 6 weeks while my body catches up. AOD-9604 interests me because the profile says no IGF-1 effect and no blood sugar hit, which feels safer than stacking another GLP-1 on top. The lipolytic mechanism is plausible on paper and I like that it is a fragment rather than full GH. Anyone here run AOD-9604 alongside a GLP-1 for a plateau? Curious what dose, what time of day, and whether it actually moved the needle or just cost more money.

fasted_scientist · Accepted Answer

Ngl. Stalls this clean tend to be water and glycogen, not actual fat gain, especially if your food log and training have been locked in. I would be cautious about adding anything new when the inputs look the same, because attributing a future drop to AOD when it could just be the stall breaking on its own is a classic placebo trap. On the AOD side, the human data is pretty thin and most of what gets passed around online is from the fragment work in obese subjects years ago, not modern recomp users. No IGF-1 bump sounds tidy in the profile but absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. Before stacking, have you tried a diet break or a small reverse for a week, then back to your deficit? Often does more than adding another peptide. What did your coach or GP think about the stall first?

calm_ketogen · Answer

Yeah exactly this. A two week freeze after 12 weeks of consistent drop is honestly pretty normal, your body catches up. Adding AOD just makes it impossible to tell what actually did the work if it breaks next week 😴

runner_aaron · Answer

Yeah the water and glycogen angle makes sense, my weight trend app shows a bit of up and down within a kilo so probably fair. I think you're right that adding AOD now would make it impossible to know what actually moved the needle. Might just hold and see if it breaks in another 2 weeks tbh. Did you ever hit a similar flat patch on a longer cut and what broke it for you?

weekendnate · Answer

Honestly that is kind of where my head is at too. If I add something right when stalls usually resolve on their own, I will never know if it was the AOD or just my body catching up. Maybe I just hold and watch the trend another two weeks before pulling the trigger.

weekendnate · Answer

Yeah, I stalled for three weeks around month 5 on my last cut and what finally moved it was dropping calories by like 150 and adding a fifth cardio session, nothing fancy. Sleep stayed solid the whole time, HRV did dip a little when I pushed the cardio but recovered. The annoying answer is it just kind of unsticks itself once you stop poking at it. Holding for two weeks sounds like a good call, resist the urge to stack something new while you're still in the noise.

weekendnate · Answer

Fair points on the stall being mostly water and glycogen, that tracks with how flat the weekly averages have been while my morning weight bounces in a 2 pound range. The placebo trap thing is real and I have already caught myself wanting to add something just to feel like I am doing something. On the human data, yeah, I noticed the same thing. Most of the obese subject trials are old and the endpoints are modest. The no IGF-1 claim is more about receptor selectivity than something I can actually measure, which is a fair call out. I am gonna hold another 2 weeks and see if it breaks on its own before I add anything. If it does not, I will probably skip AOD and look at a diet break instead. Less interesting but probably smarter.

Tirzepatide stalled at week 14, considering a short AOD-9604 bridge, anyone tried it?

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